♪♪ [THEME MUSIC] ♪♪
>>>CAROL ANNE RIDDELL:
I'm Carol Anne Riddell
and this is Science & U!
Today we're
talking about our home,
planet Earth, a place
both familiar and wildly
undiscovered for most of
us. We begin with water.
It is central to our
existence and yet in many
ways our oceans remain
largely unexplored even
though they produce 70%
of the Earth's oxygen and
billions of people rely on
oceans for their livelihood.
Fabien Cousteau, grandson
of legendary ocean
explorer Jacques Cousteau,
wants to change that with
an ambitious project
to raise awareness.
Living in an underwater marine
laboratory for thirty-one days.
He spoke to our Vianora
Vinca about the experience.
>>>FABIEN COUSTEAU: I'm
glad that we all came out
of it in one piece.
You know there were a
lot of uncertainties.
This was a theory really,
the project itself,
as epic as it was and
based on real science and
history, as it was,
still was a theory.
The theory was let's do
this crazy mission and see
if people are still
interested in the oceans.
>>>VIANORA VINCA: Dubbed
Mission 31 the endeavor
took place 9 miles off the
coast of the Florida Keys
and 63 feet below the
ocean surface where
Aquarius, the last existing
underwater marine research
lab or underwater human habitat
sits, on the ocean floor.
>>>FABIEN COUSTEAU: In
history there have been
habitats built certainly
first by my grandfather
and others in the
60's. 
There were several
dozen in history.
In the 80's things
changed and underwater habitats
disappear, and I think
that's a huge travesty
because we've explored
less than 5% of our oceans.
>>>VIANORA VINCA: Since then
even with underwater exploration
technology continuously
evolving Fabien Cousteau
says there's nothing like living
in an underwater human habitat
and being able to explore the
marine environment first hand.
>>>FABIEN COUSTEAU: A
habitat immerses you in
the environment and you
become very tactile and
your senses are very much
attuned to that environment,
which is invaluable when
you're trying to assess things.
>>>INSTRUCTOR: We're going to do
a test. Where's your EGS valve?
Steady flow valve? Good to go. 
>>>FABIEN COUSTEAU: I
picked some young aspiring
marine biologists to
be able to encompass a
nice rounded team that
could give a foray into
robotics engineering, into
marine biology and science
in general, so that we
could get a good picture
of what the next
generation of ocean
explorers and
aquanauts could be.
>>>FABIEN COUSTEAU: This
is our scientist and this
is one of our technicians
and they're going out to
one of our sites to bring
some of the sea grass to
plant around the, there's
a sea grass right there,
to put around where
the predator prey fear
behavior models are.
And we were studying the
effects of the absence of
predators on the
coral reef with regard to
biodiversity and that
really goes into the
subject of over fishing and how
we're taking away a lot of these
essential creatures that
make coral reefs healthy.
>>>GRACE YOUNG: We
actually just got back
from the dive,
hence the wet hair,
and it went really well.
It took us about 45
minutes to set up the camera.
We're using a lens that
has a really narrow focus
so we can see the details
of these little critters.
>>>FABIEN COUSTEAU: No, no,
no, don't move the camera.
Just let me know when he
spits so I can push the trigger.
>>>GRACE YOUNG:
Okay, I'll let you know.
>>>LIZ MAGEE: But after
45 minutes we got it.
There's a lot of critters that
just move really fast and only
with a camera can we see the
details of their movements.
So it was a pretty
good day and all.
>>>GRACE YOUNG:
Really great day.
>>>LIZ MAGEE: High-five.
>>>FABIEN COUSTEAU: We were
able to do over three years
of science in 31 days and that
in itself was invaluable.
>>>MAN: Here we go. End of
Mission 31 Alpha.
>>>VIANORA VINCA: After spending
a full month at the worlds
final frontier, as Cousteau
likes to call the underseas,
coming back on land was yet
another challenging experience
he had to brace up for.
>>>FABIEN COUSTEAU: It was a bit
of an unraveling experience-
for the last seven days of
Mission 31 I was dreading coming
back up because I had gotten so
used to being underwater in
the worlds only undersea
laboratory, it became my home.
And fish became our neighbors
and we became very
accustomed to what that meant.
