I love the ocean like many of you
whether walking beside it diving under
it or sailing across it I just can’t get
enough of it and earlier this year I was
fortunate enough in sailing to remote
Pearson Island in the Great Australian
Bight this island 64 kilometers offshore
from the main land is a really special
place it’s been isolated for over 10,000
years and remained completely free of
any introduced pests and during that
relatively short timespan geologically
speaking it’s even evolved its own
species of rock wallaby the Pearson
Island rock wallaby fantastic wildlife
and when we went ashore we were greeted
by these charming sea lions and
Wallabies but we were also greeted by
this plastic waste so human waste in the
form of plastic has made it to this
relatively remote and pristine
environment now if plastic like this
container say – or it would merely be
ugly maybe we could live with that but
unfortunately plastic from around the
world has made its way into into our
oceans and it’s created a horrible mess
in the North Pacific and now also South
Pacific their entire floating islands of
plastics caught up in gyres giant
ring-like ocean currents rotating
clockwise in the northern hemisphere and
anti clockwise in the southern
hemisphere and a recent World Economic
Forum report warns that the total volume
of plastic in our oceans by 2050 will
exceed the
weight of all of the sea creatures in
the ocean but there’s a lot of plastic
and the problems getting worse
why do we know plastics is spreading
well through efforts such as adventure
scientist global micro plastics
initiative that’s quite a mouthful
adventure science like the name suggests
combines adventure with science so when
I heard about this adventure science
from a fellow sailor I was hooked I
became part of a global group of
adventurers tasked with going out around
the world and collecting water samples
and that’s me collecting water samples
were sailing my patch was about 325
kilometers east to west about 200
kilometers north to south 65 65 thousand
square kilometers of water and I
collected only six samples because they
all had to be sent to the US and it’s
quite heavy sending water overseas as it
turns out but two of my six samples had
micro plastics in them and one of the
samples was more than 50 kilometers
offshore I mean I was gobsmacked here
you are in the middle of nowhere and
there’s micro plastics in just a random
scoop of water we we now know that micro
plastics form in one of two ways there
are primary micro plastics that are
purposely manufactured to be microscopic
and they’re everywhere in Ambon society
they’re used in cosmetics there they’re
used in air blasting technology they’re
even in the fibers of the clothes we
wear but they’re also these so called
secondary micro plastics which resorting
from the breakdown of larger plastic
debris the global micro plastics
initiative collected almost 2700 samples
around the world 72% of those contain
micro plastics of which 90% were fibrous
and look like this so these are very
very tiny particles you need a
microscope to see zooming out to
remote Henderson Island in the North
Pacific sorry South Pacific
Henderson Island is one of the Pitcairn
Islands immortalized by a mutiny on the
bounty today sadly Henderson Island is
immortalized by plastic more plastic
arrived on this island than anywhere
else on the planet over 3600 pieces of
plastic litter arrived every single day
and it’s not just destroying a beautiful
marine environment it’s it’s hurting our
wildlife as well seabirds are like the
Canaries in the coal mine when it comes
to telling us about the health of our
marine environment and things are not
pretty this is Lord Howe Island and this
is a dead Shearwater bird now I warn you
the next slide is really quite horrible
so you may wish to cover your eyes dr.
