- [Woman] This program
is a presentation of UCTV
for educational and
non-commercial use only.
(light instrumental music)
- Good afternoon.
First I'd like to thank the Charles M.
and Martha Hitchcock Foundation
and the Hitchcock family
for making it possible for us today to
hear from Dr. Sylvia Earle.
I met with Sylvia a few minutes ago
and I asked what she'd like
me to do to introduce her.
She said, "Oh, just say here's Sylvia."
(audience laughing)
If you were here yesterday
to hear Dr. Earle's talk
you heard Professor Lester
describe her long list
of accomplishments and honors.
Most of these are also
listed in the program
and I will not attempt
to enumerate them all.
Here's a black lightening version.
Dr. Sylvia Earle is an
oceanographer, explorer,
author, lecturer, and experienced
field research scientist.
She is the president of Sea Alliance,
a non-profit whose mission
is to create awareness
of the ocean's importance to life,
explore global waters, and
inspire conservation action.
In 1992, Dr. Earle founded
Deep Ocean Exploration
and Research, which pioneered technologies
for ocean scientific
research and exploration.
Early in her career she
led the first team of
women aquanauts during the Tektite project
and among her several diving records,
she was the first person
to dive solo to a depth
of 1250 feet without being
connected to a support vessel.
Dr. Earle is an accomplished
scholar who earned
her undergraduate degree
from Florida State University
and her masters and PhD from Duke.
She's authored more than 180 publications,
many of them documenting
the aquatic plant life
of the Gulf of Mexico.
Dr. Earle was the U.S. National
Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administrations chief
scientist for 1990 and 1992
and is currently an explorer in residence
at the National Geographic Society.
It's this last position that
characterizes Dr. Earle.
She is, and foremost, an explorer.
She's had more than 100
expeditions world wide
and while she's quick to tell us
that less than 5% of the Earth's
oceans have been explored,
I can find hardly a stretch of
ocean anywhere on the planet
that she hasn't visited.
Whether it was when she
was first learning to dive
in the '50s in Florida
or on the underwater
missions living and working
on Tektite and Aquarius,
she got to live up close
and personal and very deep
with a diversity of life
that is found in our oceans.
She's logged over 7,000 hours underwater
in connection with this research.
Fortunately for us, she has and continues
to take us along on her
exploratory journeys,
using them to inspire and
energize all generations,
but most importantly the young.
With her passion for
conservation of the blue planet
and a love for science.
Today Dr. Sylvia Earle
will talk to us about
exploring the deep frontier.
Here's Sylvia.
(audience clapping)
- I think that's the best
introduction I've ever had.
(laughs)
So thank you and thanks for
coming in on this beautiful
afternoon to take a few
dives into the deep.
I hope if you haven't
already mastered the fine art
of slipping on fins and face mask
and scuba tank is nice.
Rebreathers are even nicer.
The submarine will also
do, but whatever it takes,
don't miss the chance
during this little time
that you have on the blue
speck in the universe
that we call Earth,
should be called ocean,
to explore it yourself.
If I could do just one
thing it would be to inspire
everybody to go see for
themselves what's out there
in the ocean.
The biggest problem with the ocean
isn't what we're putting in to it,
although that's a big problem.
It isn't what we're taking out of it,
that's a big problem too.
But far and away the biggest
problem is the complacency
that comes with not
knowing, with ignorance,
with just being unaware
of the nature of the
ocean, how important it is
to everybody with every breath we take,
every drop of water we drink,
that yes, there is concern growing
about taking care of whales.
Yes, there is awareness about the melting
of the polar ice and just
the loss of so much so fast.
But there is still this impression
that I have experienced most of my life,
that the ocean is so big,
so vast, so resilient,
that there isn't much we
can do to hurt the ocean,
harm the ocean, and if there is pollution
or if we have lost a few
species here or there,
or if coral reefs go bye
bye forever, so what?
Well, if you get out
there and see for yourself
the answer to that question
comes into focus pretty clearly.
On our watch, during out
time, decisions will be made
or not made, that will
have a profound impact
on everything that follows.
We live in a time that
will determine the fate
of whales, the fate of coral reefs,
the fate ultimately, perhaps
of our species, ourselves,
based on the awareness that
it matters to take care
of the living world, the wet world.
To take care of the ocean,
because that's where
most of the action actually is.
Knowing that is within
everyone's grasp today,
but not everyone takes
advantage of the opportunity
that is all around us,
to gain that insight,
to gain that knowledge and to
allow that to shape the
decisions that we make everyday.
That all stacked together
make the world flow
in the direction that it will go.
So I appeal to you, go get wet.
My idea that I hope everybody
ultimately will take
to heart for an education
program that is absolutely
vital for kids coming along.
Yeah, I mean, there's
this no child left behind
and there's the other take on
that no child left indoors.
I think no child should be left dry.
(laughing)
And that means all of you too.
'Cause everybody, it doesn't
matter how many decades
you've been around,
there's a child in there
waiting to discover the undiscovered
or to see for the first time yourself.
I get asked sometimes how did
you get to be an explorer?
How did you get to be a scientist?
And I say to kids, it's really easy.
You start out like you, as a
kid, and you do what kids do.
You ask questions.
Who, what, why, where, when how
and you don't stop and
you maintain that same
three year old sense of
wonder over everything
you look at and it's fantastic.
Whether it's a ladybug or a mushroom
or the sun coming up in the
morning and disappearing
over the horizon at night,
it's that sense of wonder and appreciating
that we're alive during
this extraordinary part
of history, making history.
If you want to chose a time,
choose now and never lose
that curiosity that comes
naturally when you're born
and somehow people have
a way of letting it get
inundated with everyday life.
So that's how you get to be a scientist.
You don't let that happen
or to be an explorer.
You just continue doing
what three year olds do.
You just never quite grow up.
I know there's some
scientists out there and some
would be scientists, I think
there's a kid lurking there,
doesn't matter what you
call yourself these days.
All of us have
maybe a heightened responsibility
to get to know this world
and understand how fast it's changing
and do what we can to
secure an enduring future.
Not just for the rest of our lives,
but because of the tipping
points that are just right there
on the edge with CO2 in the atmosphere,
acidification of the oceans,
the loss of many creatures
on the land and in the sea,
whole ecosystems at risk,
but most of all we're at
risk if you really get
right down to what matters.
So I didn't know about these
things when I started diving
back in the 1950's.
All I knew is that I loved diving.
I loved science, that I wanted to be,
I didn't know what to call
it when I was five years old,
but I did know I had to do
something with critters.
Later I understood that's
biology, that's science.
So I made the choices along the way.