I'm torn. I'm really happy to
be back up to the surface to see
friends and family. 
I'm a little sad to be leaving
our home for the last month
but it was pretty awesome. 
>>>VIANORA VINCA: For Science
& U! I'm Vianora Vinca.
>>>CAROL ANNE RIDDELL:
Gray whales have not
inhabited the Atlantic
Ocean for the past three
hundred years however
in the past five years
sightings in bodies of
water connected to the
Atlantic have led
scientists to speculate
these whales may be
migrating through melting
ice in the polar regions.
Andrew Falzon tells us more.
>>>HOWARD ROSENBAUM: As a
population gray whales in the
Atlanta went extinct
several hundred years ago.
>>>ANDREW FALZON: Dr. Howard
Rosenbaum directs the Ocean
Giant's program for the Wildlife
Conservation Society.
Measuring upwards of fifty
feet in length and up to
forty tons in weight grey
whales are some of the
largest
animals alive today.
These gigantic creatures
live in the Pacific Ocean
in two distinct groups.
>>>HOWARD ROSENBAUM: So
the gray whales off the
coast of Russia are called
the western gray whales
and they are a highly
endangered population
genetically distinct
from the animals that are
called the eastern north
pacific gray whales for
which there's a good
census and recovery
laws such as the
U.S. Endangered Species
Act, the Marine Mammal
Protection Act, have
promoted the recovery of
those animals from
very low numbers several
decades ago to more
than twenty five thousand
animals in the
population today.
>>>ANDREW FALZON: But in
2010 this video stunned
whale researchers
across the globe.
It shows a gray whale swimming
off the coast of Israel. Then in
2013 another whale was spotted
off the coast Namibia in Africa.
The scientific community
was so surprised by the
photos many
thought they were fake.
But after they were
authenticated scientists
began to hypothesize.
They thought climate change
might be part of the equation.
>>>HOWARD ROSENBAUM:
Now as we consider what's
happening with climate
change and leads opening
up in the Arctic and
animals being able to move
through the Arctic, in
particular ice free zones,
that these animals may
migrate from the Pacific
to the Atlantic.
>>>LIZ ALTER: Phylogenomics
is the study of using D.N.A.
to reconstruct
evolutionary relationships
between organisms
and between species.
>>>ANDREW FALZON: Dr.
Liz Alter is an assistant
professor of biology at
the City University of
New York's York College
and Graduate Center.
She's part of the
team that used D.N.A.
to examine whether or not
the now extinct Atlantic
grey whales migrated
from the Pacific Ocean.
Prior to this study
there was no known genetic
information on
Atlantic gray whales.
Sources of Atlantic
gray whale D.N.A.
are hard to come by and
show how science can come
from some very
unusual sources.
>>>LIZ ALTER: So
occasionally fishermen who
are trolling the North Sea
will pull up a big chunk
of whalebone and if they
don't feel like throwing
it back overboard and
if they're a little bit
curious about it,
they'll bring it back and
eventually it makes its
way to a museum and then
eventually to us where
we can extract D.N.A.
from it and sequence it.
>>>ANDREW FALZON: This
allowed Alter to confirm
that the now extinct
Atlantic gray whales
migrated from the Pacific
to the Atlantic during the
warmer periods about ten
thousand years B.C. They
realized that climate change has
created similar conditions.
>>>LIZ ALTER: We all
started to wonder,
OK well why is it that
gray whales are showing up
in the Atlantic now
after this long hiatus?
And of course the
immediate thing everyone
starts to think about is
the decline in Arctic sea ice.
>>>ANDREW FALZON: Since
certain polar regions have
experienced significant
ice melt as a result of
climate change scientists
believe that the whales
were able to pass into the
Atlantic but caution it
doesn't mean the climate
change is a good thing.
>>>HOWARD ROSENBAUM: Just
because climate change is
in essence facilitating
you know a movement of one
population or another does
not mean it's positive.
In fact there are really
Arctic dependent species
that will suffer
due to warming seas.
>>>ANDREW FALZON: I'm
Andrew Falzon for Science & U!
>>>CAROL ANNE RIDDELL: As
you can see here at Inwood
Hill Park even we urban dwellers
are surrounded by nature.
Our next story is about
the struggle between the
natural world and
the manmade one.
