hi everyone
so yeah I’m an engineer which is kind of
a strange thing to be involved in
conservation work but you know I my day
job is I’m a satellite propulsion
engineer so that basically means that I
use rocket science to help get
satellites and other unmanned spacecraft
from Earth into the orbital slot that
they need to sit in and it was when I
went to Stanford where I really kind of
saw the real issue behind what’s going
on with our oceans and it was there that
I saw a good fit for a technology-based
solution so the tragedy of our ocean
comments our oceans are at this very
unique point right now and they have a
different kind of conservation challenge
than maybe some of like the terrestrial
challenges and part of the reason why is
is because of this a lot of the times
when people look out at the oceans they
see just this they see the surface so it
makes it a little difficult to
demonstrate the dire need in protecting
the species under there when most people
just look out and they only see this so
I’m I wish it was just as easy to look
out here and tell the number of bluefin
tuna remaining you know as we can look
out and see how many black rhino or
Mexican gray wolf are still out there so
overfishing I’m sure a lot of you guys
have heard the statistics on how bad it
really truly is but but overfishing and
illegal fishing is currently kind of the
greatest risk we have to our ocean and
coastal ecosystems not only that but it
has huge implications on global food
security and it could really really
cause a huge huge issue in our future
and so I’m sure you’ve heard this
statistics before you know ninety
percent of our large fish have
disappeared we can possibly get to the
point in this century where global foods
fish stocks could collapse and our
current fishing fleet is about
halftimes what are the capacity of our
planet can sustainably handle so what
can we do to change this well to get
into that I’m gonna talk a little bit
about a story I went to Palau in 2009
was with Stanford University and the
point of the trip was to really talk to
the people of Palau about
entrepreneurship but we had a focus that
we wanted to talk to him about how they
can do things to improve their
environment and improve their economy at
the same time we called the series of
meetings we had green plow I mean my
whole purpose there was to talk about
how they could use technology
specifically low cost technology to help
protect this pristine environment you
see behind me here it was really a
perfect time to be there too we came
right after plows presidents stood up in
front of the UN General Assembly and
declared all of plows waters a shark
sanctuary so that’s six hundred thousand
square kilometers right there was a
shark sanctuary well while I was in
Palau I had a chance to do some field
work and I was talking to a lot of the
people there about the current state of
their oceans and really what they
thought was going on out there and and I
got the chance to talk to quite a few
people you know people that you would
think would have a better idea about
what was going on in their oceans and I
got to ask them in your opinion how many
boats do you actually think are out
there that plow doesn’t know about like
how many vessels do we have out on that
water that are unaccounted for and you
know the numbers that I got were low I
had people telling me a handful maybe
four or five that they didn’t actually
know we’re out there but luckily at that
same time Australia was flying a
military vessel in the area and they
took some data as they did and just in
that one single fly path they found over
seventy unaccounted for vessels and
Glaus water so there’s this really huge
perception problem there well so how
does Palau protect that that six hundred
thousand square kilometer shark
sanctuary you’re looking at it one
patrol boat a single boat to patrol
all of that area so you have this one
coastal nation that has a 600,000 square
kilometer shark sanctuary it’s often
considered one of the seven wonders of
the underwater world and not only that
they’ve signed on to the Micronesia
challenge which would protect over 30%
of their coastal waters all to be
protected by a single boat do you think
that that could be done you see this
Palau problem is not unique to that
country it’s really an issue that we
have across the board the way that we go
about protecting our waters is is based
on technology and methods that’s
decades-old we use donated or purchased
military vessels to patrol the coasts
and sometimes take some arbitrary paths
we rely on borrowing some time as a
secondary mission on military aircraft
and these things cost in the hundreds of
thousands to millions of dollars per
flight we look at cooperative systems
where we have vessel tracking
information that’s sent from the vessels
and those are kept in different
databases and much of this information
is not shared amongst each other and
finally we use paper-based logbooks and
forms to capture all this catch
information and vessel data giving the
opportunity for all this information
just to be filed away in some cabinet
