I’m like trembling right now I have the
coolest job in the world
now we’re building things to understand
more about the world around us
this is what we like people don’t really
believe we could do this
that’s awesome that’s why I do what I do
and why don’t we begin with our
exploring residents
we’ll begin with Enrique great I’m going
to tell you a little story now when I
was a kid growing up on the
Mediterranean coast of Spain I was
completely fascinated by the
documentaries that Jack was to show that
on TV no that was in the 70s and he
showed us this amazing coral reefs lots
of sharks whales sea lions it was so
fantastic but when I was swimming in the
ocean when I was diving while I was
later a professor at the University of
California this is what I saw those
coral reefs that he showed us were gone
the places that I loved were less and
less life overtime so I was studying
human impacts in the ocean and I saw
those dead reefs covered by algae and
slime and the big features were gone
this fish that you can see are smaller
than my diving mask I quit my job as a
professor and I started going to this
remote places and I started this project
that we call pristine seas the goal of
this project is to go to the most remote
and inhabited and touch places in the
ocean the wildest places in the ocean a
coral reef that looks like this where
the corals are life and predators
dominate and we combine exploration
scientific research compelling media and
then we inspire the leaders of the
countries that own these places to
protect them in the very large resource
in the last five years we’ve been to
nine places and we got five protected
covering a total of almost half a
million square kilometers and in the
next few years we’re going to a few more
of these places to try to protect the
last places that still look like the
ocean that was thousands of years ago
thank you
now Tristram Stuart gonna give us a
little overview of his work quickly
we’re chopping down rainforests to grow
more food and at the same time a billion
people are hungry and yet we’re wasting
one third of the world’s food supply
that is something of a tragedy but I’ve
made it my life’s mission to show that
this is a colossal off opportunity if we
need to cut down on our environmental
impact and increase food availability
where it’s needed most cutting food
waste is a really good place to start
these green beans show you just how
simple some of the solutions to food
waste can be adorn your attention to the
word trimmed these beans have been
trimmed to size to fit into these
plastic containers that means that
Kenyan farmers growing these beans for
export to European markets are cutting
sometimes 30 40 percent of the beans
they’ve grown in a country where the
land and the water that they’re using to
grow these beans are scarce resources 20
tonnes a day of waste coming out of this
single Depot just outside Nairobi and
contractors collecting this waste have
to sign a contract saying they won’t
feed any of this good food to hungry
people
it will all be treated as waste we’re
paying for that crime in our supply
chains
what we did is four things first of all
raise awareness through public campaigns
on ugly fruit and vegetables and why
these standards are unnecessary number
two
pass a law within the United Kingdom
saying that when supermarkets cause
their suppliers to waste food they
should share the cost of it number three
help farmers in those countries develop
secondary markets to get some of that
food to markets and number four work
with the supermarket’s to change those
standards we got test goes to change the
way they ask for the beans to be trimmed
they now trim only on one side of the
bean rather than two it’s not far enough
they’ve gone halfway but Kenyan farmers
are producing five percent more bean per
unit of production than they were before
we did that in a few months
similar story with bananas in Ecuador
that’s the waste of one banana
plantation after one day of harvest
bananas in Costa Rica these are carrots
being wasted because they’re too long to
fit into these supermarket
plastic crates it’s crazy and it’s
happening everywhere we have led a
global revolution against food waste by
doing positive campaigning and feeding
the 5,000 which is the name of our
organization and an event that we use to
launch our campaigns where we feed 5,000
people all on food that otherwise would
be wasted filling bellies not bins we
also set up the gleaning Network in
Britain and now across Europe where we
take volunteers to fields to harvest
some of this unused crop and get it to
people who are hungry and also
communicate about those basic original
sources of food waste and what we can do
about it my next mission is to come to
America I’m here now and I’m making
friends and I will show you why it’s
most important what this shows is that
America has twice as much food in its
shops and restaurants than is actually
required to keep the population alive
that is a huge opportunity to save money
save resources save impact on the
environment we’re going to start with
portion sizes and we’re going to move up
to the farms we’re going to cause a food
waste revolution here in America
we’re coming soon thank you very much
excellent
and now Siobhan Ebola from our big cats
initiative in Kenya in under a century
we have lost over 90 percent of our
planets lions where I’m from in Kenya
the situation is just as serious we have
only 2,000 lions left in our country we
work to try and understand why this is
happening
lions are running out of space they also
come into contact with people the local
people whose livelihoods depend on their
livestock are often targeted by lions in
Samburu in northern Kenya where I live
our population has grown from 11 Lions
to over 50 now as a result of
conservation efforts I work with the
team and our mission is to promote the
coexistence between lions and people in
northern Kenya we
do this through a number of community
programs one of which is our warrior
program known as warrior watch here in
this picture you see three of the
warriors I work with previously
neglected when it came to conservation
these Warriors are now wildlife
ambassadors they’re engaged in
conservation we have sixteen warriors
now working in the region when we
started the program we asked the
warriors what would you like in exchange
for all this great wildlife information
that you give us and they said we would
like education we have never been to
school these are young men aged between
15 to 25 who’ve never had that
opportunity to go and learn how to read
and write we’ve now changed this and
over the last five years all 17 of our
warriors can read and write both in
English and the national language
kiswahili this picture was taken a
couple of weeks ago at our annual lion
kids camp they had never seen a lion
they’d only had negative experiences
with lions they’d seen the remains of a
camel after a lion had preyed on them
but we changed that we took these kids
to see their first ever lion and their
faces say it all as they saw their first
line they whispered to me Simba Simba
and this is what
this is what gives me hope for the
future thank you and now Jack andraka
our inventor so I suppose my story
really began when I was 13 but a close
family friend who was like an uncle to
me actually passed away from pancreatic
cancer and when the disease had so close
to home I knew I needed to learn more so
I went online to find answers and white
had found really shocked me
you see 85% of all pancreatic cancers
are diagnosed late when someone has lost
a 2% chance of survival and either you
know deeper I found an even more
shocking statistic you see there’s
currently no standard way for detecting
pancreatic cancer as our conventional
method is the six-year-old technique I
mean first off that’s older than my dad
but also it cost $800 per test and
there’s grossly inaccurate missing 30%
of all cancers and thus is rarely ever
used for screening of pancreatic cancer
so armed with 8th grade biology I
decided to set out to change the field
of cancer diagnostics bit lofty of a
goal that I was going to do it and so
essentially why I did is I stumbled
across how we’re currently diagnosing
these cancers and what we’re doing is
we’re looking at your bloodstream for
particularly for these variations and
protein levels and while it sounds
extremely straightforward it’s anything
but because you have leaders and leaders
of blood which is about in enumerable
numbers of these proteins so it’s like
trying to find a needle in the SAC of
nearly identical needles
however on Tutera due to my teenage
optimism or how some people label it
complete and utter ignorance of the
entire field I continued on and I
essentially found a database of over
8,000 proteins that are found in your
bloodstream when you have these cancers
essentially I found this one protein I
could use called mesothelin and it’s
just your ordinary around the mel type
protein unless of course you have
pancreatic ovarian and lung cancer in
which case it’s found these very high
levels in your bloodstream but also the
kids I found the earliest stages of the
disease when some has close to 100%
chance of survival
and essentially what I did is I combined
something called carbon nanotubes
essentially the superheroes of material
science is long thin tubes of carbon
they’ve these amazing properties and all
you do is it’s like making choc chip
cookies you put them in this giant thing
of water you pour in some nanotubes add
some antibiotic use that only react with
one cancer biomarker mix it up take some
paper dip it dry and you can detect
cancer and then I sent out my procedure
to 200 labs at Johns Hopkins University
got 199 nose seven months later after
getting accepted into a lab I stumble
out with one small paper sensor that
cost three cents and takes five minutes
to run making a 168 times faster over
26,000 times it’s expensive and there
were 400 times more extensive are
conventional conventional methods of
detection but also so far it can detect
the cancer in the earliest stage when
someone has close to 100% chance of
survival and so far has over 90%
accuracy and could be broadly applied to
pretty much any disease range from
Alzheimer’s other forms of cancer even
HIV age and heart disease so that’s my
research
okay so hungry
one thing you have found which this is a
really great news is it if you can set
aside a marine area and keep and just
make it a reserve for brief period of
time we’ve been able to do that you were
talking about some of the successes in
your talk because it was once a desert
doesn’t mean it will always stay a
desert it comes back exactly the ocean
and nature has this incredible capacity
to rebound this photograph was taking on
the Medes Islands marine reserve and on
the Costa Brava
in northern Spain and this guy is Pierre
Yves Cousteau Jacques Cousteau younger
son and next to him is a 25 kilo grouper
lakenya
which are gone from most of the
Mediterranean except in in marine
reserves think about most of the ocean
like a debit account or everybody
withdraws and nobody makes a deposit you
don’t need to be an economist to know
what’s going to happen but these
reserves were there is no fishing are
like savings account with a principle
set aside that produces interest so the
abundance of fees them tons of fish per
square mile in these reserves increases
four hundred and fifty percent in less
than ten years and how hard is it to get
people to set aside in there to say if
you only stopped fishing for ten years
you’ll be so amply rewarded all the the
benefits to fishing are happening
earlier in some places in Ashley the
last three years after the creation of
these reserves there are so many fish
inside the reserve that reproduce so
much then some of these fish spill over
the boundaries of these reserves to the
fishermen are catching more outside
that’s the interest
