when I ask people what place do you want
to see most in the world
no one answers with the place that’s in
the ocean all the places that I still
really want to see are offshore if I ask
you to imagine the seabed 40 miles
offshore what do you see in your mind do
you see a rather barren place where
little life is visible much of the
offshore environment does look this way
but there are other places places where
life is very visible this forty miles
off shore of the together River on our
East Coast is one of the most memorable
places that I have visited I’ve seen
more than 500 places on the seafloor I’m
a marine scientist my name is Kerry sink
the isn’t captain alive who does not
quiver when he sees the name sink on his
passenger list I love to go to sea and
this evening I’m gonna share with you
some of the places in my journey this is
my world at the tip of this great
African continent we have three oceans
that land tech the Indian and the
southern ocean and on our atlanticus ID
we have this wide continental shelf
where that shelf changes angle and drops
down steeply into the deep sea that’s
called the shelf edge or continental
margin I like to call it the great
underwater escarpment and many of my
most special places just like that
forest of sea fans on the tequila shelf
edge lie on the grades
government this evening I’m going to
share with you some of the special
places not the shallow coral reefs and
beautiful kelp forests some of you know
but the places that have taken four or
five scuba cylinders to breathe
hundred-meter
under the water the places that I’ve
been by underwater drone and the places
that I’ve seen through the window of a
yellow submarine my personal journey has
been one of increasing dips and these
are two central characters and my story
the late Peter Tim trimix diver and
Jesse the coelacanth coelacanths have
long held secrets of the sea I think
they still do they were abandoned in the
fossil record in all kinds of forms and
in many environments but considered
extinct until in 1938 a troller quarter
coelacanth of the South African coast
the scientists who reported this
described it like finding a living
dinosaur and 60 years later this diver
his discovery of three silicon sin is
ammonia Lisa a Zulu word for miracle and
wonder it sparked a new research program
so much like that initial discovery that
put South African marine science on the
map scientists like me got opportunities
to have access to deep water research
tools and time at sea and in the last 17
years I have been mapping and
classifying the ecosystems in our ocean
space it’s time for me to share some of
them with you Jesse and 30 other
coelacanths each recognized by their
individual spot patterns lives here in
the submarine canyons that cut into that
continental shelf age
it’s a Doisneau Bay on South Africa’s
East Coast it was here that I first met
this great escarpment and Peterson took
me to go in here
over its edge for the first time later
after a lot of training he took me over
that edge into a new world when you swim
over the edge of this escarpment it’s
like being able to fly slowly down the
slopes of a mountain and you descend
through bands of life each of them with
different animals and different depths
earns last year I traversed this great
escarpment for 30 days and one of the
places I really wanted to go and see was
a place where this fish our king took
one of our most valuable seafood species
gathered to spawn these special drummers
they call to each other across the ocean
and then they congregate aggregating
together in this one tiny space and I
had no idea what would I find when I got
there but what I can tell you is it
didn’t look like this I have trouble
sleeping at night on the sea because I
have fear of missing arts firmer I love
to watch the Icarus under that echo
sounder constantly charts the underwater
terrain and I love to see that seascape
below me as I’m sailing through the
ocean when I got here I was amazed the
continental shelf wave drops sharply all
the way to 700 meters and then suddenly
like this needle rising up to 300 meters
high is this wall and this long narrow
Ridge it extends for 40 kilometers and
the king club gather here in this
special place you can see on the echo
sounder all those little blue dots that
is a cloud of life and when we put our
cameras down we were not disappointed
the seabed is rich and diverse it’s
different in different places in protea
Canyon you have a lawn made of
polychaete worms interspersed with giant
cup sponge
yes in this single image from 500 meters
on our south coast I can see more than
50 species I’ve been studying the
language of the seabed since I was
little from 6 my brother took me
snorkelling along the pier where I
learned to read the tiny footprints of
starfish and other animals I was just
drawn in by the detail the intricacies
and the mysteries when I first saw these
animals the kind of zig zag dark things
on the sea floor not the two red lasers
my students said to me Kerry what what
are those and it was it was difficult
because I had to tell them I had no idea
what group of animals they belong to you
I joked with them that I thought to
arrest a foreign had lost his dreadlocks
on the seafloor it was the best I could
do but now I know that these are single
celled animals called forums or forum
indifference and they secrete shells but