and lost forever you see we can have all
the improvements in the world in terms
of laws and international treaties but
if we don’t have an effective way to
monitor our oceans then it’s really
flawed as soon as we set up these marine
protected areas everywhere really the
next step needs to be figuring out a way
to better watch over those areas well
this is what I think we can do I think
this is the answer technology and I
think that really comes as a result of
the great improvements we’ve had in
technology and that’s my whole purpose
here is to try and bring some of that
over to the ocean realm you see
technology can kind of be looked at in
this s-curve form in terms of adoption
and basically all this is saying is that
as the number of people who start using
the technology more and more it slowly
builds and
to this kind of critical point and then
plateaus once it’s hit the mainstream
and if we look over the last hundred
years we’ve seen that it’s followed this
basic same s shape but what I wanted to
point out was as the decades progress
you see technology adoption accelerates
and I think we’ve all kind of seen this
in the way that the computers and cell
phones have really changed our lives in
the last 20 years so right now we’re
living in this zone we’re living in this
amazing time right now where a tech
entrepreneur can created something that
can change not only is industry but the
world in months and not decades you see
before to be a technology entrepreneur
you had to have access to a factory or
all sorts of capital to do something
well now we’re in the state where you
can design something you can get it a
prototype printed out by a 3d printer
and then you can send that file off to
be manufactured at a factory all without
even leaving your couch so this is what
I think we need to do to change this
problem now it’s kind of a busy chart
but I want you to look at the simplified
roadmap and really get two things from
it there’s two paths that we need to do
here we need to create better
observation technologies and we have to
make that information that we collect
more actionable so observation
technologies we need to make use of
drones and unmanned boats we have to use
the Internet and a lot of this
information that we’ve been able to
handle and manipulate to really bring
this issue up and not rely so much on
the military aspect of it and then for
building information infrastructure it
really has to be information that’s
actionable illegal fishing is a global
problem and we’re attacking it in
regional in regional ways I mean it
blows my mind that there could be a
vessel shark finning in the South
Pacific and when that vessel shows up in
South America we don’t always have that
information there so I’m going to talk a
little bit about various texts and all
technologies I’m just gonna pick a few
of them out and show you different ways
that they can help so the first is
drones now drones have gotten a lot of
controversy lately with their use
the military I think I’ve even when I
said the word I saw some of you guys
cower in fear but you know just like the
Internet which kind of originally came
under military funding and has been like
commandeered by the public I feel like
like drones are a technology that can
help to bring conservation to new
heights I mean there’s this incredible
amateur community out there that is now
producing more of these planes than the
US military has and they’re sharing the
designs and the information and and all
the software for free online it’s this
really incredible time and there’s
nothing that a unmanned plane can do
that that we don’t already do with our
manned aerial planes that we use in
conservation the second thing I want to
talk about is hydrophone sensors this is
something that I made now see all
vessels really make noise underwater
when they move so basically what you see
behind me is a hydrophone sun sensor
it’s a underwater microphone and it and
the way that this thing works is it
basically listens for big enough changes
in the ambient noise of the water to
tell that a vessel has passed by I mean
you can kind of think about this as a
those lights that everyone has above
their garage the motion sensor lights
when someone walks into area it’s a
similar thing but it can be connected to
any kind of communications mechanism and
send a note to someone saying hey
something’s came by the next thing I
wanted to talk about was satellite
technology so we’ve all kind of heard
the amazing things that we’ve been able
to do with satellite imagery there was
that recent valley of the Khans thing
that National Geographic was equipped
with and and there was there’s also been
some really interesting conservation
challenges that have been solved by this
including this so what happened here was
this was a group of individuals who saw
just using Google Maps that someone was
illegally trawl fishing in the Canary
Islands and they reported it to the EU
and these people got in trouble because
of it so that’s not even using specific
satellite imagery but I think that the
really exciting stuff that’s happening
