>> Hi, everyone. Thanks for coming here. It's great to see everybody. I
know a lot of you but not all of you. And I'm happy, happy to see you
here. And also really happy to be able to talk to my great crew here about
the Thriving Ocean, which I hope all of you were just able to hear Bob
Ballard, who is always a good time And he has, I would say in the past
couple of years really as a lot of us have, really started to think about like
how is this going to work? How is the next 5, 10, 15, 50 years actually
going to work? And what is it we need to know that we don't already
understand. And how are we going to act on that understanding? One of
the things that's always been a mantra, especially when I was at National
Geographic was, you know, there's never been a more important or
urgent time for us to understand how does the world work and what is
our place in it. And I think that this is what this panel is on. How can we
make sure our ocean thrives so that we can thrive. And I think that
there's a real connectivity between -- there's just an essential, essential
connection between us and the ocean for air, for food, for anything. For
just the air we breathe Just about everything that is important to us. So I
want to quickly have my panelists introduce themselves with a couple of
quick lines so that they can tell us what they are up to. But -- and then
we'll go to their presentations.
>> Sounds good. I'm Jeff Marlow. And I'm a post doctoral scholar
of geobiology at Harvard University. I am mostly studying microcommunities
in the deep-sea that consume methane and thinking
about what it means for the planet. I am a science journalist and
I'm also the Executive Director of the Ad Astra Academy. We work with students
around the world to be inspired through exploration to pursue knowledge.
>> Okay So I'm Diva Amon. And I'm a deep-sea biologist who hails from the Caribbean.
And I'm also a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow at the
Natural History Museum in London. Quite a mouthful. And there
my research focuses on trying to answer two questions, what lives in our
deep oceans? And then how are we impacting it? I'm also the co-founder
of a marine NGO nonprofit in the Caribbean called Species. And we
focus on marine education, advocacy and research.
>> Hi, everyone, I'm John Mandelman. I am the Chief Scientist
and Vice President of the Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life
at the New England Aquarium. The Anderson Cabot Center
represents all of our research and conservation work
at the aquarium. I've been at the aquarium for almost 20 years.
I started out in the days when I had time to be a scientist as a
physiologic ecologist doing mostly fisheries biology and fishery science
to try to provide essential information to better manage and inform
policy and regulatory decisions in our oceans. I'm really a fishy guy.
Started out studying sharks and fish and that's still sort of my bread and
butter. But now I'm in charge of a large center of around 40 people all
trying to come up with creative solutions to the biggest ocean problems.
>> Hello, everyone. I don't think these are on.
>> No, I don't think so, either
>> My name is Ayana Elizabeth Johnson. I'm a marine biologist by
training. And I spent the last decade working with Caribbean
communities trying to solve this crazy puzzle of ocean conservation by
integrating science and policy and communication and economics to
figure out what the future could look like. And I am founder and president
of Ocean Collectiv, which is a consulting firm for ocean conservation
strategy that's grounded in social justice.
>> Great. I guess mine was the only -- I should have passed you
all my one. Ah-ha.
(Chuckles).
>> So what we'll do is go through everyone's presentations but as you
can tell, it's a really -- it's a good bunch of people here.
So I think we have Jeff's cued? You guys can go ahead and play it.
>> I'll take the function of the microphone. All right. So I'm a microbiologist.
And I'm mostly interested in thinking about how these microbial
communities shape our planet Microbes are everywhere
They are in any drop of seawater. They are in more
than a different organisms. New species are discovered every
single day. And they really form the foundation of what we might term a
healthy and thriving ocean in this context. They transform different
nutrients. They recycle different essential cofactors. They change the
chemistry around them in a way that makes things habitable for the rest
of us. They are really the foundation of any ecosystem and the ocean in
particular. And like the foundation of a building, we need to understand
exactly how they work. How stable they are. How they discuss and
communicate amongst themselves in order to really be a sustainable,
thriving community. So to illustrate that point, I'm going to ask you a
question about these two pictures. Which one kind of evokes thoughts of
biodiversity more? On the left we have a picture of the Amazon
rainforest. There are probably several hundred species of plants we're
seeing in this picture. It's kind of the epitome of a lush, diverse
ecosystem. On the right, 100,000 times smaller in scale is a grain of
sand from the North Sea. And every single green dot you see is a
different microbe There are 8,000 different species on this single grain of
sand. So what does this mean in terms of biodiversity and sort of
maintaining a thriving ecosystem? Well, like anything that is a
fundamental trait of our world, there are a lot of different definitions for
biodiversity. The one I'm using here is from the UN Convention on
Biological Diversity. And they would use this definition that it's the
variability among living organisms from all sources, including, among
others, terrestrial, marine and other aquatic ecosystems, ecological
complexes of which they are a part. The operative word here to me is
variability. And the functional most functional unit of biological variability
to me is a gene product, gene variation. Genes that make proteins are
the functional unit of biology. They are the things that allow us to
transform sunlight into food or a toxic chemical into a harmless one.
These are the units that change the world biochemically and are
important in terms of biodiversity. So where is all of that biodiversity
potentially coming from? Here are some estimates about the number of
species in gene products that exist. So a recent study suggested there
are a trillion different species of microbes. And 85 million macroscopic
organisms, the plants and animals we see around us all the time. And
while there are certainly more genes inside a macroscopic organism, the
sheer number of microbes means that about 3 orders of magnitude, a
thousand times more protein forming genes are found in the microbial
world. To put that in context, if this square here on the right is the kind of
quantity of gene products from plants and animals, this entire slide is
what's coming out of the microbial world. And this is kind of where the
deep ocean comes into play. Where are we going to find these new gene
products and these crazy environmental systems that allow diversity to
thrive? This is the Guaymas Basin in the Gulf of California it's a heavily
sedimented, hydrothermal system. And these interactions between
different types of chemistry really allow for multiple energetic niches to
form. And these are the types of environments that allow a huge
diversity of microbes to exist. Of those 1 trillion potential species we've
characterized or at least seen genetic snippets of only 10 million. So
there are 99.999% of the microbial diversity out there still waiting to be
discovered. And if we think about where to target that search, I like to
think of the earth as a battery and the deep ocean as a sort of
discharging battery where these chemically reduced electron rich fluids
from the interior of the earth are coming into contact with this sort of
oxidized electron pore ocean. This is where energy is produced by
chemistry rather than by lights. These are chemosynthetic habitats. And
there are three broad flavors of these that exist. There are the
hydrothermal events that precipitate black minerals as they spew metals
into the ocean. There are hydrocarbon seeps That's where I've done most
of my work. And this is where methane is fueling the symbiotic
relationships of microbes that build carbonate rocks. And then these are
lost city type of -- type alkaline hydrothermal events, which are getting a
lot of attention as potential incubators for the origin of life. And those
three types of chemosynthetic habitats, there are hundreds, probably
thousands of those different vents and seeps and mixture of fluids
around the world. But in the deep-sea we've only seen about .01% of the
sea floor. So if that much amazing biological diversity that has changed
our conception of what biology is capable of, if we have only seen that,
that tiny fraction, it's amazing to me to think about what's in that 99.99%
we haven't seen So the question I'm kind of charging the audience with
today is, how to focus that search. How do we go from this regional
scale sense of an ocean, maybe looking at bubble plumes zooming in to
perhaps getting a visual survey, taking a chunk of sediment looking at
the way these minerals interact, looking at microbes and minerals on a
micro scale. We're crossing 12 different orders of magnitude here. So
zooming in on this is hard. And what kind of proxies of metabolic
diversity can we look at on a larger scale to zoom in on what's really
interesting? So to back up to me the big picture again is what is all of the
unknown metabolic diversity in the microbial world, what are they doing?
And how are they building this important foundation for the rest of the
biosphere? On the most fundamental level what are the metabolic
reactions we haven't even imagined yet that still exist? And in a more
applied sense, how can we use some of these gene products perhaps for
biotech purposes or for health purposes? So to me it's really the
microbial world that is underlying a thriving ocean. And I look forward to
hearing other peoples' thoughts of how these can integrate to kind of
preserve a healthy -- healthy ocean. Thanks.
(Applause).
>> Do a switcharoo. I feel like I'm going to have to ditch the notes.
Okay So I have the thumbs up? Yes? Okay. So Jeff does deep-sea stuff,
as do I. Jeff tends to look at the really, really tiny things.
Whereas I'm a couple orders of magnitude bigger.