Tristram had let’s just put it out on
the line you’re a dumpster diver you go
around and spy on people’s trash but
what have you found is that where you
first got the clue that how much was
being thrown out of restaurants and
grocery stores yeah it is actually I was
15 also when my mission started and I
was collecting food waste for my pigs
from my school canteen and the local
Baker and the green grocer but I
realized that most of the food I was
giving to my pigs was actually perfectly
good for human consumption and I
remember the day I sat down for
breakfast with my pigs and ate one of
these perfectly good loaves of bread
that the Baker chucked away and that was
the first act of what you could call
dumpster diving or freeganism this
photograph you see I moved to London a
few years ago and I stopped being able
to keep pigs so I decided to launch a
campaign on feeding food waste to pigs
which is the next best thing
after you’ve exhausted all possibility
for feeding it to humans processed pig
food which has been grown by deforesting
the amazon to grow soy europe imports 40
million tons of it every year this is
the worst thing that is going on on the
planet at the moment we’re chopping down
forests to grow more food and we can
cancel out a lot of the demand for that
by changing the way first of all we eat
and waste food and secondly the way we
produce meat by using waste products
rather than using virgin crops Shivani
all of us have had neighbors we didn’t
exactly get along with in this case for
the sambu the lions are their neighbors
if you want to make peace you invite
them over for dinner so how do you make
friends if your neighbors are lions what
do you do to make that relationship
harmonious I’m so the big problem in
this area is conflict so when lions come
along and they attack people’s livestock
this is when people don’t like lions
they don’t want Lions in their area so
we work with the communities to reduce
conflict we try and encourage them to
look after livestock better one of the
big issues is livestock is always you
know often lost so lions come across and
sleeping camels at night far from the
village and they will attack them so we
encourage them look after your livestock
better don’t send young children out to
look after your livestock because of
course a little boy is scared of lions
yet Warriors are not scared of lions
also at night livestock are kept in what
are known as bomas livestock enclosures
we work with them to reinforce their
bomas so at least they can be more
predator proof predators can’t get in
easily and livestock can’t get out so
there are lots of ways we can work with
the local people to reduce light
conflict from happening in the first
place and then they’re much more willing
to be able to live with lions good
fences do make good neighbors in this
case
now Jack you came up with this idea had
how do you know that it works is urine
are you in testing – did the head of the
lab whose how did he react when you said
look what I found and how long were you
there just over your summer vacation I’d
know for seven months so he’s been
working there his entire career yes you
come in seven months later and what does
he say me to even like get anything was
like really exciting for him like he was
in disbelief but essentially what what
really tipped us off that was working is
its sensitivity you see it could detect
downs like femto Graham levels which was
really incredible for these types of
sensors especially given its cost and
how rapid it was and so once we saw that
then we started working with Mouse blood
samples and we saw that was effective
there so we instantly submitted a patent
and we’re instantly we’re right now in
talks with several different biotech
companies about getting it on the market
as soon as possible
just because I unfortunately can’t run a
clinical trial as a high school student
I have SATs and prom to worry about now
when we go to the pristine seas we talk
a lot about things that we put in the
ocean one thing we put in the ocean or
oil platforms turns out they actually
create artificial reefs so this is
actually a life source these platforms
what have you discovered there is it is
it spreading beyond the platform we when
we think of the oil wells we think of
the possibility of spills but why are
they so popular for fish so we leave
that pristine seas expedition took a
pond and the coast of Gabon is mostly
sandy and there are dozens of oil
platforms and these platforms are the
only hard substrate and hundreds of
kilometres of course we were told by the
people at the oil companies about the
safety it was like we’re going to dive
into the Chernobyl reactor or something
it was they painted such a dire picture
and we jumped in the water and we could
not believe it there were so many fish
rainbow runners like these ones tuna
sharks in the first 20 meters there’s
the first 60 feet of these platforms
there is more than one ton thousand
kilos of fish except because coral grows
on the hard surface that it wouldn’t
have
sandy bottom the exile service of the
all the animals that live on reefs that
produce eggs and that they turn to
larvae that float and if they don’t find
a hard substrate to settle they die so
now there is this plan to work the
government of Gabon is working with the
oil companies so the oil companies will
enforce the area around the oil
companies so they there will be not
fishing and this is going to be a haven
for replenishing the rest of the coast
of Gabon who would have thought we’re
holding a beauty contest for our fruits
and vegetables can you stop the beauty
contest does that begin with the market
or the consumer that’s what the basis of
our campaigns are all about is about
instigating popular revolt literally it
is revolting against food waste this is
why the big supermarkets and why
governments are now listening to us not
because we’re right but because we have
a popular movement behind us and it’s
gonna sound funny but ugly fruit and
vegetables since the launch of our
campaign have become the fastest-growing
sector of the fresh produce market in
the United Kingdom do they golfer it at
a different price different prices in
some places or you just tell the story
if you’re a high-end demographic
supermarket or a farmers market you just
say well the skin on these apples are
blemished because it hailed during the
autumn and people like to hear that kind
of story and will respond to it so I
mean we’re doing the same thing with
fish also fish are being chucked
overboard that a perfectly good for
consumption by a process called high
grading basically only bringing the best
specimens ashore because you’ve got a
finite hold and fishermen are chucking
them away and in Europe that’s being
exacerbated by quota systems that make
people chuck over quota fish aboard and
we’re just changing the legislation in
Europe now to make discarding valuable
efficiency 40 to 60 percent of fish
caught in European waters being chucked
overboard now if you’re going to get the
local people involved and taking on the
conservation as being important to them
they have to see some benefit beyond
just the fact that they’re lions and one
you have to show them that tourists
aren’t going to show up if they don’t
have elephants and lions if they’re all
poached out because that’s what they’re
coming to see so there’s that dollar but
did those dollars from the tourists in
any way get
to them so that they see a direct
benefit absolutely so tourists that come
to visit Samburu there’s a huge
percentage that goes directly back to
the community the community then used
these funds for health projects for
school bursaries for water projects
because what is a big issue in our area
we’re in a semi-arid desert there is no
water you literally have to dig for
water in the dry riverbeds so through
the funds that they get from tourism
they can they’re able to do such things
and have more access to water education
is key sending their children to school
is a big thing for them and now they’re
able to do that through the benefits
they get from tourism and they make that
connection between the alliance program
you’re doing the Owosso Alliance program
and the education they’re getting
because of the Lions yeah so we’ve got a
great relationship with the tourism
management’s and the lodges within our
area we work closely together so people
can really understand the relationship
between tourists and conservation and
working with communities and they have
seen that and you’ve got the Sam brewery
warriors who are walking around to see
where the Lions are warning with the
people if it’s getting close to their
cattle but there’s such great trackers
do they also look for human tracks of
poachers do you have them on the watch
for that they do our warriors are
basically out there looking out for
anything so not just predators but
people as well
poaching is a big problem in our area in
northern Kenya so our warriors do notify
the wardens the Rangers if they do any
if they see any kind of tracks that look
a little bit suspicious they’re very
good at aging the tracks they know
exactly when that track has been through
that area they can tell from the type of
shoes who it is
they’re fantastic trackers and so they
can really give information back to the
authorities if there’s anything that
looks a little bit suspicious in the
area and let’s just repeat the number
when you started this program you had 11
lions in your area and that was how many
years ago that was back in 2006 we had
about 11 lions we were monitoring and
now we’re up to over 50 950 so it’s
working whatever you’re doing it’s
working
keep it up now Jack tell us how it all
started did you start like those of us
who had chemistry section or kid blowing
up stuff I started out with like a lot
of environmental work so working with
bioluminescent bacteria to attack the
water contaminants and then I moved on
to like nano ecotoxicity so investigate
I did one the first days of its kind on
the impacts of nano particles sources
both particles and their impacts on the
aquatic ecosystems I know you have
something that will test water quality
what’s that yeah yeah so it’s
essentially something the size of a
credit card that detects six different
environmental contaminants and it is two
hundred thousand times as expensive than
our conventional methods so it cost a
dollar and then also want the very cool
things about it is that it can actually
only take 20 minutes so 25 minutes to
run and one of the coolest parts about
that part that was kind of like the
minor part of that project the major
part of that was developing a water
filter out of recycled plastic water
bottles so essentially you can take
water bottles and turn them into filters
that filter out 95% of all heavy metals
and pesticides in five minutes for 70
cents and then also you can actually put
them in boiling water for just one
minute and they will actually reclaim up
to 90% of those contaminants so but you
can then sell back and actually profit
from filtering your water so we are
currently still testing with that so
we’ve used it for like heavy metals
pesticides it could also be used for
like fracking contaminants oil spill
cleanup it has a wide variety of usage
and now I’m moving on to indoor air
quality and there’s actually seven
stages the successful people in all
areas have them but maybe not as much as
some explorers they all start with
curiosity you want to see can it find an
answer is there must be a better test
they have hope which is not blind
optimism hope is based on some knowledge
that I can find an answer that the
information is out there they have
passion do they all have passion yeah
courage independence self-discipline but
none of it would succeed without
perseverance sticking with it and then
one person can make a difference this is
just a sample of the explorers that
National Geographic thank you for
participating in our opening
you
coolest job in the world
now we’re building things to understand
more about the world around us
this is what we like people don’t really
believe we could do this
that’s awesome that’s why I do what I do
and why don’t we begin with our
exploring residents
we’ll begin with Enrique great I’m going
to tell you a little story now when I
was a kid growing up on the
Mediterranean coast of Spain I was
completely fascinated by the
documentaries that Jack was to show that
on TV no that was in the 70s and he
showed us this amazing coral reefs lots
of sharks whales sea lions it was so
fantastic but when I was swimming in the
ocean when I was diving while I was
later a professor at the University of
California this is what I saw those
coral reefs that he showed us were gone
the places that I loved were less and
less life overtime so I was studying
human impacts in the ocean and I saw
those dead reefs covered by algae and
slime and the big features were gone
this fish that you can see are smaller
than my diving mask I quit my job as a
professor and I started going to this
remote places and I started this project
that we call pristine seas the goal of
this project is to go to the most remote
and inhabited and touch places in the
ocean the wildest places in the ocean a
coral reef that looks like this where
the corals are life and predators
dominate and we combine exploration
scientific research compelling media and
then we inspire the leaders of the
countries that own these places to
protect them in the very large resource
in the last five years we’ve been to
nine places and we got five protected
covering a total of almost half a
million square kilometers and in the
next few years we’re going to a few more
of these places to try to protect the
last places that still look like the
ocean that was thousands of years ago
thank you
now Tristram Stuart gonna give us a
little overview of his work quickly
we’re chopping down rainforests to grow
more food and at the same time a billion
people are hungry and yet we’re wasting
one third of the world’s food supply
that is something of a tragedy but I’ve
made it my life’s mission to show that
this is a colossal off opportunity if we
need to cut down on our environmental
impact and increase food availability
where it’s needed most cutting food
waste is a really good place to start
these green beans show you just how
simple some of the solutions to food
waste can be adorn your attention to the
word trimmed these beans have been
trimmed to size to fit into these
plastic containers that means that
Kenyan farmers growing these beans for
export to European markets are cutting
sometimes 30 40 percent of the beans
they’ve grown in a country where the
land and the water that they’re using to
grow these beans are scarce resources 20
tonnes a day of waste coming out of this
single Depot just outside Nairobi and
contractors collecting this waste have
to sign a contract saying they won’t
feed any of this good food to hungry
people
it will all be treated as waste we’re
paying for that crime in our supply
chains
what we did is four things first of all
raise awareness through public campaigns
on ugly fruit and vegetables and why
these standards are unnecessary number
two
pass a law within the United Kingdom
saying that when supermarkets cause
their suppliers to waste food they
should share the cost of it number three
help farmers in those countries develop
secondary markets to get some of that
food to markets and number four work
with the supermarket’s to change those
standards we got test goes to change the
way they ask for the beans to be trimmed
they now trim only on one side of the
bean rather than two it’s not far enough
they’ve gone halfway but Kenyan farmers
are producing five percent more bean per
unit of production than they were before
we did that in a few months
similar story with bananas in Ecuador
that’s the waste of one banana
plantation after one day of harvest
bananas in Costa Rica these are carrots
being wasted because they’re too long to
fit into these supermarket
plastic crates it’s crazy and it’s
happening everywhere we have led a
global revolution against food waste by
doing positive campaigning and feeding
the 5,000 which is the name of our
organization and an event that we use to
launch our campaigns where we feed 5,000
people all on food that otherwise would
be wasted filling bellies not bins we
also set up the gleaning Network in
Britain and now across Europe where we
take volunteers to fields to harvest
some of this unused crop and get it to
people who are hungry and also
communicate about those basic original
sources of food waste and what we can do
about it my next mission is to come to
America I’m here now and I’m making
friends and I will show you why it’s
most important what this shows is that
America has twice as much food in its
shops and restaurants than is actually
required to keep the population alive
that is a huge opportunity to save money
save resources save impact on the
environment we’re going to start with
portion sizes and we’re going to move up
to the farms we’re going to cause a food
waste revolution here in America
we’re coming soon thank you very much
excellent
and now Siobhan Ebola from our big cats
initiative in Kenya in under a century
we have lost over 90 percent of our
planets lions where I’m from in Kenya
the situation is just as serious we have
only 2,000 lions left in our country we
work to try and understand why this is
happening
lions are running out of space they also
come into contact with people the local
people whose livelihoods depend on their
livestock are often targeted by lions in
Samburu in northern Kenya where I live
our population has grown from 11 Lions
to over 50 now as a result of
conservation efforts I work with the
team and our mission is to promote the
coexistence between lions and people in
northern Kenya we
do this through a number of community
programs one of which is our warrior
program known as warrior watch here in
this picture you see three of the
warriors I work with previously
neglected when it came to conservation
these Warriors are now wildlife
ambassadors they’re engaged in
conservation we have sixteen warriors
now working in the region when we
started the program we asked the
warriors what would you like in exchange
for all this great wildlife information
that you give us and they said we would
like education we have never been to
school these are young men aged between
15 to 25 who’ve never had that
opportunity to go and learn how to read
and write we’ve now changed this and
over the last five years all 17 of our
warriors can read and write both in
English and the national language
kiswahili this picture was taken a
couple of weeks ago at our annual lion
kids camp they had never seen a lion
they’d only had negative experiences
with lions they’d seen the remains of a
camel after a lion had preyed on them
but we changed that we took these kids
to see their first ever lion and their
faces say it all as they saw their first
line they whispered to me Simba Simba
and this is what
this is what gives me hope for the
future thank you and now Jack andraka
our inventor so I suppose my story
really began when I was 13 but a close
family friend who was like an uncle to
me actually passed away from pancreatic
cancer and when the disease had so close
to home I knew I needed to learn more so
I went online to find answers and white
had found really shocked me
you see 85% of all pancreatic cancers
are diagnosed late when someone has lost
a 2% chance of survival and either you
know deeper I found an even more
shocking statistic you see there’s
currently no standard way for detecting
pancreatic cancer as our conventional
method is the six-year-old technique I
mean first off that’s older than my dad
but also it cost $800 per test and
there’s grossly inaccurate missing 30%
of all cancers and thus is rarely ever
used for screening of pancreatic cancer
so armed with 8th grade biology I
decided to set out to change the field
of cancer diagnostics bit lofty of a
goal that I was going to do it and so
essentially why I did is I stumbled
across how we’re currently diagnosing
these cancers and what we’re doing is
we’re looking at your bloodstream for
particularly for these variations and
protein levels and while it sounds
extremely straightforward it’s anything
but because you have leaders and leaders
of blood which is about in enumerable
numbers of these proteins so it’s like
trying to find a needle in the SAC of
nearly identical needles
however on Tutera due to my teenage
optimism or how some people label it
complete and utter ignorance of the
entire field I continued on and I
essentially found a database of over
8,000 proteins that are found in your
bloodstream when you have these cancers
essentially I found this one protein I
could use called mesothelin and it’s
just your ordinary around the mel type
protein unless of course you have
pancreatic ovarian and lung cancer in
which case it’s found these very high
levels in your bloodstream but also the
kids I found the earliest stages of the
disease when some has close to 100%
chance of survival
and essentially what I did is I combined
something called carbon nanotubes
essentially the superheroes of material
science is long thin tubes of carbon
they’ve these amazing properties and all
you do is it’s like making choc chip
cookies you put them in this giant thing
of water you pour in some nanotubes add
some antibiotic use that only react with
one cancer biomarker mix it up take some
paper dip it dry and you can detect
cancer and then I sent out my procedure
to 200 labs at Johns Hopkins University
got 199 nose seven months later after
getting accepted into a lab I stumble
out with one small paper sensor that
cost three cents and takes five minutes
to run making a 168 times faster over
26,000 times it’s expensive and there
were 400 times more extensive are
conventional conventional methods of
detection but also so far it can detect
the cancer in the earliest stage when
someone has close to 100% chance of
survival and so far has over 90%
accuracy and could be broadly applied to
pretty much any disease range from
Alzheimer’s other forms of cancer even
HIV age and heart disease so that’s my
research
okay so hungry
one thing you have found which this is a
really great news is it if you can set
aside a marine area and keep and just
make it a reserve for brief period of
time we’ve been able to do that you were
talking about some of the successes in
your talk because it was once a desert
doesn’t mean it will always stay a
desert it comes back exactly the ocean
and nature has this incredible capacity
to rebound this photograph was taking on
the Medes Islands marine reserve and on
the Costa Brava
in northern Spain and this guy is Pierre
Yves Cousteau Jacques Cousteau younger
son and next to him is a 25 kilo grouper
lakenya
which are gone from most of the
Mediterranean except in in marine
reserves think about most of the ocean
like a debit account or everybody
withdraws and nobody makes a deposit you
don’t need to be an economist to know
what’s going to happen but these
reserves were there is no fishing are
like savings account with a principle
set aside that produces interest so the
abundance of fees them tons of fish per
square mile in these reserves increases
four hundred and fifty percent in less
than ten years and how hard is it to get
people to set aside in there to say if
you only stopped fishing for ten years
you’ll be so amply rewarded all the the
benefits to fishing are happening
earlier in some places in Ashley the
last three years after the creation of
these reserves there are so many fish
inside the reserve that reproduce so
much then some of these fish spill over
the boundaries of these reserves to the
fishermen are catching more outside
that’s the interest
Tristram had let’s just put it out on
the line you’re a dumpster diver you go
around and spy on people’s trash but
what have you found is that where you
first got the clue that how much was
being thrown out of restaurants and
grocery stores yeah it is actually I was
15 also when my mission started and I
was collecting food waste for my pigs
from my school canteen and the local
Baker and the green grocer but I
realized that most of the food I was
giving to my pigs was actually perfectly
good for human consumption and I
remember the day I sat down for
breakfast with my pigs and ate one of
these perfectly good loaves of bread
that the Baker chucked away and that was
the first act of what you could call
dumpster diving or freeganism this
photograph you see I moved to London a
few years ago and I stopped being able
to keep pigs so I decided to launch a
campaign on feeding food waste to pigs
which is the next best thing
after you’ve exhausted all possibility
for feeding it to humans processed pig
food which has been grown by deforesting
the amazon to grow soy europe imports 40
million tons of it every year this is
the worst thing that is going on on the
planet at the moment we’re chopping down
forests to grow more food and we can
cancel out a lot of the demand for that
by changing the way first of all we eat
and waste food and secondly the way we
produce meat by using waste products
rather than using virgin crops Shivani
all of us have had neighbors we didn’t
exactly get along with in this case for
the sambu the lions are their neighbors
if you want to make peace you invite
them over for dinner so how do you make
friends if your neighbors are lions what
do you do to make that relationship
harmonious I’m so the big problem in
this area is conflict so when lions come
along and they attack people’s livestock
this is when people don’t like lions
they don’t want Lions in their area so
we work with the communities to reduce
conflict we try and encourage them to
look after livestock better one of the
big issues is livestock is always you
know often lost so lions come across and
sleeping camels at night far from the
village and they will attack them so we
encourage them look after your livestock
better don’t send young children out to
look after your livestock because of
course a little boy is scared of lions
yet Warriors are not scared of lions
also at night livestock are kept in what
are known as bomas livestock enclosures
we work with them to reinforce their
bomas so at least they can be more
predator proof predators can’t get in
easily and livestock can’t get out so
there are lots of ways we can work with
the local people to reduce light
conflict from happening in the first
place and then they’re much more willing
to be able to live with lions good
fences do make good neighbors in this
case
now Jack you came up with this idea had
how do you know that it works is urine
are you in testing – did the head of the
lab whose how did he react when you said
look what I found and how long were you
there just over your summer vacation I’d
know for seven months so he’s been
working there his entire career yes you
come in seven months later and what does
he say me to even like get anything was
like really exciting for him like he was
in disbelief but essentially what what
really tipped us off that was working is
its sensitivity you see it could detect
downs like femto Graham levels which was
really incredible for these types of
sensors especially given its cost and
how rapid it was and so once we saw that
then we started working with Mouse blood
samples and we saw that was effective
there so we instantly submitted a patent
and we’re instantly we’re right now in
talks with several different biotech
companies about getting it on the market
as soon as possible
just because I unfortunately can’t run a
clinical trial as a high school student
I have SATs and prom to worry about now
when we go to the pristine seas we talk
a lot about things that we put in the
ocean one thing we put in the ocean or
oil platforms turns out they actually
create artificial reefs so this is
actually a life source these platforms
what have you discovered there is it is
it spreading beyond the platform we when
we think of the oil wells we think of
the possibility of spills but why are
they so popular for fish so we leave
that pristine seas expedition took a
pond and the coast of Gabon is mostly
sandy and there are dozens of oil
platforms and these platforms are the
only hard substrate and hundreds of
kilometres of course we were told by the
people at the oil companies about the
safety it was like we’re going to dive
into the Chernobyl reactor or something
it was they painted such a dire picture
and we jumped in the water and we could
not believe it there were so many fish
rainbow runners like these ones tuna
sharks in the first 20 meters there’s
the first 60 feet of these platforms
there is more than one ton thousand
kilos of fish except because coral grows
on the hard surface that it wouldn’t
have
sandy bottom the exile service of the
all the animals that live on reefs that
produce eggs and that they turn to
larvae that float and if they don’t find
a hard substrate to settle they die so
now there is this plan to work the
government of Gabon is working with the
oil companies so the oil companies will
enforce the area around the oil
companies so they there will be not
fishing and this is going to be a haven
for replenishing the rest of the coast
of Gabon who would have thought we’re
holding a beauty contest for our fruits
and vegetables can you stop the beauty
contest does that begin with the market
or the consumer that’s what the basis of
our campaigns are all about is about
instigating popular revolt literally it
is revolting against food waste this is
why the big supermarkets and why
governments are now listening to us not
because we’re right but because we have
a popular movement behind us and it’s
gonna sound funny but ugly fruit and
vegetables since the launch of our
campaign have become the fastest-growing
sector of the fresh produce market in
the United Kingdom do they golfer it at
a different price different prices in
some places or you just tell the story
if you’re a high-end demographic
supermarket or a farmers market you just
say well the skin on these apples are
blemished because it hailed during the
autumn and people like to hear that kind
of story and will respond to it so I
mean we’re doing the same thing with
fish also fish are being chucked
overboard that a perfectly good for
consumption by a process called high
grading basically only bringing the best
specimens ashore because you’ve got a
finite hold and fishermen are chucking
them away and in Europe that’s being
exacerbated by quota systems that make
people chuck over quota fish aboard and
we’re just changing the legislation in
Europe now to make discarding valuable
efficiency 40 to 60 percent of fish
caught in European waters being chucked
overboard now if you’re going to get the
local people involved and taking on the
conservation as being important to them
they have to see some benefit beyond
just the fact that they’re lions and one
you have to show them that tourists
aren’t going to show up if they don’t
have elephants and lions if they’re all
poached out because that’s what they’re
coming to see so there’s that dollar but
did those dollars from the tourists in
any way get
to them so that they see a direct
benefit absolutely so tourists that come
to visit Samburu there’s a huge
percentage that goes directly back to
the community the community then used
these funds for health projects for
school bursaries for water projects
because what is a big issue in our area
we’re in a semi-arid desert there is no
water you literally have to dig for
water in the dry riverbeds so through
the funds that they get from tourism
they can they’re able to do such things
and have more access to water education
is key sending their children to school
is a big thing for them and now they’re
able to do that through the benefits
they get from tourism and they make that
connection between the alliance program
you’re doing the Owosso Alliance program
and the education they’re getting
because of the Lions yeah so we’ve got a
great relationship with the tourism
management’s and the lodges within our
area we work closely together so people
can really understand the relationship
between tourists and conservation and
working with communities and they have
seen that and you’ve got the Sam brewery
warriors who are walking around to see
where the Lions are warning with the
people if it’s getting close to their
cattle but there’s such great trackers
do they also look for human tracks of
poachers do you have them on the watch
for that they do our warriors are
basically out there looking out for
anything so not just predators but
people as well
poaching is a big problem in our area in
northern Kenya so our warriors do notify
the wardens the Rangers if they do any
if they see any kind of tracks that look
a little bit suspicious they’re very
good at aging the tracks they know
exactly when that track has been through
that area they can tell from the type of
shoes who it is
they’re fantastic trackers and so they
can really give information back to the
authorities if there’s anything that
looks a little bit suspicious in the
area and let’s just repeat the number
when you started this program you had 11
lions in your area and that was how many
years ago that was back in 2006 we had
about 11 lions we were monitoring and
now we’re up to over 50 950 so it’s
working whatever you’re doing it’s
working
keep it up now Jack tell us how it all
started did you start like those of us
who had chemistry section or kid blowing
up stuff I started out with like a lot
of environmental work so working with
bioluminescent bacteria to attack the
water contaminants and then I moved on
to like nano ecotoxicity so investigate
I did one the first days of its kind on
the impacts of nano particles sources
both particles and their impacts on the
aquatic ecosystems I know you have
something that will test water quality
what’s that yeah yeah so it’s
essentially something the size of a
credit card that detects six different
environmental contaminants and it is two
hundred thousand times as expensive than
our conventional methods so it cost a
dollar and then also want the very cool
things about it is that it can actually
only take 20 minutes so 25 minutes to
run and one of the coolest parts about
that part that was kind of like the
minor part of that project the major
part of that was developing a water
filter out of recycled plastic water
bottles so essentially you can take
water bottles and turn them into filters
that filter out 95% of all heavy metals
and pesticides in five minutes for 70
cents and then also you can actually put
them in boiling water for just one
minute and they will actually reclaim up
to 90% of those contaminants so but you
can then sell back and actually profit
from filtering your water so we are
currently still testing with that so
we’ve used it for like heavy metals
pesticides it could also be used for
like fracking contaminants oil spill
cleanup it has a wide variety of usage
and now I’m moving on to indoor air
quality and there’s actually seven
stages the successful people in all
areas have them but maybe not as much as
some explorers they all start with
curiosity you want to see can it find an
answer is there must be a better test
they have hope which is not blind
optimism hope is based on some knowledge
that I can find an answer that the
information is out there they have
passion do they all have passion yeah
courage independence self-discipline but
none of it would succeed without
perseverance sticking with it and then
one person can make a difference this is
just a sample of the explorers that
National Geographic thank you for
participating in our opening
you
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