Jennifer Labor’s from the university’s
manatees dissecting the gut and it’s
very ugly or be quick but basically this
bird had eaten so much microplastic it
unfortunately killed it but all kinds of
microplastics are finding their way into
our ecosystem so here’s a poor turtle
with a plastics straw stuck her past
nostril imagine how painful that was
removing it as a society we’re addicted
to plastic we just use it everywhere and
most of it is actually quite unnecessary
I mean I brought a little show-and-tell
this has to be possibly the silliest
example of plastic I have seen in recent
years single-use plastic I picked this
up out of a rubbish bin in Sydney just
outside the city convention center it
was overflowing with these apparently
these antennas I think that’s what they
are we’re given away to attendees of a
Sydney convention most attendees bin
them as soon as I left the convention
center and yeah these bins were
literally meters away from Sydney
Harbour so we’re just producing
niklas amounts of plastic 300 million
tons a year and we’re recycling very
little of it about 10% so what are we to
do about these mountains of plastic and
oceans are plastic well for starters we
have to dramatically cut back the
developing world often gets a bad rap
for not acting quickly enough but
Bangladesh one of the poorest countries
in the world put in place a total ban on
plastics way back in 2002 they did this
because plastics had found their way
into every part of their country into
waterways into sewers and caused
catastrophic flooding in 1988 and 1998
it’s still a problem in that country but
they had the foresight to ban plastics
over in Europe Denmark was the first
country Jeff to introduce a tax on
retailers selling plastic bags and
Denmark now has the lowest per capita
usage of plastic bags in the world the
average Dane only uses four bags a year
for plastic bags a year I mean that’s
incredible
compared with several other European
countries which basically have usage
rates about a hundred times that by
comparison here closer to home here in
South Australia in 2008 we introduced a
ban on lightweight checkout style
plastic bags which has obviously made
quite a bit of difference so there are
good examples of countries around the
world doing doing the right thing and
we’re starting to see some positive
results as a result of that I’ll share
this one because it’s quite a quite
stark to see the difference will zoom
across to Mumbai in India
this is Versova Beach until a few years
ago Basava Beach was littered with over
5 million kilograms of rubbish and
plastic debris the entire Beach 4
kilometers look like that
but with several hundred volunteers over
several years largely due to the
leadership of one person afresh it was
cleaned up and now wow what a difference
it can make
yeah so we can make a difference we can
clean up environment if we put our minds
to it these these efforts though today
either rely on rallying lots of local
volunteers or lobbying politicians or
perhaps a bit of both but there is
another way and that’s through the power
of global communities and moonshot
thinking by moonshot I mean huge
problems albeit relatively well-defined
problems but the kinds of problems that
require you know radical new approaches
and not just something that you can kind
of tweak and tinker out but something
that requires it you know we take a
radically new approach to perhaps a new
technology a big part of moonshot
thinking is lighting a fire in other
people and helping others see that
perhaps the impossible might just be
possible now with plastics we have two
huge problems that lend themselves to
moonshot like approaches the first
problem is we’re simply using too much
of the stuff in particular too much
single-use plastic and it’s great that
this venue it has committed to minimize
the impact of single-use plastics it
turns out we can all help though we can
all make a difference so here’s a crazy
idea just refuse to use it I mean don’t
accept that plastic drinking straw ask
for a paper straw instead you know use
bamboo toothbrushes and and take your
shopping bag of course to the
supermarkets I mean you know if we’re
all mindfully thinking about it we can
make a difference
so that’s the first moonshot the second
moonshot is that we need to dramatically
improve
our scientific understanding of the
problem and it turns out everyone can
help with that problem too now earlier I
touched on adventure science but you
don’t need to be an adventurer I mean
anyone can be a scientist anyone can be
a citizen scientist science needs data
and the future of low-cost data
collection in many many scientific
disciplines and in particular life
sciences is putting low cost technology
into the hands of everyday people so
technology like this this is just a
smartphone but with a smartphone anyone
can be a citizen scientist anyone can
contribute to global scientific
knowledge now earlier I talked about the
global microplastics initiative that was
several hundred volunteers we collected
almost 2700 samples believe it or not
that was the largest ever data set a
mass to date on microplastics that was
the biggest and the bestest but honestly
and it was an awesome initiative it
really was but it was still a drop in
the proverbial ocean I mean our oceans
are so vast we literally just skim the
surface now imagine this imagine if a
million people were out there collecting
water samples that would be a
game-changer
now imagine if instead of having to send
these halide earth water bottles to labs
you could actually do that analysis in