I do the mag ga foreign in a which are the really charismatic animals
that we can see in images and video. So I was saying my research
tends to focus on two questions. What lives in our deep oceans
and how are we impacting it? So we're here today to think abou
t how our oceans exist. And how we continue to keep them thriving.
Okay. Am I not loud enough? Okay. So -- hold on. Let's do a little shufflaroo.
All right. So where we need to start is that most of our deep oceans --
most of our oceans are actually deeper than 200 meters. That's
all of the blue on this map. Over 60% of our planet's surface is deep-sea
and that's 98% of all habitable space on our planet. That's the largest
ecosystem by far And with this large size comes great responsibility. Our
deep-sea provides us with ecosystem services that are essential to
keeping our planet healthy and to keeping us alive. So it sequesters
carbon, it regulates, climate, and it cycles nutrients. And now more than
ever our deep-sea is becoming a source of food, oil and gas, and many
other key resources that we need to survive as stocks are dwindling in
shallow waters and in -- on land, sorry So as I said, oil and gas, food, well,
we can't see food in that picture. But food. And even genetic materials
are currently being harvested from our deep-seas with things like mining
for minerals due to begin imminently. And these are polymetallic
nodules, you can see here in this top image, which contain a lot of
metals So in addition to this, we've also got climate change and
pervasive pollution as key impacts in our deep-seas. And these
anthropogenic impacts are already impacting the communities and
habitats and even the basic functioning of our deep-sea. And this is only
going to become more exacerbated as time goes on. And that would be
fine if the story ended there. But it doesn't. Unfortunately, there are two
further compounding issues. Firstly, most of our deep-sea, as Jeff was
saying, is unexplored. More than -- most of our deep-sea floor has
probably been mapped at a resolution of about 5 kilometers and that's
not really a lot. That means that whole mountains are missing from the
story. Furthermore, mapping is just sort of a peak of what actually exists
down there. And in order to be able to really understand, we need to go
down there. We need to explore. And by explore, I mean visualize. So
99%, over 99%, as Jeff said, is unexplored. Has never been visualized.
And that's just an absolutely staggering figure. That means that we can't
even answer basic questions. Questions like, what lives there? Much less
questions of the ecology of the animals down there. You know, what do
they eat? How do they reproduce? What role do they play in this
ecosystem? And the second problem is that most of our deep-seas are
unregulated and that's because they fall into areas beyond national
jurisdiction, which is all of the blue on this map. And that basically
means international waters. It means that our deep-seas are sort of this
Wild Wild West essentially. Where protection and management and
governance don't really exist. And that means that a lot of the
biodiversity there is left really vulnerable. So I said we already have
fishing that has sort of rampaged the high seas over the last century as
well as many other impacts just increasing as time goes on One of the
biggest looming impacts right now is deep-sea mining And so these
colorful blocks here that you can see are actually areas that have already
been leased for exploration for deep-sea mining to begin soon. And
that's done by the International Seabed Authority, which is an
intergovernmental organization responsible for all mineral-related
activities in areas beyond national jurisdiction. And so in terms of the
grand scale of things, this may not seem that big When you think each of
those 26 areas are tens of thousands of square kilometers and bigger
than countries and that the potential is so much greater, we have a
ticking time bomb on our hands.
So -- and this is only one of the types of potential exploitation
that can happen in the deep-sea in the future. But it's not all bad news.
You know, the deep-sea, everywhere we have looked and the little that
we have explored has continued to absolutely astound us.
We have made the most wondrous discoveries. New species like the
jelly and the carnivorous sponge that we were just seeing. To new
habitats. Pillow larvas Hydrothermal vents that are absolutely bursting
with life and gushing black fluid, underwater lakes, coral beds, you name
it and we found it. And the deep-sea just continues to really push our
boundaries, to break down those paradigms of life. And as I said, just be
generally pretty amazing. But life in the deep-sea is very difficult. For a lot
of the animals living down there, they grow really slowly and reproduce
even slower. So that means that they are incredibly vulnerable to change,
which is of course increasing. Things like this basket star and the crinoid
we're about to see. There's so little that we know about them. We know
some tubers can live for hundreds of years, some corals can live for
thousands. But we have no idea for the majority of the biodiversity in
the deep-sea. Who knows what else is left out there to discover? I mean,
there's probably quite a lot. And what we can say for sure is that
whatever we do find in the future will be equal measures of both really
weird and really wonderful. So how do we ensure that our oceans
continue to thrive for generations to come? Of course it's not an easy
question to answer. But what we do know is that our deep-seas need to
play a really integral role. And I think there are a couple of approaches we
can take to begin with. So firstly, we need to explore and collect baseline
data. We cannot protect what we do not know. And we cannot manage
what we do not understand. Next, to be able to do that, we need to
innovate. Deep-sea research and exploration is difficult, costly and time
consuming and given the amount of work we have to do, we have to
change that. We also need to raise awareness and engage stakeholders.
The deep-sea is currently out of sight, out of mind. And again, that needs
to change. We need to increase our governance. We need to make sure
our high seas and international waters are governed in a way that's fair
and equal and also in a way that ensures the resources there will be
sustained for generations to come. And if we can't get all of that
environmental data that we need to make really sound decisions about
management before exploitation begins, then we need to take the
precautionary approach. So that means following this hierarchy here.
And it shows that avoiding and preventing impacts should be the first
priority We need to know -- we need to make sure -- sorry -- that when we
go into our deep oceans we go there to appreciate it rather than to
plunder it. Because our oceans will not continue to thrive unless our
deep oceans do. Thank you.
(Applause).
>> Trust my mic. All right.
(Chuckles).
>> Thank you, everybody. And it's an honor and privilege to be here.
I definitely want to thank Joi and Alex as well as Katy for putting this on.
And also my colleague, Jane Wilson, at the aquarium, wherever she is.
Back there. Hi, Jane. For allowing the introduction -- the
involvement in the New England Aquarium and this amazing event and
for my involvement. So thank you very much. So the thriving ocean. I'm
going to talk a little bit today about where I feel the social side comes in.
There are a lot of amazing people. Some heroes of mine at this meeting
today who are doing just amazing exploratory work. And I think what
Diva said really resonates as far as we cannot protect what we don't
understand. And I'm going to talk a little bit more about that. But I think
in terms of actually enacting change and driving solutions on the ocean,
we have to combine all of the technological innovations and the amazing
science that goes on and ensure it's maximally applied. So as I
mentioned during the introduction, my role in leading the Anderson
Cabot Center for Ocean Life, we believe very strongly in using science to
drive solutions Transforming science into action. We combine scientific
solutions to different problems or scientific ideas with building extensive
partnerships and collaborations and the convening power of the
aquarium to drive change. My background as a scientist and being a field
biologist, I believe very heavily that we cannot -- again, to talk to what
Diva said, I believe very strongly that we cannot protect what we don't
understand. So my entire career has been based on trying to identify the
areas of need Trying to figure out the -- or evaluate the data gaps. Then
going out there and trying to diagnose the problems, fill those data gaps,
and come up with the solutions necessary. But not stopping there.
Ensuring that that science and that information is transmitted to the end
users that are going to put it to use. What challenges us? As Bob Ballard
said during his keynote so eloquently, we've got a lot of challenges out
there. And we haven't necessarily done a great job to this point. Climate
change is obviously a major problem challenging our oceans. Right here
in our backyard in the Gulf of Maine, the rates of thermal increase are
astronomical relative -- almost as high as any other place on earth. We're
seeing major shifts in why our fish migrate, where they live, where
animals occur. We have overfishing obviously, as Diva pointed to, being a
major problem. We're seeing roughly 50% of all species out there have
gone through some level of decline in population in the last 30 years.