what I was amazed to learn when when I
look this up is that these animals are
currently like the coelacanth was
reported as extinct and I need to report
that they’re very very much alive and
abundant on our artists shelf we
encounter fascinating species like this
tilefish who carries each and every
piece of shell fragment and rubble to
build a home complete with front door
it took Peter Timothy dives to show me
this fish kind of first described it to
me but it took us a long time to see it
because it shoots into its hole we also
find valuable species this gelatinous
network of tube has produced the most
effective compound ever tested against
cancer it only lives in South Africa’s
ocean even in the darkest mightiest
parts of the ocean floor
there is life
one of the most fascinating specimens I
encountered was this one and I found it
not in the field but rather in the South
African Museum and it was most
classified it was in the worm section of
the museum you can see how someone might
think it was a network of worm tubes but
it’s a lattice of coral and what
astounded me about this coral was its
label the label of this coral red 926
meters when I worked up that we had deep
water corals 926 meters under the sea I
knew that we had to see them and this
took us more than 10 years
first just glimpses a child’s Bank on
the Atlantic side and then later the
cigarette corals as we call them and
undescribed species on our East Coast
and I’m still working at seeing those
one kilometer down mounds that stand 70
meters high or far seabed you get
different types of corals and each of
them make ecosystems as different from
one another as a pine forest and a
tropical forest
these are lace corals and they only
occur in a very small section of our
shellfish they’re very slow growing just
like our black corals these ones also
from the tequila shelf age the oldest
black coral ever recorded is 4,000 years
old
one can only imagine what a tree such as
this might have witnessed in 4,000 years
and what’s great for scientists is that
corals record in their details like a
tree almost they record the details of
our climate past and of conditions in
the oceans that’s very valuable for
science we also have soft corals in the
ocean and when you look closely you find
life within life and if you look very
closely you will see the eyes of
you two fish in the arms of the soft
corals corals make nursery habitats and
nursery areas are special places I’m not
only a marine scientist but I’m also a
mother and the hardest thing of being a
marine scientist mother is that you go
to sea for long periods and the first
time that I was going to sea for a month
I had to say goodbye to my little boy I
was explaining to him at age three why
why I study the seabed and he understood
he said to me Mom if you don’t look
after the seabed the fish will have no
way to sleep
we have pressures on our offshore
environment South Africa has a
hundred-year-old trawl fishery and that
fishery is important for providing foods
food and jobs that’s the South African
hake one of our key target species we
still learning about how the seabed
responds in these sandy slopes where
most of this activity takes place but we
know the impacts on our special places
cold water corals that matrix that
complex three-dimensional lattice is
broken and fish had nowhere to hide from
predators and and lose their homes such
ecosystems do not recover overnight if
ever South Africa also has mining in the
seascape and we know from studies on the
impacts of diamond mining that the
deeper you go the longer the recovery
times for the seafloor a good scientist
knows what she doesn’t know and I don’t
know the impacts of this activity on
that great escarpment and beyond
globally there is great interest in
seabed minerals and the emerging
technology to mine kilometers under the
sea is impressive it is however unlikely
to be compatible with the special places
and
Oshin many countries are building the
ocean economies and many countries like
South Africa have oil and gas
development as a key aspect of that we
have 30 new wellheads planned for the
next 10 years when good industry
practice is followed and special places
are avoided the impacts of the Sterling
on the seabed is localized we can have
coexistence if we apply the deep
knowledge that we have and if we look
after the special places in the ocean
it’s possible for the ocean to be shared
we know what to do we need to establish
protected areas in the sea like Kruger
National Park sand yellow stones for the
ocean space at present on land eight
percent of South Africa’s land is
protected in our ocean space naught 0.4%
is protected you can barely see it there
I’m going to say that again
naught point four percent of our ocean
space is protected South Africa has
committed to expanding as protection to
five percent of the ocean and in 2016 22
proposed new marine protected areas were
released for public comment these
protected areas can help build
resilience resilience against climate
change resilience against pressures and
they can help us to secure the last
pieces of ecosystems like this which
have been impacted over ninety five
percent of the total extent we also need
to manage the most productive areas in
our ocean that little blue area on the
map that represents about 5% of our
ocean space but 90 percent of our
seafood is caught in that five percent