Not because I was consciously
trying to get anywhere
in particular, but because I
did what I had the latitude
with parents who encouraged this
and with teachers who didn't discourage it
so much along the way, to follow my heart.
That's what I also advise
to kids coming along.
Do what you really love.
If it's music, fine, but
let the natural world
be a part of your life as well.
You want to go into politics, great,
but never lose sight of the
fact that you are a part
of the living world and
it's your job in part,
to take care of the system
that takes care of you.
It should be as vital
as learning your letters
and your numbers as a kid.
You gotta take care of the natural world
that takes care of us.
If everybody did it, we might
not even need national parks
to hold the line against
the loss of diversity
or to protect water sheds.
We might not have to do,
what I find myself now
running flat out to try to achieve,
which is protected areas in the sea.
To at least save something of
what remains of that heritage
that goes back to the beginning of Earth.
That we have a chance
to squander the assets
in such a short time or to
keep them and give some hope
that they'll be around giving
us life far into the future.
Today I've just brought a
few video clips that I want
to share with you to
help tell the story of,
my personal story in part, but
exploring the deep frontier.
It's the ocean, it's most of the world,
so how are you gonna cram exploring
most of the world into a few minutes?
Well, this is not going to be perfect.
But it's going to be a
glimpse of some of the things
that maybe hit on the
issues that right now,
at this critical point in
time, can make a difference.
If we really pay attention
and use our collective,
our individual and our collective powers
to ultimately address
peeling back the unknown,
gaining the knowledge that we need,
getting it into the minds
and hearts of as many people
as we possibly can to
shape the way forward
through policies, through
everyday decisions,
through whatever it takes
to try to leave this planet
at least as good as we found it.
At least as good.
Maybe we can actually turn
things toward making it better.
So yesterday I began with a little clip,
thanks to Google, that
takes you around the world
in a few seconds, to look
at some of the places
that have been explored,
that need to be explored.
So I'm gonna do it again, but
with another series of places.
So watch this.
Muah ha ha.
There we go, you made the world turn.
And you can do this too, of course,
that's what's so cool about
being alive right now.
Couldn't do this when I was a kid,
couldn't do it five years
ago, to go explore places
such as here, the Gulf of
Mexico, the Flower Garden Banks.
A little speck in the
Gulf that is protected
out of all that mass of water.
Or to fly over eastward from there.
Look at the lemon sharks as
they gather off the Bahamas.
Or let's fly out to the Patagonian shelf.
A place that currently
is at risk
from squid fishing, among other things.
That Patagonian Shelf
is one of the richest,
most productive parts of the ocean.
It's where orcas come ashore
to munch on elephant seal pups.
It's a place that is known
mostly from the shoreward basis
or from fishing fleets,
but little is known
in terms of scientific exploration.
The Coral sea, right now,
the Australian government
is considering establishing right adjacent
to the Great Barrier Reef,
what could be the biggest
marine protected area in the ocean so far,
if they make the decision
in that direction.
There's this big
Barry grouper, I mean,
it's a big Napoleon wrasse.
If you go to Australia you'll be able to,
or go to Google, you can hear
with an Australian accent
Barry the Napoleon wrasse
telling you why it really matters
to save the Coral Sea.
But this image of the Trieste,
the submersible that once
and never more took people to
the deepest part of the sea
in 1960, 51 years ago.
Oh!
Once people went to the
deepest place in the sea,
seven miles down.
Nobody has been back since.
Well, vicariously,
actually Japan had a deep diving
ROV, Kaiko, that several times went down
to the bottom of the Mariana Trench
and came back but it was lost
in a storm several years ago.
Woods Hole has come up with a
wonderful piece of equipment,
Narius, that has made nine
trips to the deepest part
of the ocean and brought
back confirmation of what
Jacques Picard and Don Walsh
saw with their own eyes
51 years ago, that
there's life down there.
There's life throughout the water column,
from the surface to the greatest depths.
Even at the bottom, where
the pressure is 16,000 pounds
per square inch.
Amazing.
How could we have waited
so long to go back?
And we still can't do it,
although Jim Cameron and Richard Branson
and teams of engineers that
they are paying for privately,
are working to try to overcome the issues
to go to full ocean depth.
As I did point out during
my remarks yesterday,
India is engaged in now the
development of a deep diving sub
not to go to full ocean depth,
but to go to 6,000 meters,
like China going to 7,000 meters.
France has a 6,000 meter submersible.
Russia as three, United States has zero.
We've got to fix this, I think.
It isn't just like a race to the bottom,
as some would portray the idea.
But rather it's a race against time
to try to understand the
ocean from the inside out.
We now live in a time
of profound ignorance
of the nature of the ocean.
Although we've learned more
in the last half century
than during all preceding
history about the ocean,
less than 5% has really been
seen, let alone explored,
let alone really mapped with
the same degree of accuracy
that we have for the moon, Mars, Jupiter.
What are we thinking?
What are we thinking?
Why are we, why are we ignoring the ocean?
Except as a source of things to take out
or a place to put things
that we don't want
close to where we are.
Why is it taking us so
long to respect the ocean
for what it gives us everyday, life.
I want to take you to a
place that I really love,
for a lot of reasons,
but one of the special
ones is that this is where
the first glimpse of what
it was like to see the ocean
from the inside out,
as much as half a mile
beneath the surface.
It's still the skin of the ocean,
but this goes back to the
1930's when William Beebe
and engineer Otis Barton,
in the little submersible
called the Bathysphere,
designed by Otis Barton.
These two guys crammed
inside this steel ball
on the end of a cable.
Conditions that today OSHA
would definitely not approve.
Lloyds would definitely
not have insured this.
ABS, not certified, nope not at all.
But they did it.
Let me show in this little
glimpse of the waters
off Bermuda around the Sargasso Sea
in a recreation and partly, this is real,
part of it's recreated by
the National Geographic.
You can find this on tada,
Google Earth, Google Ocean.
If you go to Bermuda, look
for the little blue dot
that you can touch and open
up this little sequence.
Intensely blue, the waters
around Bermuda are warmed
by the Gulf Stream, one
of the world's largest
and swiftest ocean currents.
Humpback whales pass through
these waters each year,
migrating from polar feeding grounds.
These waters are also known
to legions of luminous,
deep sea creatures and
intrepid undersea explorers.
(dramatic music)
In the 1930's, zoologist William BeeBe
and engineer Otis Barton,
descended a thousand meters
into the depths around Bermuda
for a first view of life
in a place the sunlight never reaches.
(dramatic music)
Beebe compared what he
saw to naked space itself,
out far beyond atmosphere,
between the stars.