Our Tinabeth Pina sat down
with Ted Steinberg author
of Gotham Unbound.
>>>TED STEINBERG: Greater
New York's one of the most
altered environments on
the face of the earth.
It's not an accident that
Manhattan today is some
seventeen hundred football
fields larger than it was
estimated to be back at
the time that Henry Hudson
came to visit in 1609.
>>>TINABETH PINA: How did
New York City become one of the
most dramatically transformed
pieces of land in the world?
>>>TED STEINBERG: Back
in the 1680's when the
British created a market in
underwater land into something
that could be bought and
sold just like anything else.
The British colonists
paved the way for the
enormous expansion of New
York at the expense of the sea.
Another major turning
point in New York's
environmental history
happened in the middle of
the nineteenth century
when the city turned to
sources of water located
outside the local environment.
First they turn and tap
the waters of the Croton
Watershed and then the
powers that be went on to
conquer the waters of
the Catskills and the Delaware.
By turning to outside
sources of water one of
the by products of this is
that they could now pave
over the natural
features of the land.
Brooks, springs, ponds to
supply the inhabitants of
Manhattan with water and
this incredible natural
density gave way to
enormous unnatural density
by which I mean instead
of oysters now you had all
these human beings
pack, jam packed,
into the New York
metropolitan area.
19 million people stuffed
into less than 1% of the
land area of the
United States.
>>>TINABETH PINA: So what
happened to
those natural inhabitants?
>>>TED STEINBERG: What
happened to the oyster
reefs and the marshlands,
they were filled in as
part of this major
reclamation process that
was going on here to
make way for real estate,
roads, parks and
of course airports.
I mean, if you take a look
at a place like Jamaica Bay
as late as 1900 there
was about twenty five
hundred square miles
of marshland there.
By 1910 the amount of
marshland in Jamaica Bay
had been reduced to about
three square miles and the
same thing went on
throughout the other major
saltmarsh complexes throughout
the New York metro area.
>>>TINABETH PINA: The
decision to transform the
waterscape and landscape
to accommodate 6% of the
nation's entire population
has had several serious
implications for
New York City.
>>>TED STEINBERG: New York
has been thumbing its nose
at the sea for some 300
years and now the city is
confronted with
global climate change,
with the prospect of
increasing sea level.
The mid range prediction
is that by the middle of
the twenty first century
sea level around New York
is going to increase
anywhere from 11 to 21 inches.
New York is on a collision
course here with disaster and in
particular with respect to the
issue of coastal flooding.
Hurricane Sandy in 2012 was
most certainly a wake up call.
According to the Federal
Emergency Management
Agency some four hundred
thousand New Yorkers
living in the 100 year
floodplain with a 1% risk
of flood in
any given year,
that's more people living
in the floodplain with the
risk of being swamped than
in any other city in the
United States
including New Orleans.
>>>TINABETH PINA: Do you
think there's a chance or
any possibility sometime
in the future that
Manhattan may go back
to what it once was?
>>>TED STEINBERG:
Well it already did.
That's what happened
during Hurricane Sandy.
Manhattan returned for a
brief moment to the watery
world from
which it emerged.
It's important that we
have some understanding
given the pace of
urbanization as to what
the ecological
ramifications are.
This idea of New York
as an proposition really
takes off and it continues
to shape and guide
New York's relations with the
environment to this very day.
>>>CAROL ANNE RIDDELL: We
live in and with nature
but its power over us can be
both awe inspiring and tragic.
From volcanoes and earthquakes
to hurricanes and tornadoes.
One thing we can do try
to understand the science
behind those
natural disasters.
>>>CAROL ANNE RIDDELL:
Despite all our progress as
people the enormity of nature's
power can overwhelm us.
Perhaps no more so than when
we face natural disasters.
A current exhibition at
the American Museum of
Natural History
captures exactly that.
Called Nature's Fury:
The Science of Natural
Disasters, it is an
in-depth look at the
potential danger
we live with daily.
>>>ED MATHEZ: Natural
hazards are a consequence
of us living on a dynamic
planet and there is no
escaping them, those
risks will always exist.
>>>CAROL ANNE RIDDELL: Ed
Mathez, the curator of
Nature's Fury, explains
learning about these
disasters can help protect us.