We're seeing roughly 85% of species in the ocean that are exploited to
one level or another. And roughly 40% of the animals that are caught in
global fisheries every year are incidental catch, bycatch, that then has to
be discarded which is a huge waste as many of those animals die
immediately or some time after they have been thrown back. And then
finally, we're seeing major industrialization of the oceans. Ocean
shipping has increased -- or quadrupled over the last 20 years alone. And
the governance of our ocean is missing. As Diva pointed out, less than
5% of the earth's oceans are protected. And even where they are
protected, enforcement is very, very thin. So these are big challenges. But
that being said, yes, we are playing a game of catchup. There's a
changing environment out there. And we have to keep up with it. But
there is hope. And we have to base everything on solutions If it's all
about doom and gloom and the perilous end to our earth and our oceans
as they stand, we're not going to get very far. We have to look at the
victories. And we have to look at the things that have worked. The
protection of habitats. The protection of species. The restoration of
certain key species. We've seen a lot of amazing things happen. And
we've seen the power of collaboration. And innovation. And it's all about
working together. Not to sound cliche but it is absolutely vital as I'll get to
in a second that we work together to drive those solutions. It is not as
dire as many make it out to be. And the sky is falling is something that
gets peoples' attention. But to drive solution requires building trust,
equity and collaboration and understanding that gains are possible. So
what are those solutions? Well, first of all, it's a marathon, not a race. I
think sometimes we're so desperate to enact policy changes or try to
drive very extensive reform that very often we lose sight of the fact that
it's the long-term collaborative networks and the building of equity in the
developing world and other areas around the world that's going to drive
change. We need to empathize with others that are gaining from
ecosystem services. And understand that the livelihoods of them and
their families, the food they eat, is based around the ocean. We are all
taking from the ocean. We cannot undercut those communities and
those people and those industries that rely on the ocean. But at the
same time we have to protect it. So we have to work together to do that.
And collaboration is the absolute key to that. As well as empowering
people that are on the front lines. People in coastal communities, in the
developing world, and ensuring that everybody is involved. And that
everybody feels a stake. And building the equity so that those countries,
those populations, those indigenous cultures, and then everybody else
around the world are understanding that we have to safeguard this for
the long term. And that's absolutely key. So short-term outcomes can
sometimes win. But in the long term, it's building that collaboration and
working together that's going to end up driving the biggest change. So I
would just challenge this panel and the entire conference today to think
about some key questions. What are the social innovations for
environmental justice? Where can we ensure -- or what solutions can we
drive to ensure that empathy, collaboration and communication are
integral to where we're going across the world as far as protecting the
oceans and safeguarding the ocean's resources? How can we scale the
solutions? The amazing work that everybody here is doing, everybody at
this meeting is doing, how is it ultimately going to make a bigger
difference than just the individual footprint that you're working in? And
how can we drive these changes to tackle the biggest problems? What
are the social innovations? How can we combine technology with social
science, socioeconomics, bioeconomics, to end up coming up with the
solutions we need to for the long term? And I think that there's amazing
work being done around the world. Harnessing that and working together
is the key. Nobody is going to get it done in a vacuum. So I'm excited to
hear what people have to say and to learn more from all of you about
where we're going. Thank you.
(Applause).
>> Does this one work? No? Try this one. Hello? All right.
Is that a problem that I did a switcharoo? Okay. They are on it.
(Chuckles)
>> Hi, everyone. I have some pictures to show you.
So when I think of the future of ocean conservation and exploration,
I think of these four ideas Ocean zoning. Coastal cities. The need for triage.
And the importance of inclusion. To give you a little context about
where I'm coming from, the work that I do now is as founder
and president of the Ocean Collectiv, which is a consulting
company for ocean conservation strategies that are grounded in social
justice. And I've built an incredible team of 14 experts whose experience
spans science and policy and political strategy and communications,
filmmaking, event planning, big wave surfing, you name it. And the idea is
we can come together in these targeted teams to help create solutions
for nonprofits and corporations and philanthropists who are trying to
figure out how to improve ocean health. And this importance of building
these robust multidisciplinary teams was really solidified for me in my
last position. I was Executive Director of the Waitt Institute and I was
working in Barbuda, an island in the Caribbean, trying to help that
community and Government figure out what it would look like to create a
truly comprehensive and science-based plan for long-term sustainable
ocean use So in Barbuda, this is what it looked like to do ocean zoning.
There were three major drafts of the map starting with this first one that
the Government put out there as a straw man, which the fishermen
hated. The fishermen came up with this second draft, which they thought
was more reasonable. The blue are no-take Marine Reserves. And they
added these anchoring and mooring zones in green. And the -- by the
final draft, which incorporates feedback from the full breadth of the
stakeholders, we had this detailed and very interesting zoning. But what
does it actually look like to do this work? This took 18 months. There
were 7 rounds of community consultations. There were 2 additional
rounds specifically with fishermen. There were 22 meetings with the
local Government. Tons of coordination with the central Government in
Antigua. But this is what the daily work looked like. You'll notice Shah Selbe
in the center of that photo there This is a fisherman, a marine park
ranger, an immigrations officer, a technologist, a GIS expert and me
sitting around the table. We have interrupted a dominos game. These
folks wouldn't come to the community consultations and we really
wanted to get their input. So for me when I think about the role of
technology, I think about it in this context. How do we use technology to
bridge the gap between people and their ideas and their communities
and their cultures and solutions that will actually work in this context? So
on this little laptop we have satellite images that have been refined into
habitat maps. And we're able to give real-time feedback
into their different ideas of what zones could be put into place to tell
them how that would affect their fishing grounds and what percentage of
habitats would be protected by their proposals. And this is what that final
map looked like in more detail after 18 months. So the blue areas are
marine reserves That represents one-third of their coastal waters out to 3
nautical miles from shore. Within those protected areas, one-third of
each habitat type is protected. So seagrasses, reefs, sandy bottoms and
deep ocean. The green is anchoring and mooring zones, which are
designated in sandy areas so as not to hurt bottom habitat and also
designated primarily so they can limit where boats are anchoring and
use that as an initial framework to collect fees from visiting vessels. The
pink are areas where no nets were allowed. The fishermen thought it was
really important to prevent the use of nets on reefs. So this is no nets
within 20 meters of the reefs and in other areas where there's high
traffic. You'll also note that the marine protected area in the southern end
doesn't go all the way to shore and that's because there's a really
important cultural use there. People go camping there in the spring with
their families around Easter time. And they fish there to eat while they
are camping. So creating a marine reserve that extended all the way to
shore there would have had some really serious impacts on their tradition.
And then the last you'll notice is this shipping zone. We don't
want people swimming or fishing in these high traffic areas. So for this
community of 1600 people on a small island, this is what zoning they
created. All of these lines were drawn by the local people. And we used
technology and a lot of patient conversations to help facilitate that. But
obviously conservation efforts are not just important in remote tropical
islands. It's -- with 8 billion people on the planet and soon the majority of
us living on the coast and in cities, it's really time to figure out urban
ocean conservation. So this is New York City. I grew up in Brooklyn. And I
never thought of myself as living on the coast. But New York has over
500 miles of coastline And so it's really important to me that when we
think about exploration, we're not just thinking about the deep-sea. But
how can we use these ROVs and Dropcams and all of this other
technology to help connect people who live in cities on the coast with
their ocean. Which they are very disconnected with. So I've just recently
moved back to New York. And I'm very excited to be thinking about
ocean conservation in an urban context. We have -- as a result of a really
sort of long and arduous slog of regulations and improving policy, we
have seen that the waters of New York City are actually cleaner now than
they have been in 100 years. We have whales coming back to New York Harbor.
We have seahorses living under piers in the Hudson River. It
actually works when you put in that effort to reduce pollution and
establish protections. So I'm really excited about this as one of the next
waves of conservation. However, we have done a really good job of
impacting and destroying a lot of coastal ecosystems, including the
oyster reefs and the marshes that protect us from things like Hurricane Sandy,
which is the moment when we realize that we are a coastal city.
And the blue economy of ports and shipping and fishing is worth over
$350 billion in the U.S. alone. And supports over 3 million jobs. So it is
important for a number of reasons to get this right. Whether we're caring
about the economy or food security or coastal cultures. So given the
mess that we humans have gotten ourselves in, I would actually posit
that it's time to take a bit of a triaged approach. Because we don't
actually have enough money and time to save everything right now. We
need to think about a strategy for prioritizing our efforts. So are there
places that are not at immediate risk? Are there places desperately in
need of immediate attention? And are there things that are beyond help
that would be a waste of our energy and impede our ability to actually
save a greater portion of other things? This is a really hard discussion to
have But it's one that I think we need to have if we're going to be
successful and really maximize the benefits and successes of our
efforts. And I really don't think we're going to be successful unless we
figure out diversity and inclusion. This slide is blank because most of
ocean conservation and exploration is very white.
(Chuckles).
>> This is a photograph taken earlier this month of the leaders
of the International Year of the Reef which is aiming to protect
and restore coral reefs around the world.
And this is a bunch of white people. Mostly men.