With a blackness of space,
the shining planets,
comets, suns and starts,
must really be closely akin
to the world of life as
it appears to the eyes
of an old human being,
in the open ocean, one half mile down.
For Beebe and Barton, the
comets, suns, and stars
were living creatures, reflecting
rainbows of iridescence
or flashing, sparkling and glowing
with their own living light.
Fireflies and glowworms
are famous light makers
on the land, but in the deep sea,
about 90% of the creatures, jellies, fish,
bacteria, shrimp,
squids and many others,
have some form of bioluminescence
to signal one another.
Scientists say these
bursts of starry light
may be the most common form of
communication on the planet.
In the open sea, jellies
are also among the most
abundant forms of life.
The Gulf Stream current can
carry these oddly beautiful
drifters along at about
160 kilometers a day.
(eerie sounds)
Buffered by the Gulf Stream,
is a magically quiet,
gently rotating mass of sargassum weed
that expands over more than
5 million square kilometers
of open waters.
Isolated by walls of fast
moving currents between
Bermuda and Puerto Rico,
the Sargasso Sea hold a
liquid jungle of creatures,
which have evolved over the ages to exist
in floating forests of
golden brown sargassum.
Within its leafy, sunlight masses,
are camouflaged such creatures
as loggerhead turtles,
file fish,
and sea hares
and the speckled brown Sargasso crab.
For scientists, it's a living laboratory,
strategically located in the open sea.
For creatures that live
in the undersea caves,
among the reef and in
the great depths below,
Bermuda is simply home.
(eerie instrumental music)
In the end, I suppose you
could say that the ocean
is home for all of us.
That is, that we're all,
one way or the other,
we're sea creatures.
Every bit as much as that little sea horse
or other creatures that we think of as
distinctly oceanic but
imagine us without the ocean.
It's unthinkable.
I mean, we are as hooked in,
as dependent on the existence
of the ocean as any coral reef
or sargassum mat community.
It's something that, again,
we miss that in our education.
Some people never acquire it.
I feel especially blessed to
have been soaked in the ocean
long enough to kind of get it that,
this is it.
Earth is blue.
We have to take care of it.
It's up to us.
A few years ago I began to
work with some of my fellow explorers
at the Explorers Club in New York,
dreaming of going to one
of those great places
that might highlight the
condition of the world today.
That is, let's go to the real North Pole.
I mean, of course people
have been to the North Pole.
Perry went there in 1909, didn't he?
Yes he did, but he didn't
get to the real North Pole,
because the real North
Pole is way below the ice.
The Arctic Ocean harbors the North Pole.
So talking with Anatoly Sagalevich,
who designed the MIR subs with Don Walsh,
who was a pilot of the Trieste,
working with Fred McLaren, who
was a pilot or the captain,
of the Queenfish, the nuclear submarine
that goes under the Arctic ice, or did,
back in the 1960's to record
the thickness of the ice
and the nature of the configuration
of the seafloor below.
So we had these big
ideas but first one thing
and then another thing
and then something else happened
to cause the great dreams
and schemes to go awry.
Then came August of 2007.
I had a message on my cellphone.
It was from Anatoly Sagalevich
and it went something like this.
Sylvia, this is Anatoly Sagalevich.
I'm calling you from
the North Pole. (laughs)
I have just come back
from diving 4,200 meters
beneath the ice.
Then there was a pause and
I could hear the clinking
of glasses, I'm sure it was
vodka in the background,
lots of hooping and hollering.
We missed you.
This was a great achievement for science.
Then more laughing and
clinking and celebration
in the background.
Then the killer comment,
but it was our achievement.
Muwahaha. (laughing)
This is Russia, establishing
with a titanium flag
in the heart of the Arctic.
Just a little notice to
the rest of the world
that they're laying claim
to much of the Arctic
by going there with their MIR subs
and by establishing the
hope, sort of a precedent,
to help show that they're
part of the Arctic
that goes out, according
to the law of the sea,
200 miles but beyond that,
perhaps, an extension of
the continental shelf,
a natural extension they
would like to demonstrate.
So I'm going to show you a little clip now
of going to the Arctic.
Again, one of these little
tours that you can see
if you go to Google, the
Ocean in Google Earth.
Find the little blue dot
that will take you ocean tour
and then a series of about
a dozen place like this,
with clips that will
take you on a little expedition.
This one includes a
glimpse of the MIR subs
as they make their historic
descent to the real North Pole.
Gleaming starkly white,
the frozen Arctic Ocean
crowns the top of the world,
above 66 degrees north latitude.
(rumbling)
In the Arctic, above the ice and below,
wildlife prospers, in
what might seem to be
an inhospitable environment.
But it's exactly what is
required for polar bears,
ring seals,
and the snowy white beluga whales,
the highly vocal canaries of the sea.
Narwhals, the legendary
unicorns of the sea
and bowheads, the great ice whales,
thrive there and nowhere else on Earth.
In the cold, dark waters of the Arctic,
life abounds as it has
for millions of years,
unknown, unseen,
and still largely unexplored.
Under the ice, and actually
within the ice itself,
life is surprisingly rich and diverse.
Photosynthesizing
organisms cast a green glow
across the sweep of the ice.
(instrumental music)
Arctic birds, fulmars, guillemots,
kitty wicks, and ivory gulls,
survive on a diet rich in Arctic cod,
while murres dive down
as deep as 100 meters
in search of fish and squid.
(instrumental music)
Walruses look elsewhere for meals,
using their great tusks
to plow into the soft
underwater terrain to
extract clams, worms,
and other tasty morsels.
Deep within the heart of the Arctic,
4,200 meters down, is the North Pole,
visited for the first time in August 2007
by six explorers in a pair
of Russian submarines,
MIR I and MIR II.
For hours they observed and
documented the seafloor,
struggling to understand
the nature of polar life
far below the surface.
The struggle to reach the North
Pole at the Arctic surface
has lured hearty explorers for centuries.
- [Man] Let's go, hoi, hoi, hoi.
- [Sylvia] Robert Perry
and Matthew Henson,
claimed the first successful
expedition in 1909.
Other explorers to the
Arctic Ocean have sought
the fabled northwest passage,
direct shipping route
form Europe to Asia across the polar ice.
Today, global warming is
melting the ice cap so fast
that scientists expect the
passage to become a reliable,
summer shipping route
within a few decades.
That's good news for shipping,
but bad news for polar bears,
Arctic seals, and the
people of the Arctic,
whose cultural heritage
is inextricably linked
to living in a realm
dominated by ice and snow.