with satellite technology is the
miniaturization and privatization of
space
so this CubeSat that you see behind me
is a really small satellite so this one
was created by albergue University
Denmark and it’s basically a space-based
AIS receiver so this thing gets vessel
tracking information from space but it
costs a fraction of the price of what
our previous satellites costed and we’ve
even seen recently planetary resources
did this Kickstarter campaign for the
Space Telescope and their minister Space
Telescope’s and it’s widely popular so
there’s no reason why we couldn’t have a
fleet of those orbiting our planet
taking real-time imagery of our oceans
and the final thing I wanted to talk
about is something that’s enabled by the
current state of the internet we should
be able to engage everybody out there to
become better conservationists
statistics say that by 2020 over 5
billion people will be connected to the
Internet and we see how people can do
some pretty amazing things with iPhone
apps and and the web now so I created
this which is MP a guardian org the
focus behind this is to really try and
help crowdsource the protection of our
California’s NPA system to anybody out
there who’s on the water on a boat they
can’t see something they could catch it
with their iPhone and upload it to the
database so we’ve heard a lot about
citizen science I’m trying to think
about citizen protection and the more
information we get about these areas
then we can start building a better
picture in helping out the enforcement
individuals that are trying to work on
stopping this stuff so instead of just
arbitrarily driving out you know taking
their vessel out into the ocean they’ll
start to get an idea of what areas this
kind of stuffs happening in and they can
take a more direct approach there so
those were just a few technologies
there’s really a whole lot of stuff that
we could be doing nowadays I you know
I’m an engineer and and I really think
that we’re in a place right now where we
need to get conservationists and
engineers working together on this you
know I want a situation where the bright
young engineers aren’t leaving school
and going to work for an internet
company working on better ad delivery
right
I want them trying to solve our greatest
conservation and environmental
challenges of the day you know
through my work with engineers Without
Borders I’ve seen what a passionate
inspired engineer can do and I really
want to bring them into this space so
thank you it was an honor
you
so yeah I’m an engineer which is kind of
a strange thing to be involved in
conservation work but you know I my day
job is I’m a satellite propulsion
engineer so that basically means that I
use rocket science to help get
satellites and other unmanned spacecraft
from Earth into the orbital slot that
they need to sit in and it was when I
went to Stanford where I really kind of
saw the real issue behind what’s going
on with our oceans and it was there that
I saw a good fit for a technology-based
solution so the tragedy of our ocean
comments our oceans are at this very
unique point right now and they have a
different kind of conservation challenge
than maybe some of like the terrestrial
challenges and part of the reason why is
is because of this a lot of the times
when people look out at the oceans they
see just this they see the surface so it
makes it a little difficult to
demonstrate the dire need in protecting
the species under there when most people
just look out and they only see this so
I’m I wish it was just as easy to look
out here and tell the number of bluefin
tuna remaining you know as we can look
out and see how many black rhino or
Mexican gray wolf are still out there so
overfishing I’m sure a lot of you guys
have heard the statistics on how bad it
really truly is but but overfishing and
illegal fishing is currently kind of the
greatest risk we have to our ocean and
coastal ecosystems not only that but it
has huge implications on global food
security and it could really really
cause a huge huge issue in our future
and so I’m sure you’ve heard this
statistics before you know ninety
percent of our large fish have
disappeared we can possibly get to the
point in this century where global foods
fish stocks could collapse and our
current fishing fleet is about
halftimes what are the capacity of our
planet can sustainably handle so what
can we do to change this well to get
into that I’m gonna talk a little bit
about a story I went to Palau in 2009
was with Stanford University and the
point of the trip was to really talk to
the people of Palau about
entrepreneurship but we had a focus that
we wanted to talk to him about how they
can do things to improve their
environment and improve their economy at
the same time we called the series of
meetings we had green plow I mean my
whole purpose there was to talk about
how they could use technology
specifically low cost technology to help
protect this pristine environment you
see behind me here it was really a
perfect time to be there too we came
right after plows presidents stood up in
front of the UN General Assembly and
declared all of plows waters a shark
sanctuary so that’s six hundred thousand
square kilometers right there was a
shark sanctuary well while I was in
Palau I had a chance to do some field
work and I was talking to a lot of the
people there about the current state of
their oceans and really what they
thought was going on out there and and I
got the chance to talk to quite a few
people you know people that you would
think would have a better idea about
what was going on in their oceans and I
got to ask them in your opinion how many
boats do you actually think are out
there that plow doesn’t know about like
how many vessels do we have out on that
water that are unaccounted for and you
know the numbers that I got were low I
had people telling me a handful maybe
four or five that they didn’t actually
know we’re out there but luckily at that
same time Australia was flying a
military vessel in the area and they
took some data as they did and just in
that one single fly path they found over
seventy unaccounted for vessels and
Glaus water so there’s this really huge
perception problem there well so how
does Palau protect that that six hundred
thousand square kilometer shark
sanctuary you’re looking at it one
patrol boat a single boat to patrol
all of that area so you have this one
coastal nation that has a 600,000 square
kilometer shark sanctuary it’s often
considered one of the seven wonders of
the underwater world and not only that
they’ve signed on to the Micronesia
challenge which would protect over 30%
of their coastal waters all to be
protected by a single boat do you think
that that could be done you see this
Palau problem is not unique to that
country it’s really an issue that we
have across the board the way that we go
about protecting our waters is is based
on technology and methods that’s
decades-old we use donated or purchased
military vessels to patrol the coasts
and sometimes take some arbitrary paths
we rely on borrowing some time as a
secondary mission on military aircraft
and these things cost in the hundreds of
thousands to millions of dollars per
flight we look at cooperative systems
where we have vessel tracking
information that’s sent from the vessels
and those are kept in different
databases and much of this information
is not shared amongst each other and
finally we use paper-based logbooks and
forms to capture all this catch
information and vessel data giving the
opportunity for all this information
just to be filed away in some cabinet
and lost forever you see we can have all
the improvements in the world in terms
of laws and international treaties but
if we don’t have an effective way to
monitor our oceans then it’s really
flawed as soon as we set up these marine
protected areas everywhere really the
next step needs to be figuring out a way
to better watch over those areas well
this is what I think we can do I think
this is the answer technology and I
think that really comes as a result of
the great improvements we’ve had in
technology and that’s my whole purpose
here is to try and bring some of that
over to the ocean realm you see
technology can kind of be looked at in
this s-curve form in terms of adoption
and basically all this is saying is that
as the number of people who start using
the technology more and more it slowly
builds and
to this kind of critical point and then
plateaus once it’s hit the mainstream
and if we look over the last hundred
years we’ve seen that it’s followed this
basic same s shape but what I wanted to
point out was as the decades progress
you see technology adoption accelerates
and I think we’ve all kind of seen this
in the way that the computers and cell
phones have really changed our lives in
the last 20 years so right now we’re
living in this zone we’re living in this
amazing time right now where a tech
entrepreneur can created something that
can change not only is industry but the
world in months and not decades you see
before to be a technology entrepreneur
you had to have access to a factory or
all sorts of capital to do something
well now we’re in the state where you
can design something you can get it a
prototype printed out by a 3d printer
and then you can send that file off to
be manufactured at a factory all without
even leaving your couch so this is what
I think we need to do to change this
problem now it’s kind of a busy chart
but I want you to look at the simplified
roadmap and really get two things from
it there’s two paths that we need to do
here we need to create better
observation technologies and we have to
make that information that we collect
more actionable so observation
technologies we need to make use of
drones and unmanned boats we have to use
the Internet and a lot of this
information that we’ve been able to
handle and manipulate to really bring
this issue up and not rely so much on
the military aspect of it and then for
building information infrastructure it
really has to be information that’s
actionable illegal fishing is a global
problem and we’re attacking it in
regional in regional ways I mean it
blows my mind that there could be a
vessel shark finning in the South
Pacific and when that vessel shows up in
South America we don’t always have that
information there so I’m going to talk a
little bit about various texts and all
technologies I’m just gonna pick a few
of them out and show you different ways
that they can help so the first is
drones now drones have gotten a lot of
controversy lately with their use
the military I think I’ve even when I
said the word I saw some of you guys
cower in fear but you know just like the
Internet which kind of originally came
under military funding and has been like
commandeered by the public I feel like
like drones are a technology that can
help to bring conservation to new
heights I mean there’s this incredible
amateur community out there that is now
producing more of these planes than the
US military has and they’re sharing the
designs and the information and and all
the software for free online it’s this
really incredible time and there’s
nothing that a unmanned plane can do
that that we don’t already do with our
manned aerial planes that we use in
conservation the second thing I want to
talk about is hydrophone sensors this is
something that I made now see all
vessels really make noise underwater
when they move so basically what you see
behind me is a hydrophone sun sensor
it’s a underwater microphone and it and
the way that this thing works is it
basically listens for big enough changes
in the ambient noise of the water to
tell that a vessel has passed by I mean
you can kind of think about this as a
those lights that everyone has above
their garage the motion sensor lights
when someone walks into area it’s a
similar thing but it can be connected to
any kind of communications mechanism and
send a note to someone saying hey
something’s came by the next thing I
wanted to talk about was satellite
technology so we’ve all kind of heard
the amazing things that we’ve been able
to do with satellite imagery there was
that recent valley of the Khans thing
that National Geographic was equipped
with and and there was there’s also been
some really interesting conservation
challenges that have been solved by this
including this so what happened here was
this was a group of individuals who saw
just using Google Maps that someone was
illegally trawl fishing in the Canary
Islands and they reported it to the EU
and these people got in trouble because
of it so that’s not even using specific
satellite imagery but I think that the
really exciting stuff that’s happening
with satellite technology is the
miniaturization and privatization of
space
so this CubeSat that you see behind me
is a really small satellite so this one
was created by albergue University
Denmark and it’s basically a space-based
AIS receiver so this thing gets vessel
tracking information from space but it
costs a fraction of the price of what
our previous satellites costed and we’ve
even seen recently planetary resources
did this Kickstarter campaign for the
Space Telescope and their minister Space
Telescope’s and it’s widely popular so
there’s no reason why we couldn’t have a
fleet of those orbiting our planet
taking real-time imagery of our oceans
and the final thing I wanted to talk
about is something that’s enabled by the
current state of the internet we should
be able to engage everybody out there to
become better conservationists
statistics say that by 2020 over 5
billion people will be connected to the
Internet and we see how people can do
some pretty amazing things with iPhone
apps and and the web now so I created
this which is MP a guardian org the
focus behind this is to really try and
help crowdsource the protection of our
California’s NPA system to anybody out
there who’s on the water on a boat they
can’t see something they could catch it
with their iPhone and upload it to the
database so we’ve heard a lot about
citizen science I’m trying to think
about citizen protection and the more
information we get about these areas
then we can start building a better
picture in helping out the enforcement
individuals that are trying to work on
stopping this stuff so instead of just
arbitrarily driving out you know taking
their vessel out into the ocean they’ll
start to get an idea of what areas this
kind of stuffs happening in and they can
take a more direct approach there so
those were just a few technologies
there’s really a whole lot of stuff that
we could be doing nowadays I you know
I’m an engineer and and I really think
that we’re in a place right now where we
need to get conservationists and
engineers working together on this you
know I want a situation where the bright
young engineers aren’t leaving school
and going to work for an internet
company working on better ad delivery
right
I want them trying to solve our greatest
conservation and environmental
challenges of the day you know
through my work with engineers Without
Borders I’ve seen what a passionate
inspired engineer can do and I really
want to bring them into this space so
thank you it was an honor
you
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