Mostly middle aged or older. And I honestly do not think that all of the
solutions and ideas are present in this photo. This has nothing to do with
touchy-feely views about diversity. If we want to be successful, we need
to make sure that all of the ideas and perspectives are at the table. And
you better believe it that the communities that live on the coast of coral
reefs have been thinking about these solutions like their lives depend on
it because their lives do, indeed, depend on it. So when we think about
the fact that the majority of coral reefs are in Asia, in the Caribbean, on
the coast of Africa are communities are color, this is really atrocious. So
when I think about the future of ocean conservation and exploration, I
think it needs to look a lot more like this. And so that's what gives me
hope This idea that we can bring together diverse experts and everyone
in this photo is an expert in a different way. And have these
conversations about how we can each leverage our expertise to come up
with solutions that will enable us to continue to use the ocean, to have it
support our food security and economies and cultures. But do all of this
in a way that doesn't use it up. So that's my vision.
(Applause).
>> Thank you. Wow, that was great. So I'll start off with a few questions.
But you guys think of questions, too. And there's the super --
there's something fantastic. When we have questions,
I will throw this to you, which is a microphone.
So I'm really looking forward to that part. (Chuckles).
>> But first, I mean, this is such a good set of problems.
Because like I was saying, I mean, I'm thrilled
to hear all of you guys talking about all of these different ways.
Because it really is the elephant in the room with all of how we're dealing
with the ocean is still really people. How are we going
to make sure that people, who are chucking stuff in the ocean all the time,
are going to see it? And one of the things that I've always
thought was difficult for people and the ocean is most of the time, the
water is in the way. You can't actually see what's in there. Most of the
time. So I would just ask you guys, what is it that in each of your different
practices -- because they are all sort of different but they are the same --
what would you have people see? And I think of that as like a storytelling.
But visualizing is so much how humans perceive things, what would you
have people see that they can't see that you have seen or that you want
to see, even if you've never seen it and could clear all of the water out of
the way for just a second to see it and understand something big about the ocean?
>> Yeah, I would say that --
>> You can have this.
(Chuckles). >
> I'll try this.
(Chuckles).
>> Turn it on.
>> I mean, in some ways the -- I'll take this. Okay. (Chuckles).
>> I think like the same issue that is the problem, the fact that there's
water in the way and we can't see things makes it mysterious and exciting.
And that quest to look beyond the next hill is inherent
in that idea of looking just beyond the headlights of an ROV
So I think that sort of sense of mystery and excitement is
something I would try to share. The other thing that I've always struggled
with is the intellectual, emotional disconnect of microbes. Like they are
not charismatic But they really matter. So how do we image them or
portray them or share how amazing they are intellectually with a broader audience?
And I don't have an answer to that. But anthropomorphizing them more maybe?
>> Yeah, they could be animalized more.
>> True.
>> Yes.
>> Plantized. Some of them are plants, some of them are animals.
>> Yeah, that's where I'm at
>> Where are you -- >
> So growing up in the Caribbean -- does this work. Okay. All right.
So growing up in the Caribbean I spent a lot of time on the ocean.
And just the exact question you asked, what could we see?
I remember being out at sea and wishing I had some kind of device
that would show me what was down there from --
that you could just have on the boat and just be like, oh, there's a
squid down there. Oh there's some dolphins lingering over there. That's
me as a kid. But I think that with the deep ocean it's especially difficult at
least in coral reefs and in shallow areas you can get yourself there and
get into those environments but with the deep-sea that's pretty much
impossible. But there are a lot of really great programs that are working
to do away with that Things like the Ocean Exploration Trust and NOAA's
Office of Exploration are really bringing the deep-sea to the masses. And
the deep-sea as both Jeff and I have spoken about is just full of such
amazing things Things that people just can't even believe are real. I think
that just by increasing that awareness in the population will probably go
a very, very long way to helping to sustain it.
>> So I would actually flip that question a little bit and say that we should
be seeing more of what others see. So instead of us trying
to show everybody else the ocean, I tend to think that
the stakeholders that have the biggest impact on the ocean
have their own vision and view of the ocean. And we need to take their
perspective into account more. A great example is the cooperative
work we do with fisheries here in New England We work with a lot of
commercial fishermen And the industry that we have seen, they have
their own perspectives. Does that mean that they are always right? Not
necessarily But their combined input and stake in the work has actually
strengthened immeasurably a lot of the projects we have done. And
that's their own way of looking at the ocean and their own perspectives.
So I think that we need to open our eyes and get out of our own way
once in a while in terms of what we're seeing and think about what
others see. And let that combined viewpoint drive change.
>> Does this work? This is a bummer. Okay What if I want to interject?
(Chuckles).
>> I think we need more glass bottom boats.
When I was 5, I went on a family vacation to Key West
And I rode on a glass bottom boat. And I saw a coral reef
for the first time and it blew my mind. And that was the moment
when I was like, what is it called when it's your job to look through this glass.
(Chuckles).
>> And I was like, I'm clearly going to become a marine biologist.
And so I think not everyone needs to become a marine biologist.
But just that moment of experience and awe and whether
it's not in clear tropical waters but in New York City and if you shine
a light and things come and if you can do it at night and see
different things I think something that simple could have a really big
impact. We can't all go to the deep-sea. But again, there's been lots of
work around the communications efforts of live feeds of expeditions and
all that kind of stuff is great, too. But I would honestly love to see more
glass bottom boats There are so few of them in the world.
>> Okay. Keep that for a second and I'm just going to yell.
So one of the things you mentioned, too,
is that idea that technology has this great way of building bridges
or just bridging gaps between people. And making that connection. So --
(Chuckles).
>> Now I'm doing it.
>> We're all good.
>> But what technologies, to have you guys think about this,
have you seen do that? Because we've got --
when Bob has his great telepresence, which is actually like you can --
if you guys haven't looked on the Nautilus online, check it out.
Because you can see real-time. You can ask questions
of somebody who is scooting out in the Pacific or whatever.
And that's fantastic. Also, maps of being able to -- as you were saying --
in real-time to get fishermen who might completely live there and see it
all the time but just to see a different view of how this looks and make
those great decisions. So I mean, what technologies -- here we are at
Katy's super party.
(Chuckles).
>> Talking about the tech. But what are the technological things that
you see connecting -- again, connecting people
to their ocean that are interesting?
>> Are boats technology? Can I use my same answer in.
>> Yeah.
>> So I -- actually as a consultant one of my clients in the last year has been
XPRIZE and I helped them design a competition to develop apps
using existing ocean datasets. So we have tons of data about
the ocean Lots of it is from NOAA, lots from other research institutions.
And a lot of it is actually already public. And yet, that data isn't accessible
or visualizable to the public. So I designed this competition for them that enabled
-- the idea was to sort of unlock all the data we already have.
Obviously new exploration is still fascinating and wonderful.
But we already know so much that's not being conveyed.
So I would encourage you all to check out the winners of this
Big Ocean Button Challenge. There were seven winners. And one
of them actually is an app that you can hold up when you're on the
shoreline and see the bottom topography at least of the ocean. You can't
see what's swimming there right at that moment. But you can kind of
start to get a glimpse into the bathymetry and start to visualize that there
actually is some complexity beneath the surface. So those kinds of
things, like how can we use the fact that we carry around tiny computers
in our pockets to help see and explain those kinds of things
>> One example --
>> Yeah.
>> One example that I've seen work well, I think that appreciation
really requires being immersed to the best possible degree.
And obviously with technology these days people can do that from their
computers, their SmartPhones, their iPads. But I think the whole advent
of VR, virtual reality, at a low price. And accessibility through Google and
other networks. The technology is amazing. And you really can feel like
you're there. And I think that's the closest thing that we can get to
bringing everybody out there and immersing them. Obviously in-person
saturation, so to speak, in the environment, is by far the most impactful
way to actually be out there and see it with your own eyes But thanks to
technology, there's a lot of ways to get people out there, if that's what
you're trying -- if that's the button you're trying to push and get people exposed.
>> Uh-huh.
>> So those were both my answers, by the way. Thanks for that.
(Chuckles).
>> But I do think immersing people in the environment is the main way
to do that Everyone is visual. And being able to actually
see an entire world that you can't really visualize normally has huge steps
towards getting people to want to conserve it And so for instance,
in deep-sea science, things like VR technology are sort of the future.
You know, telepresence takes us down there But then actually
being able to feel like you're down there is just one further step, which is
absolutely fantastic. And we're just on the cusp of getting that into
peoples' homes and mainstreaming.
>> Yeah, so I would absolutely agree with all of that.
But I might also push back and make a case of the tangible a little bit more.
When we work with kids who maybe never have been to the ocean before,
realize that there are other planets or something like that,
as part of our education program, we have an opportunity
for them to take pictures of Mars and work with NASA to actually
get new images from a different planet, which sounds so cool.
Another part of the curriculum is that we go to the coast and look at
water under a microscope. And for probably more than half the students,
that's actually more impactful. It's just like seeing a new world and
something that is -- seems so quotidian. And realizing there is a new
thing beyond what you actually see and making it -- connecting the dots.
That it's not just something on a screen still. Regardless of how far away it is.
>> Right.
>> But it's right there.
>> That's the thing. I think I can talk into this (Chuckles).
>> That's the thing is we're talking about connecting the dots for -- again,
for humans because they are the ones that have to take care of it.
But again, this idea of connecting people also to how they --
what is their place in all of this, too? Not to just look at it like, oh, Blue Planet.
I watched it on TV. It was great. But it's not necessarily relevant. Y
ou know, I think that the idea of making -- again, whether it's coastal
communities. Whether it's people who are buying fish or something, that
idea of making people also feel that they are empowered at the very
closest level but then at the bigger level at an everyday level, even if you
do live in Wichita, Omaha, the marine biologist. But how can we -- what --
if you guys could sort of wave a magic wand, there are a huge bunch of
challenges facing us. But what would be a way to make sure that -- have
a solution that we can scale up. This is -- I'm kind of -- there's -- I'm
staggered by the enormity of the problem in a certain way. And I'm sure
you guys often are, too. But the idea of just trying to figure out what
would be the technological solutions or policy solutions? Some of these
things are absolutely policy. Whether or not we actually can protect the
high seas is totally a policy thing. Whether or not -- I think that your
solutions on coming up with speaking to each individual community and
coming up with solutions is certainly the best one to start with,
groundup. But if you could empower those people with technological
solutions, what else would it be that would connect -- would create these
big solutions that could -- would -- aquaculture? Is it aquaculture that will
actually connect us and save us or is it understanding --
>> It depends what problem you're trying to solve.
>> Yes.
>> All of these things are very different that you're describing.
So aquaculture we really need to figure out because we can't feed 8 billion
people on wild seafood. The ocean just can't keep up with how
fast we can eat finish.
>> Yeah.
>> So the technology that's needed there is super important for food security.
Whereas the technology that's needed to support zoning and
policymaking is quite different than the technology needed to monitor
fishing. And there's some really great innovations
there with lower cost VMS and satellite tracking
and all of that kind of stuff. So I think -- I mean,
I think we need to be careful not to think of technology as the solution.
But to be more targeted Like what is the specific problem we're
needing to solve? And is technology needed to solve that problem? And
if so, what specific technologies? Because I worry about the mindset
that we can innovate our way out of problems where a lot of problems
really just we need to agree with each other and the technology as a tool.
>> Yes.
>> So I would echo what John said earlier which is, we need to be talking
about what's working and replicating and scaling success stories.
I think that that is a missing link. And to the extent that technology can
help spread the word about these stories of ocean optimism, check out
that hash-tag online. You'll find lots of what's working. I think that that
would be really valuable.
>> Yeah, I agree. And just to add to that, I think mobilizing the public
and creating awareness in the public is not always the right solution.
>> Right.
>> It's not always going to pull the lever that you need to. It's not the
end-all be-all answer to problems. Sometimes problems are very
individualistic around a few different stakeholder groups that need
to work together to drive change. So I'm not opposed to awareness of the oceans.
And promoting that awareness
But when it's pragmatic. And when it's done in a way that's
actually going to create the empowerment that we were just talking about.
And ensure that peoples' behaviors are changed. But that's not always the right solution.
>> Yeah.
>> It's really case dependent.
>> It depends on the question, on the issue. >> Absolutely.
>> Yeah.
>> But I would love to cite the example of what's happened with shark fins over in Asia.
Recently in recent years there's been major initiatives to try to address
what is driving the fin trade globally. It's not trying to cut off the supply.
But actually working sensitively with the indigenous populations
there to understand the depth of the problem
that's caused by this particular demand. And I think once that awareness
has spread and at the demand side sensitively working together,
you're starting to see a reduction in the value of those fins
>> Yeah.
>> And that trend still has a lot of -- there's a lot of work that needs to be done.
But that's an incredible way of sensitive communication
that isn't saying, what you're doing is bad. But here is what --
the effects of what you're doing. And it's incredible what kind of a change
that can draw when you bring in the people and involve them.
>> Yeah. So we only have a few more -- I mean, go ahead quickly.
And then we have a few --
>> I was just going to say --
>> We have one more minute for questions. >> (Off microphone).
>> Does anybody have a question? A burning question that they have?
>> You can throw that one. >> One burning question
that you guys have that you would like an answer to?
>> I've got one
>> Which mic is it?
>> I want to know how we can better incorporate art into these solutions?
Because I think if we're going to have the cultural shift on a massive scale
that we need, it has to be appealing and attractive and sexy and beautiful.
And so that's what we need to figure out.
How -- where are -- you know, what's the next generation of movies
and art and sculpture and design that's going to inspire everybody
to commit to this really hard and complicated work for the long term?
>> Sorry, I just have to talk into this for one second.
(Chuckles).
>> So I think to find the subsidies to help offset the cost of changing
strategies for people that are very accustomed to doing things
a certain way. But new technologies are coming in that might allow them
to keep doing that and then at the same time not have the impact on the
ocean, that's often very, very costly. And I think finding a way to get that
money, it sounds really cheesy, but there needs to be more funding that
is directed towards pushing these changes once they are engineered.
>> I just want to find all that lives in our oceans Goddamn it.
(Chuckles).
>> No. I think that's one of the biggest questions is again, you need to
find out what's there before you can understand how to manage it.
And I think increases in technology and working with technologists
to actually be able to answer that question is sort of that burning issue.
>> Yes, I would certainly echo that.
And also, I mean, we were talking last night that there was a study last year
where they found these copepods in the Mariana Trench,
like the deepest most unexplored part of the ocean. And they had PCVs.
They are full of PCVs. So the fact that our tendrils of
contamination are outpacing our initial characterization of places is a
problem. On the social side I think how the ideas of wilderness and
urban life co-exist is really interesting. And your presentation made me
wonder about that. To me it's escaping civilization to go to the wild But
because we live with it in nature we need to think about that.
>> In New York.
>> That sounds great.
>> Oyster watching.
>> Great, this is so good you guys, seek these people out and ask them more questions later.
But we are good. But thank you everybody.
>> Anyone who wants to ask questions on Twitter, I'm volunteering myself I'm Diva.
>> And Jeff.
>> And Jeff to answer your questions, if people are watching online.
>> And we're using hash-tag openocean.
>> Hash-tag openocean.
(Chuckles).
>> Great. Thank you, everyone
>> Thank you. (Applause) ( Break.)
>> It's a very exciting time for sensors and the environment in general,
especially oceans. As Bob said in that great keynote,
there's so much that we haven't seen.
And it may not be humanized to be able to see all of it. >> Welcome back. It's great to be --
>> Because we can scale in other ways through electronics and networks
and things like that. So this is a great time to think about new kinds
of sensors for the ocean. At this point we're deploying Internet of Things,
scale sensors across the planet in our habilitated environments.
We're going to see it happen in natural environments.
And indeed, we'll see it in the oceans. And technologies
are really revolutionizing how we're able to sense things, what we're able
to sense And how we connect it to people. So it's a great time. I run the
responsive environments group here at the Media Lab so I've been doing
sensing most of my life. I even spent four or five years at Draper Lab
doing underwater sensing, too. So I guess I have the slight privilege to be
here with these honored guests. But I've done a little bit of it. And I think
it's, again, a very exciting time going forward when all of this comes
together. So we've got a great panel to discuss. We're going to open up
with statements from the panelists. They will give a short talk. And then
we'll have Q&A from the audience and among ourselves. So we're going
to begin with Alan Leonardi from NOAA. And then Anna Michel from
Woods Hole. And finally Brennan Phillips from URI. So maybe you guys
can introduce yourselves and then we can start.
>> Sure, thanks. Alan Leonardi. I'm the director of NOAA's Office of Ocean Exploration
and Research and also a member of the Science Advisory Board
for the ocean mapping XPRIZE.
>> I'm Anna Michel. I'm associate scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
And a proud MIT alum. So I'm happy to be back on campus.
>> And I'm Brennan Phillips. I'm an Assistant Professor
in ocean engineering at the University of Rhode Island.
>> Okay. Great. So maybe we can start with your talks. We'll begin with Alan.
>> Great. Let me get out of the way a little bit. Let me say one
thing to get us going. I was a little bit surprised -- and maybe this is a
good thing -- that when I looked at the agenda I am the only speaker here
from the Federal Government. So I'm proud to say that I'm here from the Government.
(Chuckles).
>> And we need each others' help. I'm going to give you a
little bit of an overview about what our office does so we can get
to the sensors and systems part of the conversation I believe
strongly that the best part of any of these things is dialogue so I'll try to
get through this pretty quickly. We'll start with the obligatory statement
about who we are. We are a pretty unique Federal entity. We are the only
office within the entire Federal Government that focuses solely on
exploring the ocean. We are not a big entity by any stretch of the means.
But we have great partnerships that we work with along the way to try to
stretch our boundaries of what we do. And the reason why we focus on
exploring the ocean, quite frankly, is because all of humanity requires us
to. The keys to the world and the solutions of the world really rest in the
oceans. We've heard this morning already some conversation about the
many problems that the oceans face But we also have heard little
snippets about the solutions that the ocean provides to all of humanity.
They are a primary protein for the world. They are our next generation for
their put particulars. If you're looking for drug discovery, this is the place
to go. And of course we all love to live and play near the ocean, as well.
So our purpose is exploration. And we believe firmly that exploration
leads to discovery. That discovery then leads to follow-on research. That
research leads to understanding that ocean environment. And ideally our
understanding of that ocean environment leads to fundamental wise use
of that space. We fulfill our purpose in a number of ways. We have multi-
year partnerships. We have major campaigns that we undertake. We'll
talk about in a little bit. We partner with entities such as the Ocean
Exploration Trust You already heard from Bob Ballard this morning We
use things like something called the National Oceanographic Partnership
Program, which allows for public-private partnerships within the ocean
space And of course we focus heavily on data sharing, outreach and
education, as well Our primary asset that we can use for exploring the
ocean is a vessel called the NOAA ship Okeanos Explorer. It's dedicated --
it's the only U.S. Federal vessel that's dedicated to exploring the mission
of the ocean. There's some details here about any number of the assets
that are on that. The one that most people are most familiar with is the
asset -- here is the ship itself. It's the asset on the back deck that you'll
see in another picture that's a remotely operated vehicle It's a two-bodied
system, much like the Ocean Exploration Trust's vessel, which will show
up in a moment, as well. To give you a sense of the magnitude of what
we've been doing, this is the last three years of our work. The office has
been in existence since 2001. We've had a vessel since 2008. And over
the last three years, we've spent exploring the Pacific communities and f
or the first time going to every managed place that NOAA has
responsibility for. If it's a protected area, a monument or a sanctuary, for
the first time, we have gone to these places, looked at the deep ocean
environments, and tried to give NOAA a sense of our management
responsibilities. Afterall, you can't not manage what you do not know. So
we have gone here for the first time. Along the way we have also
partnered with folks from the Cook Islands and getting them to see their
deep ocean environment for the first time ever. Nobody had ever done
any work there before. So we've been doing work with the Cook Islands
and others, as well. You can look at some of the statistics here. I won't
bore you with them. But we've mapped a lot of the sea floor. We had a lot
of ROV operations and samples collected and things of that nature. And
of course we had a lot of views. We had 8.4 million live views on
YouTube. One of our key things that we do, just like the Ocean
Exploration Trust, is we broadcast what we do live to the public and we
interact with scientists who may be on shore and we interact with
communities of students and just interested people while we do our
work. Moving forward over the next few years, 2018 to 2020, this is kind
of a sneak peek of what we're looking at. These slides will all be made
available to you. So if you want to dig in a little bit, you want to reach out,
you want to participate, let us know. But we've moved back east of the
canal and we'll be focusing on the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean and the
Atlantic through at least 2020. Maybe a little bit longer. We've got a lot of
activities already teed up. Some in partnership with other Government
agencies. Some in partnership with the academic community And some
in partnership with folks like the Navy. And it would not be fair of me to
talk about our exploration capabilities without pointing out one of the
other major assets that we support. We of course don't operate the
Ocean Exploration Trust vessel the Nautilus. But we do support it. I'm
proud to say we are the primary benefactor currently of that vessel's
operations. Maybe it will say that way. But Bob is very entrepreneurial as
everybody knows and he's always gaining additional resources to do the
kind of work that they do, as well. This is the Nautilus' plans for this
coming year. So tune in. There's going to be a lot of great discoveries.
Some of this is follow-on to the work that we have done. Some of this is
some continuing stuff, particularly along the Cascadia Margin where
there's some really extremely exciting communities. So tune in, there's a l
ot of great discoveries going on. As Bob likes to point out 24 by 7
operations. And lots of interactions with the public and the education
community. So it's not sufficient, though, to just go out there and collect
this data and then kind of put -- give it to some scientist and put it on a
shelf. Our goal is from ship to repository 90 to 120 days for all of the data
that we collect and it becomes publicly available. Anybody who wants to
use it can. The bathy data is, generally speaking, within 60 days. The
biological samples go to the Smithsonian. Some of them are in the
Bishop Museum for the communities in the Pacific. And right now we've
been sending some subsamples to the Ocean Genome Legacy center, as
well, try to increase the ocean genome. All of that data is publicly
available. All of those samples are publicly available. Anybody in the
science community who wants to use them, can. And then we also focus
heavily on public engagement. We've got a strong web presence. Of
course we telecast live what we do. But we also have a teacher
educational Professional Development Program where we like the
Nautilus folks develop lesson plans. We get the teacher community
together. We teach them how to best use those lesson plans and then
they use them in the middle school and high school setting. Because
afterall the key is -- the key to the future of the ocean problems and the
ocean solutions of tomorrow are the middle schoolers and the high
schoolers of today. So I'll leave it at that. And we'll hand it over to the next
speakers down the way. But I look forward to the Q&A and talking about
how we can augment what we're doing with these existing platforms that I
showed and some of the things that might be coming online in the coming years
>> Thank you.
(Applause).
>> Anna is next.
>> So I'm Anna Michel and I'm a scientist at the Woods Hole
Oceanographic Institution. And we're going to turn now to a little bit deeper
in the sensing side. So my lab works on developing new sensors
for making chemical measurements in the ocean.
So I'm going to show you some of the technology we've been developing
and then I'm going to end with some of the big problems we have.
And this is where I really hope we can have some conversation later
on how do we get new technologies into the ocean.
Because some of our platforms -- some of our instruments are
still very big and so how do we move from these giant instruments to
these small cheap sensors? I know Alan and I have had many
conversations about this. So I do a lot of gas sensing in my lab and I'm
sure all of you have heard about how carbon dioxide, so this is the blue
line, has gone up over time so people want to make measurements of
carbon dioxide. There's another gas that's equally important Perhaps
even more important that you probably heard about. Methane. So this is
time versus concentration. So this is methane going up over time. So
methane has gone up. Why do we care about it? Well, there's a big i
nfluence on climate. So these two gases are really important in the
ocean And we want to be able to measure them in lots of different
environments. But one of the problems is they are often from these
diffuse sources so how do we actually make measurements in these
different environments of these gases? And also if they are in the gas
form and it's in the ocean, it's liquid, how do we actually make
measurements of them? And where do we want to make measurements
of them? So if we look at the ocean as a whole, there's lots of
environments where these gases are really important. And so if we step
through some of these environments where we want to put these
sensors out, up in the arctic there's areas, coastal areas. Also these lakes
and coastal areas where there's a lot of methane coming up, we want to
be able to make measurements there. Alan just mentioned the Cascadia Margin.
There's a lot of bubbles that come up in those areas where we
want to be able to put instruments out to make those kind of
measurements. In coastal areas, like estuaries, there's a lot of methane
that comes out there. So how do we make measurements in those
environments, at seeps, these cold seeps in the deep ocean?
Hydrothermal events have a lot of these different gases. So how do we
make measurements there? Bubbles that come out, either they can be
carbon dioxide bubbles or they can be methane like in the Cascadia Margin.
And there's also these methane hydrates in the deep ocean. So
how do we actually get instruments so we can take out and make
measurements in these environments instead of actually collecting a
sample and bringing them back on the ship and then bringing them back
to our lab and maybe six months later we have a measurement? We want
to make measurements at these sources. So my lab works on this
technique called laser absorption spectroscopy. I'll simplify this. But
basically we have a laser. And we have a detector. The laser puts out
light. And we collect that light. What we do is we pick the laser light to be
at a certain wavelength. And it's the same wavelength of whatever we
want to measure absorbs light. As that light goes through our sample we
see a decrease in the amount of light and we can determine what's
actually in our sample. So we can do this for a bunch of different gases.
This is a picture here of the different wavelengths and different gases. So
methane is this red gas over here. The stronger these lines are, the more
light we can actually absorb in that region. So what you can notice here,
there's a lot of different gases that are important in the ocean that have
this infrared signature. So methane, carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, lots of
different gases we can use these techniques for. So it's a really good
technique to use for atmospheric sensing but also for ocean sensing.
One of the problems, though, is these lasers won't go through water. So
what we actually have to do is extract our gases. So we have to build
systems to actually get the gas out of our seawater and then we can
measure that gas. So that brings in a new challenge to be able to bring
these technologies to ocean environments. So what have we done? We
built these systems to be able to make measurements coming out of
surface water. So out of things like lakes and coastal regions. So what
we can do is we can launch this laser a really long distance over the
water and any gas that's coming out of the water we can measure. What
we do is we use these really cool lasers. These quantum cascade lasers
Each one of these stripes is actually a laser. So they are really small. So
the idea of using these small lasers is we can make these small sensors
But there's a lot of electronics involved. So our sensors end up being
really big for other reasons so even though our lasers have become really
small and our detector have become really small there's a lot of other
challenges that we need to address. Like how do you make the
electronics themselves smaller? How do you make the power packs
smaller? For example, the batteries. So another thing we do is we try to
make measurements in these coastal regions So what we have done is
we can use the same kind of technology and we can buy there's
commercially packaged to take out in the field and we can put them onto
an autonomous kayak. So this is a kayak that we can put all of these
different instruments on and drive around. So here is the kayak driving
around. This is actually about an hour away from here. What we can do is
kind of like a remote control car. We can drive it along. As it drives along,
it can continuously make measurements of the chemistry in the surface
waters. So as you can imagine there's a lot of applications for this both in
the coastal and we'll take this out actually to Cascadia Margin this fall to
make measurements of methane coming up on the surface waters So
what does it give us? This is actually a map. So this is a river here. This is
the longitude and latitude. What it can do is as we drive the jetyak up and
down. It can continuously make these measurements so we can start
getting these large spatial scale measurements that can tell us what's
happening in the water. This is actually methane here. When you see it
turn red, this is actually a plume of methane that's being emitted here.
There's actually a wastewater treatment plant here so it's putting out a
plume right here. So over time we can start to track it. As you can
imagine, there's a lot of different applications where we can have these
autonomous vehicles that we can drive around and start making better
spatial scale measurements. Third, this is a project with Peter Girguis
who some of you saw this morning. This has developed systems where
we can do these kind of measurements in the deep ocean. So this is the
first generation system here That we can put out in the deep ocean. We can
put it on a vehicle like Hercules and we can make measurements of
carbon dioxide and methane in the deep ocean. We've been developing a
new system. This is our new system here, which is a lot smaller But it's
still very complicated. So you can see the system here is packaged in our
pressure housing being put in Hercules and you can immediately see
what one of the problems is, it takes two people to just lift that
instrument. I can't even lift it myself. Because the pressure housings are
so big because the instruments are big. So where are we with chemical
sensing and where do we want to go? We're limited right now because
the instruments are large, they are heavy, a lot of them require a lot of
power so they are platform limited we can't put these instruments an
AUVs right now We have to be on a vehicle like Hercules. They are also
one of a kind. There's one of each of these different instruments. They
are also highly technical. So we need somebody specialized in the
instrument to be able to deploy it. Also funding is a problem. It's not easy.
But you can get funding to develop a first generation system. But how do
you get money to take that system into many different generations? How
do you push that instrument further? So what do we want? We want
small, easy-to-use sensors that we can put on lots of different platforms.
We also want to look at new technologies. There's a lot of labs that are
developing technologies for other applications such as biomedical
applications that we can really transition to ocean applications. So what
new technologies are available that we could look for? I'm also
personally really interested in doing plume hunting and tracking. So when
we put AUVs down, for example, can we put instruments on it that can
find these different plumes? And fields? Can they find bubbles, for
example? So how do we move from having an instrument that we know
is going to a targeted site to actually using the instruments to find these sites? Thanks.
(Applause).
>> Okay Next we have Brennan
>> (Off microphone).
>> Press the button here. There we go. Great, thanks. Okay.
So my name is Brennan Phillips. As I said, I'm an ocean engineer at the
University of Rhode Island but my other alter ego is a deep-sea biologist.
So today I'm going to be talking a lot about deep-sea biology, how it
relates to technology. And sort of the take-home theme. It's pretty
obvious. You can't explore the deep ocean without knowing your tech So
there are a couple of disciplines. They have to work together. And with
that, there's some interesting themes to explore off of that. But the topic
of this whole workshop is these -- Here Be Dragons. And so these are my
dragons when I thought about it I was like, well, what our dragons
actually look like under water. So one of the projects I work on is in the
Western Pacific. On a submarine volcano that's really shallow. A couple
of years ago we were exploring around this area. And this is when it's
erupting most of the time. And we actually got inside the crater using a
piece of light-weight technology from National Geographic. And when it's
not erupting, it's full of sharks. Just as an example, this is out there. But
you can't take a big ship and sit it out over there. You have to just throw
something over the side and see that. Right nearby we saw this deep-sea
shark at about 1800 meters. Again, using that light-weight piece of
technology. But another theme I work on a lot with -- is hydrothermal
vents, which are also underwater volcanos. And on the Nautilus and the
Hercules ROV, a couple of years ago at the Galapagos we were able to
publish these findings. We were able to find a whole bunch of skatex (
phonetic) embryos that are evidence that these deep-sea skates are
actually using these vents to incubate themselves and increase -- or
decrease the time it takes them to gestate. Another topic I work on is
bioluminescence and using low light cameras. So this is a school of
flashlight fish out in the Solomon Islands in the Western Pacific. This
doesn't do it justice but to give you some representation of what this
school looks like, it's like an order of magnitude more. It's like swarming
around you. We were able to film that. And also using that same type of
capability, we were able to film bioluminescence in really high resolution
and recently playing around with a color camera that same worm you just
saw, we can show it emits a blue bioluminescence and actually sheds it. S
o we thought the animal was glowing but it's actually shedding it, which
is kind of cool. Another recent trip I was on this is in one hour of diving
we found evidence of a bioluminescence sponge. Google Scholar that.
You won't find it. And a bioluminescent black coral. Again, you Google
that, and you won't find anything. I can't publish that. We have to actually
collect these things. But just flying around the dark, you find some cool
stuff if you just do that so changing the way we approach it. And lastly a
couple of examples this is a true a few months ago on Nautilus.
Approaching animals with just some dim lights. So this is a jellyfish the
size of a trash can called deep stariatamatica (phonetic). And it's totally
chill and doing it's thing. We actually caught it capturing something and
closing up. And we can get up really close and do some interesting
lighting on it sort of like interior lighting that shows these canals that are
really beautiful. And then the last example, we found this vampire squid
which was just hanging out, was unaffected by us. We're using a light to
illuminate this that's less bright than your cell phone light. And we're
getting these color images of it. So the animal isn't nearly as disturbed
from that. So again, my point is that the technology that we use is key to
seeing the ocean through a different lens. So another take on that,
besides the low light imaging and all of that sort of thing, I just want to
point out this robotic arm right here that's reaching out, I'll talk about this
in a second, this arm is a very heavy duty arm. It's about the size of me.
And the vehicle it takes to run it is about the size of a jeep. So it's really
heavy duty stuff. A lot of gear we're bringing down just to collect If you're
a biologist like me, it's a lot of hardware to carry around just to do one
particular thing. So another project I work on are these squishy fingers.
Which use low pressure seawater just background seawater to collect
animals very delicately and we have actually developed the whole arm. I
can't show that to you here today. But we have a whole squishy arm that
runs on two orders of magnitude less power than that big heavy duty arm
that goes with it. So the entire platform itself becomes reduced by it And
then when we dive down back with the low light camera stuff, which is
sitting here on the front of Herc, we have the lights on, guns ablazing. But
it's really interesting to just turn them down and look at it from a different
perspective to go with it. Now, those are good ideas. But I have a little bit
of evidence to back that up. That we are really missing a lot of things that
are in the deep ocean because we're scaring them away So last take is if
you're this deep-sea shrimp right here and this giant 5,000 pound vehicle
comes at you with stadium lighting on -- (Chuckles).
>> You're going to act a little bit differently. You're going to run.
Then you reach out and try to grab it.
That's your perspective from one of these vehicles. And one thing
I couldn't show because it's awful to your ears but there's vehicles
create a tremendous amount of noise, as well In order to run those big
manipulator arms and those thrusters, they run on a hydraulic power
pack and it's horrendous to hear. The amount of noise that they create.
So this is my one slide of data. So speaking of open data from the NOAA
Office of Exploration and Research thank you very much. These are some
dives I think they did in 2016 in the Western Pacific. And this Etch A
Sketch line you see in the middle here, this is a dive profile of their deep
ROVs, they work together so there's two of them. The red line is the sea
floor. We have depth here. What we're looking at is acoustic back scatter
collected from the vessel at the same time. The stuff in blue is stuff. It's
fish. It's jellyfish. It's shrimp in the midwater On this particular dive they
were trying to explore the midwater and put them in the camera. So the
vehicles go down deep and all of the scatterers go up. They say, oh, wait,
they are up here. We are going to fly up. And then they all go up. And then
they go to the vehicles and go back to doing what they were doing in the first place.
(Chuckles).
>> So you're just not seeing that at all. And again, this is what all of these
big exploration vehicles look like. They look like Herc, they look like Deep Discover,
these wonderful pieces of technology. And I used to be an ROV pilot.
And I love these things. But then I started looking at it from the biological standpoint.
And it's oh, maybe we should redesign these things a little bit.
So my last slide looks like Proposal Land, because that's where
I'm at right now. Actually on the left -- oh, sorry, excuse me.
On the left I've invested a lot of money with my new position to buy a winch,
which is the most boring thing I could do with my money.
But it's a cool winch. It's a small winch. And it will provide access
and allow me to bring out other peoples' platforms, including my own. So
something on the right I'm proposing something I call the simple
platform, a battery-powered platform with a low light camera, some dim
lights. And that same technology that showed you that back scatter, let's
put that right down there and see if we can turn up the volume in terms
of lights, in terms of noise, and see what these effects are and try to
parse that out. Or since this is a workshop if people have other ideas on
ways that they would like to explore more elegantly I'll put it that way
under water, come see me. Because I have the winch. So I just need
something to put onto it to go with that. Yeah. With that, thank you.
(Applause)
>> A lot of motivation. So now we can get into some discussion.
I'll start off with a couple of questions and then we can just
range free with the crowd. Of course sensing is being revolutionized in
many ways, we're opening up all kinds of different worlds we can sense
now with new technology. One of which is in situ DNA sequencing
because you can get an interpore DNA sequencer now for about $5,000.
They are going to get much cheaper. Soon you'll just be able to talk into
your cell phone. Of course you have to prepare samples. That may be
where the difficulty is. But this could be intriguing to get real-time.
Instead of waiting months as you mentioned to get the data back, have it
sequenced in a lab, so on and so forth, just have the stuff continually
processed. Do you guys see this as being a potential future? Is it a
relevant thing for you? You get some idea of the biology just from DNA
that's surrounded in the water?
>> I can tackle it. I just know there's a whole project out of MBARI
I think that did this. I think Pete worked on. This is one of your things.
I forget the acronym
>> (Off microphone).
>> Thank you. But it is possible but it was pretty big and I think it's
along the same vein and Anna was saying.
There's a lot of money out there to put a first idea but in terms of
making this a bit more robust and smaller, I think that's where the hope is.
>> Yeah, I mean now you can get them about the size of your hand. Of course
you have to work the pressure, which is another factor to again prepare the sample.
>> That's new to me. That's really cool.
>> Intriguing future.
>> Yeah, if I might tack onto that, the ESP or Environmental Sample Processor developed by
MBARI was originally something about the size of a very large garbage
can They then made it down to about the size
of a coffee can with the goal of putting it an AUVs.
It was actually tested in the Great Lakes last year to detect a harmful algal bloom.
So very successfully. But what we're really seeing in
the tech space in this arena within the next ten years is probably flow
through sampling capability. So you could envision a world in which you
had a terrain-following AUV. So autonomous underwater vehicle. Not an
ROV that's piloted by somebody with, say, stereo cameras, other
environmental sensors and flow-through DNA sequencing. And all of a
sudden, you have the potential of being able to characterize not just what
exists in that habitat but the environmental conditions that it exists in.
And not just those things that you can see that are existing in that habitat
but all of the DNA that might be present in that water stream at any given
time. I firmly believe if we're able to do this, we're going to lead to this
inductive research revolution where we basically take a look at these
gobs of data and start seeing correlations that we have never seen
before. And that's going to then lead onto a tremendous amount of
follow-on research to try to improve our understanding of those
environments.
>> And what about self-powered vehicles? You can make them autonomous
but they always come home right now at least for the most part.
You're starting to see these wave rectifiers with silver cells
and other things you can just let them go. They talk via satellite. They can catch data,
upload it, and just go forever. Is this going to be a game changer, too, do you
think? Or is there just too much power that we need to do what we want to do?
>> Well, I think for a lot of the sensors right now, I think that we need
to work on the sensors to be able to adapt them to those platforms.
But I think those are great platforms long term. We have things like CTDs
that we can get really tiny and put on those vehicles
. But if we want to do some of these other kinds of analyses, our
instruments are still not there. And so we need to kind of channel funds
into that, too, to push those instruments to be smaller so they can go on those vehicles
>> I was wondering with your winch if you can't just use a bladder.
If you made the sensor smaller, if it wasn't so heavy, that would make it even more innocuous.
>> Definitely. Yeah. I mean I go in this direction of the winch because
I wanted to simplify things under water. I didn't want that bladder system
to be my problem. Which is a really great idea.
And certainly adjustable buoyancy is a thing to integrate into it. I just decided
to put all of the brains up top so I could look at it.
(Chuckles).
>> The only thing I can focus on is changing the camera under water.
But if I understand your point, there are some really interesting platforms
that are out there for high endurance but they haven't
really gotten into the deep-sea yet. There are some real
limitations with doing that. There's these really cool sailboats that can
sail the ocean for months at a time. Gliders obviously can do that. Wave
gliders and all that sort of thing. But they are really working on the
surface because they have to come up either to charge their cells or to
get navigation data. If you're going to stay down deep and just stay there you,
A, don't know where you are, and B, you're going to run out of power eventually.
So there's some real limitations to break through, if it's at all possible
to break through in that, in the deep.
>> And I might add that at any given time there are about 3,000 to 3500 autonomous
floating instruments on the ocean.
They are called ARGO floats. And they collect great data about the ocean,
they call them the thermal properties, the salt properties and things like that.
And increasingly they are looking at adding biology A
limitation here is that they primarily are limited to the top 1,000 meters of the ocean.
So that's good for a quarter of it on average. Right?
The other three-quarters we really aren't getting with those assets.
And so I think it's going to end up being some combination of service-based assets
whether they are ships or autonomous crafts that are exploding
in popularity right now or ROVs and AUVs, as well as in situ fixed sensors,
as well. It's going to be the combination of these technologies that's
really going to be the break-through and getting them all to work together.
>> Are these sensors that are out there now running off batteries like the old sonobuoys or --
>> Yes, they are.
>> The scuttle or fever cover. >> Yeah, they are running off of batteries
Generally they get recovered when the battery dies and it rounds
aground some place and there's an address on it. Ship it home.
But these batteries are -- they last for several years.
The data bursts are pretty small. So they are using a radium satellite
to burst the data. Periodically The assets mostly drop to a level
in the ocean. They let the ocean currents take it so they don't power
themselves in a direction. They are doing measurements along the way.
They pop up periodically. They send the data up to satellites, to shore
Then they pop back down again and taking data and
measurements. And also taking the vertical measurements looping the
way. So these things typically last for about a year and a half to two and
a half years. Which is pretty phenomenal, if you think about it. And they
do use the bladder system that you mentioned for buoyancy control. >>
Let's open it up for controls.
>> Yeah you want to toss me that football >> You can take this.
>> You know, obviously you're always looking for low hanging fruit.
Because the costs of being out at sea right off the top, that's such
a huge step function. And I know in our operation I haven't seen people taking