of the ocean we need to look after that
90 percent of our seafood in just a 5%
the ocean we need to make sure that as
we grow our ocean economies and expand
and diversify ocean activities food and
jobs provided by the fishing industry
are maintained fish is a renewable
resource if we look after these areas we
can fish forever
we lost the opportunity to get most of
our protein from wild antibiotic free
sources on land a long time ago and we
need to ensure that we maintain these
opportunities into the future the last
thing we need to do is to deepen our
understanding of how to protect and
manage the ocean this beautiful undersea
mountain or seamounts is within one of
our proposed protected areas but in the
back you can see these amazing Canyon
features and there are little pits or
pock marks on the seafloor which are
actually gas escape features South
Africa has these amazing communities
that live around these gas features
these animals defy the food chains of my
biology teachers all of whom which were
powered by sunlight such chemically
powered ecosystems have great potential
for biotechnology we need to secure our
ocean spaces we can do this if we
protect if we manage and through all of
your choices if you eat seafood if you
use oil and gas if you love diamonds if
you love your cell phone and other
emerging new technologies that demand
ocean minerals your choices play a role
in the health of our oceans all of the
special places that are shared with you
this evening
are within these proposed protected
areas I haven’t seen the last piece of
Benguela antral shelf edge on our west
coast myself and other scientists need
to see this to be able to understand and
it
change and advise on coping with change
but there’s one place that I want to see
more way up on the bucket list in the
heart of the diamond mining area at a
hundred and twenty meters there lies on
the floor a fossilized yellow word first
I read about it in a geological journal
and there’s some grainy black-and-white
pictures which shows the trunks of these
trees and on the trunks are curls last
trees and rocks tell a story of our
climate past and I think you’ll agree
that there was never a Mormon as to
understand our climate past so we can
predict and change our climate future I
want to see this place and tell its
story and there’s one more thing that I
want to see this is my intern Luther
great oceans I want to see Luther
complete his studies I want to see all
my students and the next generation of
scientists discover and describe new
species and new ecosystems I want to see
future generations look after the seabed
so that the fish will always have some
way to sleep thank you
[Applause]
to see most in the world
no one answers with the place that’s in
the ocean all the places that I still
really want to see are offshore if I ask
you to imagine the seabed 40 miles
offshore what do you see in your mind do
you see a rather barren place where
little life is visible much of the
offshore environment does look this way
but there are other places places where
life is very visible this forty miles
off shore of the together River on our
East Coast is one of the most memorable
places that I have visited I’ve seen
more than 500 places on the seafloor I’m
a marine scientist my name is Kerry sink
the isn’t captain alive who does not
quiver when he sees the name sink on his
passenger list I love to go to sea and
this evening I’m gonna share with you
some of the places in my journey this is
my world at the tip of this great
African continent we have three oceans
that land tech the Indian and the
southern ocean and on our atlanticus ID
we have this wide continental shelf
where that shelf changes angle and drops
down steeply into the deep sea that’s
called the shelf edge or continental
margin I like to call it the great
underwater escarpment and many of my
most special places just like that
forest of sea fans on the tequila shelf
edge lie on the grades
government this evening I’m going to
share with you some of the special
places not the shallow coral reefs and
beautiful kelp forests some of you know
but the places that have taken four or
five scuba cylinders to breathe
hundred-meter
under the water the places that I’ve
been by underwater drone and the places
that I’ve seen through the window of a
yellow submarine my personal journey has
been one of increasing dips and these
are two central characters and my story
the late Peter Tim trimix diver and
Jesse the coelacanth coelacanths have
long held secrets of the sea I think
they still do they were abandoned in the
fossil record in all kinds of forms and
in many environments but considered
extinct until in 1938 a troller quarter
coelacanth of the South African coast
the scientists who reported this
described it like finding a living
dinosaur and 60 years later this diver
his discovery of three silicon sin is
ammonia Lisa a Zulu word for miracle and
wonder it sparked a new research program
so much like that initial discovery that
put South African marine science on the
map scientists like me got opportunities
to have access to deep water research
tools and time at sea and in the last 17
years I have been mapping and
classifying the ecosystems in our ocean
space it’s time for me to share some of
them with you Jesse and 30 other
coelacanths each recognized by their
individual spot patterns lives here in