>>>ED MATHEZ:
Understanding the science
is really important because
it helps us determine the risk.
You know risk is really a
combination of probability and
consequence. So that's where
science can help us.
>>>CAROL ANNE RIDDELL:
Earthquakes, volcanoes,
tornadoes and hurricanes are
all on
display here explained
though the stories of
people in communities as well
as interactive exhibitions.
Visitors can stand in
the eye of a tornado,
create a virtual
volcano and even their own
earthquake by jumping
next to a seismometer.
I'm going to make my
own earthquake here.
It's going to be huge. See that?
Hurricane Sandy is also
part of the exhibition an
example of Nature's Fury
that many in our area are
all too familiar with.
The museum offers an
interactive map exploring
how New York City
was vulnerable.
Sandy demonstrates what
some scientists tell us.
Back in 2011 well before
the storm we brought you
an interview with
Professor Nicholas Coch,
an expert on hurricanes
who said New York City
could be hit hard.
>>>NICOLAS COCH: We
know that if something has
happened before it's
capable of happening again.
If it hasn't happened in a long
time it's going to happen soon.
This right angle makes the
New York area one of the
most dangerous places in
America for a hurricane to
come in based on the
generation of flood surge.
>>>ED MATHEZ: New York
is one of the places that
should expect you
know pretty severe,
pretty large hurricane every,
you know, few decades or so.
>>>CAROL ANNE RIDDELL:
So we are not out of the clear?
>>>ED MATHEZ: Well there's no
such thing as being out of the
clear. There is such a thing as
taking you know sensible
mitigating actions but
there's no such thing as
being out of the clear.
>>>CAROL ANNE RIDDELL: There is
plenty of science here beyond
hurricanes. The exhibit looks
at plate tectonics,
the theory of the movement
of the plates that make up
Earth's outer skin.
And did you know that
about 75% of all tornadoes
take place in an area covering
8 states in the central U.S.
known as Tornado Alley.
And while some natural
disasters strike with
little warning,
others can give scientists
significant
advanced notice.
>>>ED MATHEZ: Volcanic
eruptions are a different
kind of hazard.
We do have forewarning,
typically we have
forewarning of weeks to days
to hours before eruption.
>>>CAROL ANNE RIDDELL: But
science is only one part
of the learning here so is
human loss and resilience.
For example Isaac Cline, a
meteorologist in Galveston
Texas. The exhibit explains he
warned of a hurricane in
1900 that killed thousands,
including his pregnant wife.
>>>ED MATHEZ: These are
human tragedies and it's
easy to forget that when
we you know wander through
an exhibit like this that has
a lot of you know interesting
things. But fundamentally this
isn't just interesting,
it's also a tragedy. We can
never forget that.
>>>CAROL ANNE RIDDELL: You
still have time to check
out Nature's Fury the exhibition
runs through August 9th.
Finally today the push
is not to cool down the
environment and reduce
greenhouse gas emissions
and a city program is
tackling that problem one
roof at a time. Mike
Gilliam has more.
>>>MIKE GILLIAM: During
the summer months rooftops
like this can be steaming
hot and that could raise
some serious issues.
But one group of people is
trying to change all that
through a program
called Cool Roofs.
>>>STUART GAFFIN: It's a
great program and it's
goal is to sort of take
out a heat source that's
really really widespread
in this city and in every
city in the world frankly.
>>>MIKE GILLIAM: Stuart
Gaffin is a professor at
Columbia University
who also works for NASA.
He says the principle is
simple and something we
all learned in
second grade.
White reflects the sun
and heat while dark colors
absorb the sun's rays causing
surface temperatures to rise.
>>>STUART GAFFIN: Because
of that the dark surfaces
heat up tremendously and I
spent a tremendous amount
time on rooftops and
I've seen them reach
temperatures up to 190 degrees
and routinely exceed 170.
>>>MIKE GILLIAM: And with
the roof painted white
what do you see?
>>>STUART GAFFIN: So if it
was about eighty degrees
out it would probably get
up to about ninety maybe
one hundred but you're
easily shaving off seventy
degrees Fahrenheit in that
peak sunlight condition.
>>>MIKE GILLIAM: Gaffin
says that can produce huge
benefits when it comes to
global warming and energy
consumption. Former Con Edison
sustainability manager
Morgan Scott says the company
has been on board for years.
>>>MORGAN SCOTT: The
reason why we're putting
and helping and involved
in this program is because
we really believe that
our customers will see benefits.
So when we put a white
roof on a building and we
reduce the building's
temperature over time we
reduce the amount of
energy that a building
needs to consume to keep
the building cool so our
customers are
saving money.
>>>MIKE GILLIAM:
Scott also points out the
environmental benefits of
the Cool Roofs program.
>>>MORGAN SCOTT: When you
reduce the energy that's
consumed you have an
emissions reduction on the
backend and so we like to
see that with emissions
reduction you have
improved air quality.
>>>MIKE GILLIAM: The
program is run through the
city and started off with
a simple pilot program in
2009 in Long Island City.
They wanted to see if Cool Roofs
would be effective in New York.
>>>GERALDINE SWEENEY:
Our goal was to coat one
hundred thousand square
feet of roof top and at
the same time work with
the scientific community
to do some initial
analysis on what the
benefits are of
coating a roof white.
And that pilot proved so
successful that the city
launched a full blown
program in 2010 with the
goal of coating one
million square feet per
year in buildings all over
the city to help the urban
heat island effect that
is a phenomenon in cities.
>>>MIKE GILLIAM: A heat
island is a location that
is hotter because
it holds the heat.
So far according to the
Cool Roofs website more
than six million square feet of
rooftops have been painted.
Now that would be the
equivalent of close to one
hundred twenty
football fields.
The Harlem Congregation
for Community Improvement
has a number of buildings
in the program and they've
seen roof
temperatures drop.
>>>MALCOLM PUNTER: The
city was ahead of the
curve on this initiative.
They actually reached out
to organizations such as
HCCI, asked us
to participate,
we thought it was a great
idea and we participated
and partnered over
a two-year period.
>>>MIKE GILLIAM: Over
time that should both cut
energy consumption
in the buildings,
saving dollars, and it
should also help to cool
the areas and in fact
the city and the planet.
Program organizers past
and present say the
Cool Roofs program works.
>>>WENDY DESSY: My message is
that every roof should be
white. This is a benefit to all
New Yorkers, to every resident.
Everyone who lives here. It's
very easy to do, join us,
come volunteer with
us, coat your own roof,
go to our website and see how
you could become more involved.
>>>MIKE GILLIAM: So the
experts agree a little bit
of the special white paint
and some elbow grease can
help to cool down our city
and do all of us a lot of good.
I'm Mike Gilliam
for Science & U!
>>>CAROL ANNE RIDDELL: Think
about the size of New York City.
Millions of people. Now think
about how much water we use.
But where does all that water go
once it heads down the drain?
For most of us it's out of
sight, out of mind.
Managing and purifying New Yorks
water system is a massive
undertakng and the key might
just be harnessing the power
of tiny bacteria. Ari Goldberg
explains.
>>>ARI GOLDBERG: I'm Ari
Goldberg. Every day,
New York City generates 1.3
billion gallons of wastewater.
That's four hundred seventy
four and a half billion
gallons a year. Whenever
rain washes dirt into the sewer,
whenever you flush a toilet,
take a shower, do the laundry,
it ends up at one of New
York's 14 treatment plants.
It's an expensive and involved
process, one that the city
is trying to make
more efficient. 
>>>JOHN FILLOS: We
basically have been focusing on
applied research meaning
that we're looking to
solve real problems.
>>>ARI GOLDBERG: Professor
John Fillos and his team
at City College have been
tapped by the New York City
Department of Environmental
Protection to develop a
cheaper and greener technology
for the city's wastewater
treatment. Specifically, the
removal of excess nitrogen with
a tiny bacteria called anammox.
>>>JOHN FILLOS: When you
look at the nitrogen that
originates from wastewater,
it's in the form of ammonia
and it's organic nitrogen.
So when it's released into the
environment, whether it's
Jamaica Bay or
Long Island Sound, when
you go into an excess amount
is when you create the problems.
>>>ARI GOLDBERG: It sounds
almost counter intuitive
at first. Nitrogen is an
essential nutrient for life
after all. Conceptually when we
think of wastewater we think
of sludge and trash pollution,
but nutrient pollution?
However, it turns
out when excess nutrients
from household, industrial
and farming products end up
in our waterways, they can
disrupt oxygen levels,
marine life, and our
own drinking supply. 
>>>JOHN FILLOS: I guess
in some way people say
everything in moderation
is good so when we talk
about removing nitrogen
we're not talking about
reducing it to zero. We're
reducing it to a level,
which will sustain biological
activity in the waterways.
>>>ARI GOLDBERG: The goal
is to turn these toxic
levels of nitrogen
chemicals, for example
ammonia or nitrate, back
into pure safe nitrogen
gas, which will escape
safely back into the atmosphere.
Conventionally this process
took massive amounts of
energy and resources but
Professor Fillos' team is
harnessing the power of a
bacterial family known as
anammox to do the work for them.
>>>JOHN FILLOS: What we're
doing is we're trying to
find the most cost
effective way of doing it,
which means the least
amount of energy,
the least amount of chemicals
that you need. And what
happens, what we have
discovered that this
bacteria anammox is
capable of transforming
the nitrate to nitrogen
gas under anaerobic
conditions with the
minimum impact in terms of
energy demand, in
terms of chemical demand. 
>>>ARI GOLDBERG: The
anammox family of bacteria is a
relatively new find having only
been identified in the 1990's.
Early applications began in
Europe but now the City College
scientists are building that
technology here starting with
small scale reactors in the lab.
>>>JOHN FILLOS: Basically this
is a scale model of the reactor
that is going to eventually be
built to treat the
waste stream. We start with
basically clean media,
and the purpose of
this media is to immobilize the
anammox bacteria
by growing on its surface.
>>>ARI GOLDBERG: Anammox
is a very slow growing
bacteria and getting it to
flourish on these plastic
pieces was no easy task. 
>>>JOHN FILLOS: So that
process of developing this
bio-film on this clean
surface took about 6 months.
Okay. This is how
slow the process is.
And, to tell you the truth,
halfway through we became
so frustrated that we
thought it was never going
to happen but it
eventually happened and it
worked very very well. 
>>>MAHSA MERHDAD: The
challenges we face during
the operation was specifically
related to the wastewater
characteristics in New York,
that we didn't expect
it in the beginning.
>>>ARI GOLDBERG: Despite
these obstacles, once they
had nurtured a population
of anammox, it was time to
incorporate them into the
waste treatment process.
Mahsa Merhdad is a
Ph.D. student working
with Professor Fillos.
>>>MAHSA MERHDAD: So here
on the screen we can take
a look into the controls
here. In the summer we can
temperature, ph, d.o., of
the reactor and also we
can control the pumps. We
can calibrate the system.
>>>ARI GOLDBERG: So as
nitrogen waste is fed into
the reactor a critical
mass of bacteria is now
able to feed on that waste
converting it to harmless
nitrogen gas. And in
the process, cleaning our
water. And the future
looks promising for this
technology, using less
resources and costing less
money then
conventional methods. 
>>>MAHSA MERHDAD: Anammox
for its growth doesn't
need any external organic
carbon and the demand for
oxygen is also reduced by
60%. It is more sustainable,
more cost effective-
>>>JOHN FILLOS: The
next phase was to build a
larger scale, a pilot
unit, which we did this at
the 26th Ward Wastewater
Treatment Plant.
That project has also been
completed. It demonstrated
the practicality and the
cost effectiveness of the
process and the city of
New York is in the process
of now putting together a
request for proposal for a
full scale operation. 
>>>ARI GOLDBERG: While
this full scale operation will
still take a while to implement,
thanks to Professor Fillos'
team and a tiny bacteria
called anammox, within the next
few years we can
expect all of New York City's
wastewater treatment
plants to be both more efficient
and more environmentally
friendly. From City College,
I'm Ari Goldberg
for Science & U!
>>>CAROL ANNE RIDDELL: That's
our show for today. 
Join us next month for
a fascinating look at
engineering in our
every day lives.
From your commute to your
local Girl Scout troop.
I'm Carol Anne Riddell, thanks
for joining us for Science & U!
♪♪ [THEME MUSIC] ♪♪