the field well it turns out the
technology to do that is almost here
this is a great example this is a
clip-on microscope if I can find my
smartphone it’s it’s really simple to
use
you basically just attach it to the back
of your smartphone and voila I’ve now
got a 60 X microscope this is a
prototype from a delayed start up phone
labs and they’re working on a high-res
version
devices like this mean that we can do
citizen science on a scale simply not
possible to now especially when we
combine it with smart software that’s
the clip-on microscope in use at the
beach so smart software such as the red
map app red map stands for range
extension database and mapping with with
this app citizen scientists can
contribute their knowledge of
Australia’s vast coastline every day
people boaters divers kayakers beach
goers can report their sightings of
marine species this is enabling the
creation of a crowd-sourced map which is
showing how species are moving in
response to changes in marine
environment so only with this kind of
data can we solve that giant moonshot
problem of trying to cleanse our oceans
of plastic now we don’t yet have all the
pieces I’ve just shared a few of the a
few of the components that pieces
available today
for example we still need human
expertise to do the analysis in the lab
as I was referring to but in the
not-too-distant future
smart software artificial intelligence
machine learning techniques will mean
that we can actually do these types of
things again on the types of devices we
carry around with this everyday air
phones in the end it will be everyday
people caring for our environment
refusing one store at a time and engaged
in citizen science that make this straw
the last straw thank you
[Applause]
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
you
whether walking beside it diving under
it or sailing across it I just can’t get
enough of it and earlier this year I was
fortunate enough in sailing to remote
Pearson Island in the Great Australian
Bight this island 64 kilometers offshore
from the main land is a really special
place it’s been isolated for over 10,000
years and remained completely free of
any introduced pests and during that
relatively short timespan geologically
speaking it’s even evolved its own
species of rock wallaby the Pearson
Island rock wallaby fantastic wildlife
and when we went ashore we were greeted
by these charming sea lions and
Wallabies but we were also greeted by
this plastic waste so human waste in the
form of plastic has made it to this
relatively remote and pristine
environment now if plastic like this
container say – or it would merely be
ugly maybe we could live with that but
unfortunately plastic from around the
world has made its way into into our
oceans and it’s created a horrible mess
in the North Pacific and now also South
Pacific their entire floating islands of
plastics caught up in gyres giant
ring-like ocean currents rotating
clockwise in the northern hemisphere and
anti clockwise in the southern
hemisphere and a recent World Economic
Forum report warns that the total volume
of plastic in our oceans by 2050 will
exceed the
weight of all of the sea creatures in
the ocean but there’s a lot of plastic
and the problems getting worse
why do we know plastics is spreading
well through efforts such as adventure
scientist global micro plastics
initiative that’s quite a mouthful
adventure science like the name suggests
combines adventure with science so when
I heard about this adventure science
from a fellow sailor I was hooked I
became part of a global group of
adventurers tasked with going out around
the world and collecting water samples
and that’s me collecting water samples
were sailing my patch was about 325
kilometers east to west about 200
kilometers north to south 65 65 thousand
square kilometers of water and I
collected only six samples because they
all had to be sent to the US and it’s
quite heavy sending water overseas as it
turns out but two of my six samples had
micro plastics in them and one of the
samples was more than 50 kilometers
offshore I mean I was gobsmacked here
you are in the middle of nowhere and
there’s micro plastics in just a random
scoop of water we we now know that micro
plastics form in one of two ways there
are primary micro plastics that are
purposely manufactured to be microscopic
and they’re everywhere in Ambon society
they’re used in cosmetics there they’re
used in air blasting technology they’re
even in the fibers of the clothes we
wear but they’re also these so called
secondary micro plastics which resorting
from the breakdown of larger plastic
debris the global micro plastics
initiative collected almost 2700 samples
around the world 72% of those contain
micro plastics of which 90% were fibrous
and look like this so these are very
very tiny particles you need a
microscope to see zooming out to
remote Henderson Island in the North
Pacific sorry South Pacific
Henderson Island is one of the Pitcairn
Islands immortalized by a mutiny on the
bounty today sadly Henderson Island is
immortalized by plastic more plastic
arrived on this island than anywhere
else on the planet over 3600 pieces of
plastic litter arrived every single day
and it’s not just destroying a beautiful
marine environment it’s it’s hurting our
wildlife as well seabirds are like the
Canaries in the coal mine when it comes
to telling us about the health of our
marine environment and things are not
pretty this is Lord Howe Island and this
is a dead Shearwater bird now I warn you
the next slide is really quite horrible
so you may wish to cover your eyes dr.