the submarine canyons that cut into that
continental shelf age
it’s a Doisneau Bay on South Africa’s
East Coast it was here that I first met
this great escarpment and Peterson took
me to go in here
over its edge for the first time later
after a lot of training he took me over
that edge into a new world when you swim
over the edge of this escarpment it’s
like being able to fly slowly down the
slopes of a mountain and you descend
through bands of life each of them with
different animals and different depths
earns last year I traversed this great
escarpment for 30 days and one of the
places I really wanted to go and see was
a place where this fish our king took
one of our most valuable seafood species
gathered to spawn these special drummers
they call to each other across the ocean
and then they congregate aggregating
together in this one tiny space and I
had no idea what would I find when I got
there but what I can tell you is it
didn’t look like this I have trouble
sleeping at night on the sea because I
have fear of missing arts firmer I love
to watch the Icarus under that echo
sounder constantly charts the underwater
terrain and I love to see that seascape
below me as I’m sailing through the
ocean when I got here I was amazed the
continental shelf wave drops sharply all
the way to 700 meters and then suddenly
like this needle rising up to 300 meters
high is this wall and this long narrow
Ridge it extends for 40 kilometers and
the king club gather here in this
special place you can see on the echo
sounder all those little blue dots that
is a cloud of life and when we put our
cameras down we were not disappointed
the seabed is rich and diverse it’s
different in different places in protea
Canyon you have a lawn made of
polychaete worms interspersed with giant
cup sponge
yes in this single image from 500 meters
on our south coast I can see more than
50 species I’ve been studying the
language of the seabed since I was
little from 6 my brother took me
snorkelling along the pier where I
learned to read the tiny footprints of
starfish and other animals I was just
drawn in by the detail the intricacies
and the mysteries when I first saw these
animals the kind of zig zag dark things
on the sea floor not the two red lasers
my students said to me Kerry what what
are those and it was it was difficult
because I had to tell them I had no idea
what group of animals they belong to you
I joked with them that I thought to
arrest a foreign had lost his dreadlocks
on the seafloor it was the best I could
do but now I know that these are single
celled animals called forums or forum
indifference and they secrete shells but
what I was amazed to learn when when I
look this up is that these animals are
currently like the coelacanth was
reported as extinct and I need to report
that they’re very very much alive and
abundant on our artists shelf we
encounter fascinating species like this
tilefish who carries each and every
piece of shell fragment and rubble to
build a home complete with front door
it took Peter Timothy dives to show me
this fish kind of first described it to
me but it took us a long time to see it
because it shoots into its hole we also
find valuable species this gelatinous
network of tube has produced the most
effective compound ever tested against
cancer it only lives in South Africa’s
ocean even in the darkest mightiest
parts of the ocean floor
there is life
one of the most fascinating specimens I
encountered was this one and I found it
not in the field but rather in the South
African Museum and it was most
classified it was in the worm section of
the museum you can see how someone might
think it was a network of worm tubes but
it’s a lattice of coral and what
astounded me about this coral was its
label the label of this coral red 926
meters when I worked up that we had deep
water corals 926 meters under the sea I
knew that we had to see them and this
took us more than 10 years
first just glimpses a child’s Bank on
the Atlantic side and then later the
cigarette corals as we call them and
undescribed species on our East Coast
and I’m still working at seeing those
one kilometer down mounds that stand 70
meters high or far seabed you get
different types of corals and each of
them make ecosystems as different from
one another as a pine forest and a
tropical forest
these are lace corals and they only
occur in a very small section of our
shellfish they’re very slow growing just
like our black corals these ones also
from the tequila shelf age the oldest
black coral ever recorded is 4,000 years
old
one can only imagine what a tree such as
this might have witnessed in 4,000 years
and what’s great for scientists is that
corals record in their details like a
tree almost they record the details of
our climate past and of conditions in
the oceans that’s very valuable for
science we also have soft corals in the
ocean and when you look closely you find
life within life and if you look very
closely you will see the eyes of
you two fish in the arms of the soft
corals corals make nursery habitats and
nursery areas are special places I’m not
only a marine scientist but I’m also a
mother and the hardest thing of being a
marine scientist mother is that you go
to sea for long periods and the first
time that I was going to sea for a month
I had to say goodbye to my little boy I
was explaining to him at age three why
why I study the seabed and he understood
he said to me Mom if you don’t look
after the seabed the fish will have no
way to sleep
we have pressures on our offshore
environment South Africa has a
hundred-year-old trawl fishery and that
fishery is important for providing foods
food and jobs that’s the South African
hake one of our key target species we
still learning about how the seabed
responds in these sandy slopes where
most of this activity takes place but we
know the impacts on our special places
cold water corals that matrix that
complex three-dimensional lattice is
broken and fish had nowhere to hide from
predators and and lose their homes such
ecosystems do not recover overnight if
ever South Africa also has mining in the
seascape and we know from studies on the
impacts of diamond mining that the
deeper you go the longer the recovery
times for the seafloor a good scientist
knows what she doesn’t know and I don’t
know the impacts of this activity on
that great escarpment and beyond
globally there is great interest in
seabed minerals and the emerging
technology to mine kilometers under the
sea is impressive it is however unlikely
to be compatible with the special places
and
Oshin many countries are building the
ocean economies and many countries like
South Africa have oil and gas
development as a key aspect of that we
have 30 new wellheads planned for the
next 10 years when good industry
practice is followed and special places
are avoided the impacts of the Sterling
on the seabed is localized we can have
coexistence if we apply the deep
knowledge that we have and if we look
after the special places in the ocean
it’s possible for the ocean to be shared
we know what to do we need to establish
protected areas in the sea like Kruger
National Park sand yellow stones for the
ocean space at present on land eight
percent of South Africa’s land is
protected in our ocean space naught 0.4%
is protected you can barely see it there
I’m going to say that again
naught point four percent of our ocean
space is protected South Africa has
committed to expanding as protection to
five percent of the ocean and in 2016 22
proposed new marine protected areas were
released for public comment these
protected areas can help build
resilience resilience against climate
change resilience against pressures and
they can help us to secure the last
pieces of ecosystems like this which
have been impacted over ninety five
percent of the total extent we also need
to manage the most productive areas in
our ocean that little blue area on the
map that represents about 5% of our
ocean space but 90 percent of our
seafood is caught in that five percent
of the ocean we need to look after that
90 percent of our seafood in just a 5%
the ocean we need to make sure that as
we grow our ocean economies and expand
and diversify ocean activities food and
jobs provided by the fishing industry
are maintained fish is a renewable
resource if we look after these areas we
can fish forever
we lost the opportunity to get most of
our protein from wild antibiotic free
sources on land a long time ago and we
need to ensure that we maintain these
opportunities into the future the last
thing we need to do is to deepen our
understanding of how to protect and
manage the ocean this beautiful undersea
mountain or seamounts is within one of
our proposed protected areas but in the
back you can see these amazing Canyon
features and there are little pits or
pock marks on the seafloor which are
actually gas escape features South
Africa has these amazing communities
that live around these gas features
these animals defy the food chains of my
biology teachers all of whom which were
powered by sunlight such chemically
powered ecosystems have great potential
for biotechnology we need to secure our
ocean spaces we can do this if we
protect if we manage and through all of
your choices if you eat seafood if you
use oil and gas if you love diamonds if
you love your cell phone and other
emerging new technologies that demand
ocean minerals your choices play a role
in the health of our oceans all of the
special places that are shared with you
this evening
are within these proposed protected
areas I haven’t seen the last piece of
Benguela antral shelf edge on our west
coast myself and other scientists need
to see this to be able to understand and
it
change and advise on coping with change
but there’s one place that I want to see
more way up on the bucket list in the
heart of the diamond mining area at a
hundred and twenty meters there lies on
the floor a fossilized yellow word first
I read about it in a geological journal
and there’s some grainy black-and-white
pictures which shows the trunks of these
trees and on the trunks are curls last
trees and rocks tell a story of our
climate past and I think you’ll agree
that there was never a Mormon as to
understand our climate past so we can
predict and change our climate future I
want to see this place and tell its
story and there’s one more thing that I
want to see this is my intern Luther
great oceans I want to see Luther
complete his studies I want to see all
my students and the next generation of
scientists discover and describe new
species and new ecosystems I want to see
future generations look after the seabed
so that the fish will always have some
way to sleep thank you
[Applause]
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