(dramatic music)
Keen interest is now focused on the Arctic
and its nature, particularly
because of the magnified
importance of the frozen
norther waters in shaping
global climate and weather,
the circulation of ocean currents,
and ultimately the
wellbeing of human kind.
That last sentence, the
wellbeing of human kind
is truly what it's all about in the end.
That's what's missing from much that is
really the focus of attention
for the ocean these days.
It's where can we go to catch more fish
or where can we go to
find new deposits of oil
and gas or how can we
actually mine the deep sea.
One of the latest and
greatest causes for concern,
using bulldozer-like
techniques to scrape the crust
from the ocean floor to
get those rare minerals,
rare earths that are needed for those
really important things like
cellphones and computers
and things that we now
have become addicted to.
Some really clever engineers
ought to think about
two things.
One, how do we recover
these rare materials out of
recycled throw away cellphones
and computers and stuff
instead of just letting
them just disappear.
Or come up with some alternatives.
Why do we need these rare earths anyway?
I know for getting them
smaller and smaller,
but there must be some
solutions, some end runs,
that will enable us to avoid
doing the equivalent
of mountain top removal
to get the seams of coal out
of Virginia and West Virginia,
to take big chunks of the
ocean to get little handfuls
of something that we value now.
It somehow we need to get
our priorities straight
and understand the real value of the ocean
should be recognized every
time we take a breath,
every time we take a bath,
every time we take a
drink of water, whatever,
to link it back to why the ocean matters.
I've had such a good
experience here over the last
few days, meeting with
students, meeting with some
of the faculty, the scientists,
who are doing the important work
of dragging information,
these secrets from nature,
out of whatever it is, using your talents,
using your minds, using your life,
to try and answer some
of the questions about
how does the world work.
Little pieces here, little pieces there,
a connection between
this and that and soon,
you've got some greater understanding
that really informs the
world about why it matters
and what we need to do to take care
of the world that takes care of us.
I'm really honored to have a
chance to touch base with you
and I hope this is just, really,
a reintroduction to some of
you, an opportunity to go
into some of these issues more deeply
and to make this the beginning
of an ongoing relationship.
I'm going to go now to an
image, a couple of them,
that will be the basis for some comments.
The Gulf of Mexico, that's where I first
put a face mask and fins on.
In fact, even before
1953, the year before,
my brother, conspiring with the son
of our next door neighbor,
borrowed our next door neighbor's
copper diving helmet.
He was a sponge diver.
This was in Dunedin, Florida.
Tarpon Springs is just up the coast,
famous for sponge diving
community that goes back
to the 1930's or so.
We dragged this equipment, I
was a kid sister who tagged
along to go to the Weeki
Watchee River to dive in,
using a little gasoline
powered compressor.
Just the helmet part,
not the big canvas suit
and not the lead weighted shoes,
so my feet kept floating up,
but it was enough just to get underwater
to breath underwater, to see fish.
I thought I was there to look at the fish.
I found that the fish were
really fascinated with us,
with me, came swimming around.
It was my introduction
to breathing underwater
and the next year, armed
with one of the two
systems that were first
brought into the country,
that Harold Hum, a professor
at Florida State University,
made available to this class
of eight little tadpoles,
students in a class in marine biology,
who were given the chance to try,
not just SCUBA but also a DESCO face mask
with a hose going back to the surface.
Again, with a compressor enabling us to
swim around at you know, 50,
60 feet under the surface.
It was a gift.
I learned quite a lot
about marine biology,
but mostly I got hooked on wanting to go
see for myself.
Over the years, the Gulf of
Mexico has been my laboratory
if you will.
The place where I came to love
the systems that were there,
the fields of seaweed
and the rocky outcrops,
the coral reefs from down
in the Tortugas, all the
way up to those that are
offshore from the Mississippi River.
The Flower Garden Banks
that I first heard about
from reading Skin Diver magazine.
It was about 1975.
I didn't know about their
existence when I finished
my dissertation at Duke in 1966.
I thought I knew something
about seaweeds in the gulf,
but I didn't know about
this tongue of the Caribbean
that came far into the Gulf of Mexico
and not only brought tropical algae
but a whole suite of
organisms, including corals.
There's so much that we
still have to learn about
the Gulf of Mexico, about
what's in the deepest place,
the Sigsbee Deep off Yucatan.
Since that first breath of air that I took
in the Weeki Watchee River and later
off St. Marks in the
northern Gulf of Mexico,
I've had hundreds of
dives in various places.
Now, including the western Gulf.
I spent the night in the
deep rover, one person sub,
off Veracruz.
Went down at sunset and came
up at dawn the next morning.
All night just sitting on the reef,
it was like a portable
underwater laboratory.
But I was in one sense by myself,
all alone in this clear
bubble, sitting on the reef
a hundred feet down.
In another sense I was just
in the midst of a metropolis
of life, watching this great speckled
moray eel come in, slither around,
and disappear and 20
minutes later it'd come in
from another area, just
looking and seeing,
then snapping up the
little creatures that were
attracted to my lights.
It was an experience, that again,
I wish all of you could
share and could enjoy.
And why not go out off St.
Clemente, off Monterey,
and not be content with
being on the shore,
being on the boat, but
why not jump over the side
and go down a thousand
feet where the krill live
in a sparkling world of bioluminescence?
It's all there for you to do.
I was so excited about wanting to do this
and I never could and
still haven't been able to
wangle away to get down in the Alvin.
I tried about 30 variations
on the theme of submarines.
The Alvin still eludes me
and now it's going through
a renovation and won't be back in business
for at least another year.
So one of my good friends
over the years has come to be
astronaut, sky walking
astronaut, Kathy Sullivan,
who succeeded me as the
chief scientist at NOA.
We go diving, she has as I say,
her ups and down.
She's a sky walking
astronaut but she also loves
submarines and she's a dedicated diver.
I rib her sometimes about
how, as an astronaut,
she just had to be a really good geologist
and really have a passion for flying.
You know, somebody built
the spacecraft for her.
They paid her a salary, not very much,
but they did pay her a salary.
They made it possible
for her, encouraged her,
to go off in the sky.
When they came back, of
course, was and should be
recognized as a hero.
Those of us who go down
in the ocean, well,
I wanted to go
and I got frustrated
waiting to go in Alvin.
So I did what most
scientists are loathed to do,
I started a company with engineers,
Deep Ocean Engineering,
deep ocean technology
going back to 1980, inspired
after I had a chance
to walk on the ocean floor in the gym suit
and realize, you know,
you don't have to stop
at 100 feet or 500 feet.
If you wrap yourself in
a one atmosphere shell,
like Bruce Robeson figured this out too,
using the little systems
that were developed,
mostly for the oil and gas industry,
but he borrowed them off of
the shelf where they had been
used by oceaneering
for pipeline inspection
and rig maintenance.
Used the wasp and use the deep rover,
the system that the company
I started ultimately built
to do scientific
exploration with scientists,
from most U.C. Santa Barbara,
but up and down the coast,
mostly from California but not entirely,
looking at what it was
like in the water column
off Monterey.
But you know,
it's so frustrating not
to have ready access
when you know engineering
wise, it's possible.
So I started the company
not knowing anything about
accounting or law
or the tax code.
Oh, or personnel issues
or you know, all the things
that when you have a startup
company, like making payroll,
that you have to know
about and think about
and finally make happen.
So I did my MBA the hard
way, by starting the company
and being responsible for those things.
And wrangling, working with engineers
to come up with design.
Working with Graham Hawks,
working with colleagues
that we pulled in to solve the problems.
Like okay, you're in a submarine,
but there's a thing that
you want to get out there.
You use this cranky
little manipulator to go
like a pair of pliers, grab a hold of it,
and oh, you squished the very
thing you wanted to catch
and bring back and oh,
it's so (groans) frustrating.
As a diver you can be gentle.
But with a submarine and a mechanical arm,
it's not so easy.
But why can't we use our
clever minds to figure
these things out?
Actually, in recent
times people have begun
and are succeeding in figuring them out.
At Harbor Branch in Florida,
with a Johnson Sea Link, at MBARI,
certainly at Woods Hole.
At Scripts with underwater
vehicles that can simulate
the human presence using
remotely operated systems.
Ah, but here we are
in 2000 and,
this time last year, it was 2010.
Gulf of Mexico, where when I
began diving many years ago,
images such as this were rare.
Since then, on the order
of more than 30,000 wells
have been drilled in the Gulf of Mexico.
Platforms established to
recover the fossil fuels
that are deep within
the heart of the Gulf.
Nothing inherently bad with doing this.
In fact, I have nothing
but the utmost respect
for the engineering
feats that are involved
with designing, developing,
and accomplishing
what's been accomplished
in the last 50 or so years,
to extract from the heart of the Earth,
these amazing materials.
I've had an inside look
serving on the board
of a company called Orix Energy,
that was a little company based in Texas,
but working in the Gulf
of Mexico to do just that.
Extract oil and gas reserves
out of the deep see in the Gulf.
They were pioneers in really
working in the deep sea
and subsequently, on the
board of Dresser Industries
that built much of the equipment
involved with pipelines.
How do you transport oil?
I mean, I really got an up
close and personal education
about the skills involved in finding
and then developing this
really, like a space station
at sea that independently can support
and that's like a hotel
facilities, but with engineering
capabilities that rival anything
that we've put into space.
It's miraculous what we're able to do
to find and recover and extract
and market and power our
civilization all over the world.
I've served on the board of
several other entities
during the years that
I've gotten those great
parallel education as a biologist,
as a scientist, working with engineers.
I'm not an engineer.
But I have immense respect
for those that actually
can accomplish this.
I found this stunning.
First of all that we got this image,
and secondly that it took
us so long to get this image
after the Deep Water
Horizon began spilling oil
from the well that was drilled
at a starting depth of a
mile beneath the surface.
It took a remotely operated vehicle system
to go down and capture this image.
Soon the whole suite of little
remotely operated vehicles
were brought to get
images of what was down,
what was happening on the deep sea floor.
What was frustrating though is
that we couldn't get a
submarine with people,
with scientists, with observers,
with engineers, with politicians
who want to see what it's like down there.
To take them down themselves
and see for themselves
what is it like on the ocean floor.
What's happening away
from where this gusher
is taking place?
This is about all we got to see,
right on the gusher itself.
What was happening a hundred
or a thousand feet away?
We still don't know.
When a call came out for
equipment that could go there.
All right, where, United
States is there other than
with the oil and gas
industry, equipment available
that can go a mile beneath the ocean?
It should be easy.
I mean Woods Hole does
have equipment to do that.
Scripts, there are a few
place other than just with,
and BARI, of course.
University of Hawaii has
two Pisces subs that can go
to 2,000 meters.
And the Alvin.
Russia volunteered to
bring the MIR sub or subs,
both of them were available
to go down and check it out.
Let's go see what's happening in the Gulf.
Somehow it never happened.
Jim Cameron convened a meeting
privately, in Washington,
of the best experts he
could muster to say,
okay, everybody with assets,
everybody with ideas, how
are we going to go out
and see what's happening to stop this from
going any further and to
asses what's happening,
to get a grip on it.
He was not taken very
seriously by the government
or by maybe the scientific community,
but it was an earnest attempt
to get people together
to really put our heads together.
At the time it seemed, when
it first began in April
of 2010 and on into June and on into July,
that we would try almost
anything to stop the flow
of oil and gas from the
bottom of the ocean.
One thing we didn't have the
capacity to do in this country
was to whip out a convenient
ROV from the Coast Guard
or from NAO.
They don't have an ROV at
the Coast Guard or NOA.
Or a submersible in the
garage with the Coast Guard
or with NOA.
It just doesn't exist - yet.
Maybe now that we know that
these things happen, we
need to have the capacity
to respond.
Even without emergency
situations like this,
what about just exploring the ocean,
knowing what's there in the first place?
Well, as I say,
I sort of got to of the
traces as a scientist a bit
starting a company.
First in 1980 and 1981
and then off to Washington
in 1990 as the chief scientist of NOA.
But when I came back I
started another company,
Deep Ocean Exploration and Research,
that was a modest little entity.
Mostly consulting until
1997 when my daughter,
Elizabeth Taylor and Ian
Griffith her pal and also
her husband, also the father
of two of my grandchildren,
took the company over.
They own it and operate it.
It's over in Alameda and since
then some wonderful things
have bene happening.
I hope that you will accept
the invitation to check it out.
Go over to Alameda,
meet with the engineers,
inspire them with some thoughts about
not only how to craft
the various devices that we
could use to solve the problems,
to explore, to understand,
and to react to catastrophes
when they happen.
It's a company founded
with the idea of certainly
making a living, but beyond
that to make a difference.
Vehicles such as this.
One of them made its way
down to Scripts recently
as a scientific tool in the box,
to be able to explore
and understand the ocean.
Right now, around the world,
mostly in the oil and gas industry,
there are literally hundreds
of remotely operated vehicles.
Some of them active, some
of them have been retired,
but just mostly brought into
service for exploitation
of the ocean.
We need variations on the
theme, capitalizing on this
investment to explore the ocean,
to understand the ocean,
to figure out what's really
valuable about the ocean.
Not just the things that we
can extract and use and sell,
but the things that keep us alive.
How we need to protect those systems.
Here's one of my dream machines.
Still on the drawing board,
but taking the distillation
of much that has been invested
in the Johnson Sea Links,
in the development of
systems such as the Alvin,
new batteries, new technologies
for pressure hulls,
new electronics, new cameras,
new lights, you name it.
We've come so far so fast,
the capacity to design and
build access to the sea.
What's holding us back?
What's gotten in to our
heads that we have invested
heavily into aviation and
aerospace in the 20th century
and we're still doing it and
it's paid off handsomely.
We're still neglecting the ocean
and it's costing us dearly.
The magnitude of our ignorance
is really costing us dearly.
Well, here's another slick little machine
that is not just on the
drawing boards, it exists.
Looks like, I don't know
exactly what it looks like.
Um, I'll tell you what it is. (laughs)
It's a machine to go
through a 22 inch bore hole
in the ice in Antarctica.
Funded by the National Science Foundation,
for scientist at Northern
Illinois University,
Ross Pal and his colleagues.
They want to know what's
going on beneath the shelf ice
in Antarctica.
We know it's disappearing.
Is the melt ice flowing
underneath the ice shelf?
Let's go find out.
Sure, let's go find out
it's a kilometer thick.
How are you gonna get there?
Well, you bore a hole, which
in itself is a big challenge.
How do you do that
through a kilometer of
ice 22 inches in diameter
and then send a robot
down through the ice?
It's a little far to send
a human, at least today,
maybe someday.
Then swim under this ice shelf
that is believed to be and
has, I guess to some extent,
confirmed to have some water beneath,
ut we don't know how deep
or what the salinity is.
But to go through the ice
and then emerge at the bottom
and then take this slim
pencil like formation,
this shape, and like the transformer toys
that are all the rage today,
open up with manipulators, cameras,
lights, and a suite of sensors
that will take measurements, take samples
and stay out there for a week
or so, sending information up
by a fiber optic link to the surface,
where scientists can shiver
in a tent looking at images
brought back real time.
Looking at data brought back real time.
With luck they'll bring
the machine back eventually
and have it fold up again
into this nice sleek form
and make its way back up
through the hole in the ice.
So there are solutions.
What's lacking is imagination.
And maybe, what can I call it?
The guts to leap out of the box
and do something while there's still time.
We can all make a difference
one way or the other.
Everybody has power, the question is
how are we individually and
collectively going to use
our power at this critical point in time?
We don't have a lot of time
to make decisions that will
have a magnified impact on the future
about will there or will
there not be coral reefs
going forward?
Will there or will there not
be tuna fish going forward?
Will there or will there not be rock fish
here in California where
some populations have been
reduced down by more than 90%?
This is really up to us and why aren't we
really excited about this?
We have a chance that nobody before
could possibly know because
we didn't have the information
we now have and going forward
in another 20 or 30 years
we'll miss the window,
the time that is open for us.
One thing that I find encouraging is
something, a glimpse that I will show,
one example of why I'm encouraged.
America's Cup, a sporting event that has
been regarded as high end,
multi zillionaires, playboys if you will,
playing with toys, these beautiful yachts,
but calling on engineering skills
that are at the cutting
edge of today's technology
in terms of materials, computer modeling,
looking at what it takes
to get the last little bit
of speed out of wind and
you want to win a race,
of course, but how do you get there?
Huge investment of funds
have been committed
over many years to fine
tune ships that go fast
just powered by the wind.
But nothing like what is happening now
using catamarans and
materials that didn't exist
when America's cup began in the 1800's
and didn't exist on through
most of the 20th century
and some didn't exist
until right about now,
being brought into focus and use.
That in itself is exciting.
Imagine getting these
gazillionairs to invest
in the technology to show
us how to harness the wind,
get the maximum use out of
something that is basically free
and an alternate source of power.
Well, actually the Cook
Islands in the South Pacific,
they along with 11 other
South Pacific nations,
have decided that they
want to actually go back
to some of their traditional
ways with voyaging canoes
to harness the wind using new materials,
using solar panels,
using their ancient
navigation but they can also
tune in go GPS, why not, it exists,
to reengage transport among
the islands with canoes
powered by the wind
they way they used to do
over the centuries that
have passed without an ounce
of oil involved.
To look to using the sun and
wind to power their societies.
This summer, in July actually,
the leader of the Cook Islands
came to San Francisco and
met a group of voyaging
canoes that started in
New Zealand this spring.
Made their way across
the Pacific to Hawaii
and from Hawaii came to San Francisco.
They were here in July and now
they made their way down to
Monterey and off to San Diego,
where they'll spend the winter.
Young men and women
learning the ancient ways
and embracing the new technologies.
The Prime Minister of the
Cook Islands has vowed
that by 2020 they will be completely free
of using fossil fuels.
They will embrace the wind and sun
and they will really
dedicate their efforts
to bringing back the ancient
ways for transporting goods
and people among the islands.
It's there to be done.
It isn't like we don't
want any of the new stuff.
We're just going to go
back to the old ways.
No, it's a merger of respecting the past
and embracing the present so
that there's a better future.
So they're vacas, they're sailing canoes,
they're voyaging canoes have
solar panels for heaven sakes.
They like to have coffee,
Pete's and Starbucks too
while they're at sea and they can do that.
But at the same time,
they don't need an engine
to get from here to there.
They don't need oil or
gas to power their way
across the Pacific.
I met with them when they came to Hawaii.
I met with them when they
came to San Francisco.
I saw them when they were down in Monterey
and I'm going to go to
San Diego in November
to meet with them again.
I hope that I connect with
them in the Galapagos,
when they take off in the
spring as they make their way
back across the Pacific
with a message of hope
for the ocean.
That's cause for hope.
I mean, it is, that there
are people who really do care
and are using their power
to make a difference.
America's Cup, coming to
San Francisco in 2013,
two years from now,
it's amazing that they
have dedicated their event
and all the events leading up to it
to the sustainability of
the sea, to healthy oceans.
Next week here in San
Francisco they will launch
this announcement, this campaign,
Healthy Oceans campaign,
using the power of sport
to celebrate the athletes
who are involved,
to celebrate the technologies involved,
to celebrate this great race,
but also to realize that
we're in another kind of race
that we can't afford to lose.
I want to share this little
video clip of the America's Cup
ships out here in San Francisco Bay.
I had a chance to go on
one and I kept looking
for the engine.
We were screaming along, I don't know,
it wasn't at their top
speed, but it felt faster
than being in one of these
high powered motorboats
going across the surface.
It was just the wind.
So take a look at this.
(dramatic exciting instrumental music)
So how cool is it that
America's Cup is coming
to our backyard here?
I say our backyard 'cause
my backyard is in Oakland.
The idea that they're
going to put the spotlight
on the ocean and really want to encourage
youngsters to embrace
sailing, to embrace the ocean,
to care for the ocean.
This is an opportunity
to magnify the message.
This is one kind of race.
There's another kind of race
that is not really a race
but it's called that if
you look at the newspapers
about the race to the
bottom with Richard Branson,
with Jim Cameron, with others who are
saying we've got to get
to the bottom of the ocean
and who wants to be first.
This should be a race to see who can do it
really in a way that is
effective working system
or systems.
We need to have the technology
to explore the ocean
from top to bottom.
I mean, I started these few
minutes of time shared with you
of the image of Trieste going down
to the Mariana Trench in 1960.
Here it is, 2011,
and still,
only two humans have
glimpsed what it's like
from their personal view point.
It shouldn't be necessarily a race
who's gonna get there next.
Nobody can get there first anymore.
It's been done.
But to get there with the kind of system
that will enable a thoughtful view.
To be able to stop and to look around
and to take samples, take photographs,
and bring back the news,
not just of the bottom,
but throughout the full
seven mile water column.
If you can go there, this is the key,
you can go anywhere in the ocean.
You're not inhibited or prohibited anymore
from going to a place
that is a little too deep
because you can go to the deepest place.
You can go to the various trenches.
You can go to the deepest
place in the Gulf of Mexico.
If there's a spill a
mile deep, no big deal.
Just take your little vehicle and shew,
go down there and take a look.
Check it out, solve the
problem, figure it out.
What are we waiting for?
This is the time as never before.
When we have magnified power
and a magnified opportunity
to leave the world a better place.
Thank you.
(crowd clapping)
- [Man] Thank you for providing critique
of the race to the bottom
because as you probably know,
the race to the poles in
the late 19th and early 20th
century was really empty
of scientific knowledge
and achievement.
It was great for the press,
great for the national egos,
but it produced very little, right?
Okay, good.
Now, why yesterday though,
did you not raise the
question of aquaculture?
Is that to you an invasion
of the great blue
wild oceans that is
intolerable or is it a solution
to the depredations that
have been carried on
in the name of exploitation?
Where do you stand on this?
- Well, I think intelligent aquaculture
has a great future because just as when,
after 10,000 years we've
sort of boiled down
the options of mostly what we consume.
It's three plants,
three kinds, four kinds.
Four, rice, wheat, soy
supply 80% of our calories.
Flat out, around the world.
About a hundred plants otherwise
supply most of the rest.
A little bit and feed the
animals that we also consume.
It's like 2% wild life, but
that number has to diminish
because we've just used up the ocean.
We can still have a
library of life out there
to choose from, just as we do on the land.
There are 250,000 different
kinds of flowering plants
and we have boiled it down to this many
that we use as sources of food
and mostly medicines and things.
But there's this cornucopia
of life that we haven't
even begun to value with the
proper attitude and respect.
And animals too, for what it's worth,
but low on the food chain.
We shouldn't be raising carnivores.
What are we thinking raising
salmon for heavens sakes?
Even when you take the best
figures that the salmon
farmers will cite, well they'll say,
it's only four to one.
We take four pounds of
wild fish to get the pound
of cultivated fish, well
that should be unacceptable
from the get to because it's
a recipe that doesn't work.
You take more from here to get to there.
You'd soon go bankrupt if
you tried to run a business
that way, but the fish
that are out in the ocean
are free, right?
You just have to go catch them.
So they're not accounted
for with the proper weight.
Or if it's not, it's actually
not four or five pounds,
because you're not putting
on the balance sheet
how many plants did it take
to make the small creatures
that made the next size
up that made the creatures
that you feed to the salmon?
If you peel it back that way,
it's a much bigger figure.
For a pound of chicken it's
about two pounds of plants.
A pound of catfish or tilapia,
it's about two pounds of
plants, 'cause they go to market
in about a year, from an egg
to market in about a year.
With cows, it's about 20 pounds of plants
to make a pound of cow and
it's less than two years,
it's a year plus a bit.
Pigs also pretty efficient,
converters of the sunlight's
energy through pounds,
plants to make protein.
But think about a salmon
or think about a tuna.
A blue fin tuna isn't one
year old or two or three.
It takes 14 or so years,
according to Barbara Block,
to get a blue fin tuna
to the point where it's
able to make more blue fin tuna.
If you let them go they
might live to be 30 or so.
We don't really know
what the upper limit is,
maybe 25 or 30.
But the big old tunas
that were 1,000 pounds
are really rare these days.
They grow pretty fast but the
eat a lot, they eat a lot.
They're high energy.
Their body temperature is
above the water temperature.
They're basically warm blooded fish.
They consume a lot and the burn a lot.
So if you do the numbers and
it's a rough calculation,
but considering, let's
say a 10 year old tuna,
not yet mature, but 10
years old, pretty big fish,
several hundred pounds perhaps,
that eats other fish that eats other fish
and maybe other fish and
then down to the plankton.
Where it's, you know within
the plankton you may have
three or four levels of
the food chain going on
with big plankton eating smaller plankton
that eats smaller plankton
that eats the plants.
Or maybe it's simpler than that.
You get krill that eat the plants.
Whatever it is it's complex
right at the bottom.
Think in terms of thousands
of pounds of plants
to make one pound of tuna.
Even a six year old tuna
still, thousands of pounds,
maybe it's on the order of
a hundred thousand pounds
to make a 10 year old blue fin tuna.
It's not a very efficient use
of the planet's resources, if you will.
It's a luxury food, no
matter how you slice it.
And that's true with most
carnivores that are out there
in the sea.
Swordfish, high energy.
Speed around, takes several
years for them to mature.
Big investment.
So cultivating carnivores
should be a nonstarter
and yet, oh, the effort
going in for salmon.
And they're trying to raise cod,
they are raising cod in
Scotland and in Norway.
I mean, what are we thinking?
We know enough to know,
after all this time,
that you need to go low on the food chain.
I am a great fan of tilapia.
It doesn't taste like tuna, but chicken.
What does chicken taste like?
It tastes like onions or lemon or garlic
or whatever it is you put on it.
The great thing about tilapia,
it doesn't taste like much of
anything until you do to it
what you want it to taste like.
So when you get fish and chips,
what the heck are you getting?
It might be wood chips deep
fried for all you know.
Tastes...
And maybe it is fish beneath
all those layers of stuff.
But they don't tell you what kind it is.
At least you have some
thought that when you get
Kentucky Fried Chicken that it's chicken.
You don't get Kentucky Fried Bird.
(audience laughing)
Or a cheeseburger, a hamburger,
it's probably beef, probably.
But you don't get a mammal burger,
but you get fish and chips.
You get the catch of
the day, which you know,
we don't care much what
it is, just so it's fish.
So why not raise tilapia or
catfish for the most part?
If you have endless amounts
of money and investment
to raise sturgeon or tuna
or whatever for an
occasional treat and realize
it's gonna cost a lot.
But we aren't paying the
real cost when we buy
farmed salmon 'cause we aren't paying
the cost to the ocean, we're not.
It's this big empty part
of the balance sheet
that we haven't...
We'll pay, I mean, we are paying,
but it's not made
immediately apparent to us
how much we're paying.
So I like closed systems.
I like what they're doing out in
the Island School in the Bahamas,
where they have like a figure eight.
Here they're raising tilapia
and they're not crowding them.
They're raising enough
so that the fish are kind
of happy, they got room to swim around.
They eat plants and
they fertilize the water
and the water goes around to a garden.
The vegetables grow over here,
fertilized by what the
fish do to the water
and the cleansed water
then goes back to the fish.
Big figure eight.
Cook University in Australia,
they're really pioneering
some really cutting edge aquaculture.
Closed systems like aquariums.
Now we know, what we
didn't know 50 years ago
about taking care of
fish, keeping them alive,
giving them what they
need and not killing them.
You know one of the big
problems with shrimp
and the salmon farms and the other farms
that are popping up here and there is
they crowd them too much,
they feed them more than can
eat at once and a lot of
excess food goes into the sea.
They use antibiotics, pour it on.
That comes back to us too.
It's just...
We know how to do it right
and we've got a lot of recipes
for doing it not right.
We need to get out of the old way,
this way that salmon
farms are now managed.
When you know it's wrong
why don't you just stop?
Just stop and move in the right direction.
I mean, that's what we need to do.
I don't think we need
to go out in the ocean
for the most part.
I do see there is a place for it,
in places like close to
shore where it's already
messed up one way or the other,
and maybe planting oysters
or something can help
clean the water at the same time
you get muscles or clams or oysters,
but do you really want to eat them?
When they been out in the ocean?
You know what you put in the ocean.
All the stuff you don't want in you.
I'd rather have a closed
system where you can control
what they eat.
You know what they have in
their bodies that you don't mind
having in your body.
Wild fish, you have no idea
where they've come from,
what they been eating or what
you will then be consuming.
Great fan of aquaculture done right.
Long answer, but it's a big question.
- [Kerri] Hi, my name's Kerri Tremain
and I have a question about
Dewar but I can't resist
a little ironic footnote here
and that is that these
lectures are sponsored by the
Hitchcock family and they
were owned a piece of property
in Napa as well as in San Francisco,
which is the both Napa State Park.
That park is among 70
parks that are being closed
by the state of California
within the next year.
So even as we're hoping to expand our
marine protected areas, we
seem to be retreating on our
ones on land, at least here in California.
I had the privilege of seeing the
ROV, the Antarctic ROV,
Liz showed it to me.
My favorite thing about
it was that she said
it was constructed out of a
very well tested technology,
that being sewage pipe.
- Right on!
- [Kerri] And also she
explained that once it was
through the ice it was
capable of sending out
radio signals that allowed
other ROVs to come in
from the side, which seemed
particularly interesting.
So my question is very simple one,
which is has it been deployed
at this point or used?
I couldn't tell from your talk.
- This ice vehicle, they call it the,
one of the names for it
at least, is the isopod.
Some of you will appreciate that.
This long, slim, wonderful creature that
has been developed to solve this problem
of getting through a hole in the ice,
limited by the ability to
make a hole in the ice.
The dimensions were set.
Couldn't be any bigger than
just so so it could slide
through and then come back up
but then unfold into all
these wonderful things.
Well, the money came through,
National Science Foundation,
to build the vehicle.
But what they didn't have the money to do,
and it's been a big problem,
is for the fuel to get across the ice
to the ice shelf, where
they can deploy it.
So one whole season was lost
because they didn't have the resources.
They got the machine,
but they can't deploy it.
That's still an issue.
So you can...
It's like old nursery rhyme thing,
yes my dear you may go swimming,
but don't go near the water.
It's a conundrum.
Yes this thing can swim, but
it can't get to the water,
can't get to the ice patch that it needs.
So there have been tests
planned and tests scrapped
to go to Lake Tahoe.
In fact, there was a test a
year ago to go to the Arctic
and you know, one thing or another,
it just ugh, perverse,
a system exists, you can
go look at it and watch it
run through its paces of
opening up and closing
and deploying the manipulators
and turning on the lights
and showing you this really cool camera
that will probably have to
be replaced because they'll
be a better one in two months
or three months or whatever.
But you know, it's,
the one good thing is
things do get better.
Better instrumentation,
the longer you wait.
you just, after a while, you just (sighs)
how much, my mother used to
say patience is a virtue,
acquire it if you can,
it's seldom found in women,
never found in men.
Well, this one, everybody's
losing patience.
Not with the engineering,
but with just bringing
to closure enough money.
You've given us the machine,
you've given up the mandate,
now help us get it there.
This was supposed to be
in the water last year.
Supposed to be in the water this year.
They are hoping that by next year...
Maybe there'll still be some
ice in Antarctica next year.
(laughing)
If they wait long enough, you know,
they can deploy this for other purposes.
But come and see, it's really fascinating.
The great thing I love
about this little entity,
DVR Marine is that
instead of saying here's the machine,
now go use it, they say what do you need
and we'll try to help
you solve the problem.
That's the right synergy, I think,
between science and technology,
getting the engineers to
listen to the scientists and
get the scientists listen
to what's possible and what's unrealistic.
There are lot of things I can wish for
that are not realistic
but you get brought down
to reality when you talk to the engineers
who know their stuff and
together you can hammer out
something that can
really make a difference.
I think this, again,
it's one of the reasons
I'm so glad to be alive
just at this point in time
because you never know
what's around the corner,
what new cool thing is
going to be discovered
or developed or what you can do
to latch on to to make one
of your dreams come true.
- [Woman] We would like
to thank Dr. Earle again
for her lovely lectures
and thank you for all
of your insights.
- Thank you.
(audience clapping)
(instrumental music)