Jennifer Labor’s from the university’s
manatees dissecting the gut and it’s
very ugly or be quick but basically this
bird had eaten so much microplastic it
unfortunately killed it but all kinds of
microplastics are finding their way into
our ecosystem so here’s a poor turtle
with a plastics straw stuck her past
nostril imagine how painful that was
removing it as a society we’re addicted
to plastic we just use it everywhere and
most of it is actually quite unnecessary
I mean I brought a little show-and-tell
this has to be possibly the silliest
example of plastic I have seen in recent
years single-use plastic I picked this
up out of a rubbish bin in Sydney just
outside the city convention center it
was overflowing with these apparently
these antennas I think that’s what they
are we’re given away to attendees of a
Sydney convention most attendees bin
them as soon as I left the convention
center and yeah these bins were
literally meters away from Sydney
Harbour so we’re just producing
niklas amounts of plastic 300 million
tons a year and we’re recycling very
little of it about 10% so what are we to
do about these mountains of plastic and
oceans are plastic well for starters we
have to dramatically cut back the
developing world often gets a bad rap
for not acting quickly enough but
Bangladesh one of the poorest countries
in the world put in place a total ban on
plastics way back in 2002 they did this
because plastics had found their way
into every part of their country into
waterways into sewers and caused
catastrophic flooding in 1988 and 1998
it’s still a problem in that country but
they had the foresight to ban plastics
over in Europe Denmark was the first
country Jeff to introduce a tax on
retailers selling plastic bags and
Denmark now has the lowest per capita
usage of plastic bags in the world the
average Dane only uses four bags a year
for plastic bags a year I mean that’s
incredible
compared with several other European
countries which basically have usage
rates about a hundred times that by
comparison here closer to home here in
South Australia in 2008 we introduced a
ban on lightweight checkout style
plastic bags which has obviously made
quite a bit of difference so there are
good examples of countries around the
world doing doing the right thing and
we’re starting to see some positive
results as a result of that I’ll share
this one because it’s quite a quite
stark to see the difference will zoom
across to Mumbai in India
this is Versova Beach until a few years
ago Basava Beach was littered with over
5 million kilograms of rubbish and
plastic debris the entire Beach 4
kilometers look like that
but with several hundred volunteers over
several years largely due to the
leadership of one person afresh it was
cleaned up and now wow what a difference
it can make
yeah so we can make a difference we can
clean up environment if we put our minds
to it these these efforts though today
either rely on rallying lots of local
volunteers or lobbying politicians or
perhaps a bit of both but there is
another way and that’s through the power
of global communities and moonshot
thinking by moonshot I mean huge
problems albeit relatively well-defined
problems but the kinds of problems that
require you know radical new approaches
and not just something that you can kind
of tweak and tinker out but something
that requires it you know we take a
radically new approach to perhaps a new
technology a big part of moonshot
thinking is lighting a fire in other
people and helping others see that
perhaps the impossible might just be
possible now with plastics we have two
huge problems that lend themselves to
moonshot like approaches the first
problem is we’re simply using too much
of the stuff in particular too much
single-use plastic and it’s great that
this venue it has committed to minimize
the impact of single-use plastics it
turns out we can all help though we can
all make a difference so here’s a crazy
idea just refuse to use it I mean don’t
accept that plastic drinking straw ask
for a paper straw instead you know use
bamboo toothbrushes and and take your
shopping bag of course to the
supermarkets I mean you know if we’re
all mindfully thinking about it we can
make a difference
so that’s the first moonshot the second
moonshot is that we need to dramatically
improve
our scientific understanding of the
problem and it turns out everyone can
help with that problem too now earlier I
touched on adventure science but you
don’t need to be an adventurer I mean
anyone can be a scientist anyone can be
a citizen scientist science needs data
and the future of low-cost data
collection in many many scientific
disciplines and in particular life
sciences is putting low cost technology
into the hands of everyday people so
technology like this this is just a
smartphone but with a smartphone anyone
can be a citizen scientist anyone can
contribute to global scientific
knowledge now earlier I talked about the
global microplastics initiative that was
several hundred volunteers we collected
almost 2700 samples believe it or not
that was the largest ever data set a
mass to date on microplastics that was
the biggest and the bestest but honestly
and it was an awesome initiative it
really was but it was still a drop in
the proverbial ocean I mean our oceans
are so vast we literally just skim the
surface now imagine this imagine if a
million people were out there collecting
water samples that would be a
game-changer
now imagine if instead of having to send
these halide earth water bottles to labs
you could actually do that analysis in
the field well it turns out the
technology to do that is almost here
this is a great example this is a
clip-on microscope if I can find my
smartphone it’s it’s really simple to
use
you basically just attach it to the back
of your smartphone and voila I’ve now
got a 60 X microscope this is a
prototype from a delayed start up phone
labs and they’re working on a high-res
version
devices like this mean that we can do
citizen science on a scale simply not
possible to now especially when we
combine it with smart software that’s
the clip-on microscope in use at the
beach so smart software such as the red
map app red map stands for range
extension database and mapping with with
this app citizen scientists can
contribute their knowledge of
Australia’s vast coastline every day
people boaters divers kayakers beach
goers can report their sightings of
marine species this is enabling the
creation of a crowd-sourced map which is
showing how species are moving in
response to changes in marine
environment so only with this kind of
data can we solve that giant moonshot
problem of trying to cleanse our oceans
of plastic now we don’t yet have all the
pieces I’ve just shared a few of the a
few of the components that pieces
available today
for example we still need human
expertise to do the analysis in the lab
as I was referring to but in the
not-too-distant future
smart software artificial intelligence
machine learning techniques will mean
that we can actually do these types of
things again on the types of devices we
carry around with this everyday air
phones in the end it will be everyday
people caring for our environment
refusing one store at a time and engaged
in citizen science that make this straw
the last straw thank you
[Applause]
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
you
Please follow and like us: