an academic thoroughbred and I grew up
in a blue-collar family in central New
York didn’t think much about the oceans
mom and my family was Italian so I’m
more like a cross between Jacques
Cousteau and Tony Soprano and in that
regard
you know you might appreciate my passion
for the sea but you wouldn’t want to see
me in a speedo I promise you so we’ll
start with this of the earth and I show
this for a couple of reasons and one is
it’s an empower ‘fl image you know when
you look at that’s our planet everyone
that’s lived on this all of our
ancestors lived here in the future our
children and our children’s children
will live here you know it’s our home
and the other thing is we take it for
granted a lot of Technology and brain
work went into bringing us that image of
Earth it’s snapshot this is a very
dynamic planet it’s always changing
everything changes the face of the earth
changes the climate changes that’s one
thing too is we take it we think that
because we can see it we can understand
it and we don’t and part of the reason
why is because most of the ocean is that
that’s most of the planet is that it’s
ocean 70% of the earth is covered with
ocean and this is the Pacific Ocean so
we just rotate the earth around take the
clouds away and there you go it’s a big
ball of blue average steps about two
miles maybe two and a half miles and you
can’t snorkel that deep you can’t scuba
dive that deep you’ve got to have
technology and the technology just
doesn’t exist we don’t have GPS doesn’t
work in the ocean
radio waves don’t work in the ocean
there’s no light once you get below
about a thousand feet so all these
things that we always joke with the
space by people that friends that work
in space that you can see eternity in
space at the ocean you can’t see your
hand in front of your face from here to
Mars it’s one atmosphere difference and
but but go to the bottom of the sea and
it’s like thousands of atmosphere is
different so the pressure is crushing so
it’s enough and as a result to this date
we’ve only explored about 8% of the
world’s ocean explored meaning go there
for the first time find out what’s there
for the first time that doesn’t mean
understanding
that means just what’s there and that’s
amazing because that really means we’re
living in an unexplored planet by I say
what I say we’re living on the planet
seven billion people live here and most
of us about half of us live right up
against the coastline within about a
hundred miles of a coastline around the
world so we’re really packed against the
edges of the continents and we move back
and forth across that ocean we’ve had
done that forever you know some more
successful than others but the oceans
have been an obstacle but they’ve also
been a pathway for human evolution in
progress it’s not a big blue fish bowl
so when we go to the bottom of the ocean
it’s not like flat muddy like a lake
there’s a mountain range out there it’s
an incredible mountain range that’s the
Atlantic Ocean and right down the middle
of the Atlantic Ocean you see it like
like a snake it looks just a mimics the
North America and in Africa the shape of
it does they fit together along that
mountain range it’s all volcanic it’s
got thousands of peaks on it higher than
the Rocky Mountains and even the vilius
it’s got thousands of valleys many many
times wider and deeper than the Grand
Canyon
it’s got life there that we never
thought would exist there because it’s
so deep so dark so inhospitable and we
find incredible amounts of life in fact
life that rivals throughout the tropical
rainforest so we have this amazing thing
at the bottom of the sea that it’s the
most dramatic everything on the planet
there’s rivers that run through it
there’s underwater Lakes there’s
underwater waterfalls and normally right
here I would be dazzle you with pictures
of jellyfish twinkling and all sorts of
animals but I’m not going to do that
this time I want to talk to you about
another project that we were involved
and that involves everything that I just
told you about so I often get the
question I retired in January a
miserable failure at retirement so I
took a job I left Woods Hole took a job
at Columbia but I’m still doing my woods
old job and my Columbia job so but
people say where’s your favorite place
on earth to be and I always have the
same answer it’s the truth my backyard
my garden that’s where I like to be
there’s a lot of wonderful places on
earth and one of my favorite things to
do is on a summer day
get my hammock and when my kids were
young I’d have my two boys with me and
we’d watch in the mid-afternoon all the
planes going from North America over
there to Europe and the convoys of them
playing after playing with the vapor
trail about the back and I would always
tell my boys they’re up there seven
miles up that’s how deep the ocean gets
seven miles deep and they would say and
sometimes we’d have binoculars and we
try to pick out which plans they were
and they say well daddy but if one falls
on us and I would say no planes don’t
fall out of the sky they just don’t
don’t don’t you don’t need to worry
about that
June 1st 2009 I was in the hammock and
my wife came out and said a plane just
crashed in the middle of the Atlantic
Ocean and it was an Air France plane
going from Rio to Paris
it was God it was Air France flight 447
232 people on board and I knew there’d
be a search and but it was French plane
and the French are excellent
oceanographers well back to jakku still
but they were very good at working in
the deep sea and so they were out there
looking with the Brazilians and and they
looked for a couple of months and found
nothing and so right away the media got
involved and said this plane will never
be found and then the government started
to echo that the planes lost forever we
don’t know what happened to the people
on board the plane and so my wife kept
saying to me are you going to get
involved thinking no it’s not really our
role and then I started to see the faces
of the passengers and hearing the
families talk about their loved ones
they want to know what happens to their
what happened to their parents what
happened to my children and it really
started to get to me because we know
that mountain range at what toll we’ve
worked there for decades and of mountain
range I gave up the next slide I’ll show
you in a moment and so finally I went
into woods all I asked the boss I said
to her do we want to get involved in
this she said well you can try to get
involved so I said alright packed my
bags my little laptop off i went to
paris to one of the committee meetings
and met with the heads of the b EA
that’s the french NTSB and i think they
looked at me like I was some
three-headed monster because you know
who is this academic
egghead coming here to tell us it they
can find the plane better than we can
well so that’s the track of the plane
Air France flight 447 and sure enough it
stops right over the top of that
underwater mountain range so here’s the
thing it’s not only deep water it’s
about three miles deep there it’s the
same depth as Titanic but on top of that
mountain range that I said that mountain
range is more rugged than the Grand
Canyon or the Rocky Mountains it’s more
rugged than that it’s not unusual to
have mountains that go up and down three
miles with landslides and volcanoes
erupting and lava pouring out and all
sorts of stuff going on so it was so wet
and when you go there to search for
something you’re entering an unknown
world we don’t know what we’re going to
find so to find something that there you
have to actually go into this unknown
world and try to the realm of Poseidon
and try to find this thing but we were
able to make the case that in fact we
did work in that mountain range for ten
years the luxury we had over the French
team that was looking is that they were
forced to go out right away get out
there and find it and they didn’t and we
had some time to think about it
there are pieces of the plane found it’s
the fin of course the galley anyone the
Flies will recognize that piece of the
galley floating around and all told we
had that those are all bits of the plane
and sadly some bodies that were floating
on the surface of the Atlantic Ocean
they were picked up over a course of a
couple weeks the question is where did
they come from
because the winds moving them around the
currents are moving them around and
they’re spread out all over the South
Atlantic and so we need to define the
haystack and more than the haystack
where’s the x marks the spot
lo and behold there was a committee
formulated in France with about ten
people on that committee we knew that
the we knew the last-known position of
the plane we knew the plane was airborne
for four minutes because it was sending
distress calls it didn’t have the
latitude where it was but it said we’re
you know these things are strange about
the plane so we had a circle in four
minutes so we drew a last location in
four minutes so we were able to draw
that circle that you see on the bottom
of the ocean read by the way here is
shallow that’s the top of a mountain
blue is deep that’s about three miles
deeper the modelers
and okay we know within probably 98%
sure that that plane is in that box you
see in the upper left-hand corner of the
circle 98% sure
so we mobilized our team out we went and
we had two months to find the plane in
year one so two months we went the first
month went by didn’t find the plane
second month went by and the pressure
started building as the day’s ticked on
the weeks ticked on the media started
saying these guys are shams they’re not
going to find a plane the families were
getting very upset understandably so the
comfort the countries Brazil and France
saying you know hey you know the modeler
said it’s there and you haven’t found
out what’s going on and then we come
down to the last weekend I was sick to
my stomach is mild to say it was
horrible the pressure was intense
we didn’t find the plane so luckily and
that was terrible but luckily after this
expedition to try to find the plane we
went to Titanic where we knew her
Titanic was and with new technology we
were able to make the most incredible
map of Titanic ever made before and in
history and we were able to take that
back to France and say look we’re pretty
sure that the planes not in that box and
of course the modelers got upset and I
asked we had two modelers that were part
of that 10 person committee and I said
how sure are you guys that that plane is
in that box and they said well we’re not
sure that we don’t think the planes in
that box that’s it well why did we spend
two months looking in the box they said
well was a committee and some people
thought the plane was over here and some
people thought the play was over there
so we drew a big buy I said I don’t know
they said well I said where do you think
the plane is and they said we think it’s
right near at the last known position so
we were able finally to get the
confidence of the families the
confidence of the government and go back
out here and with one boat that’s called
it’s a Lucia and three very new robots
that you see there and I want to tell
you right here if this is not about Dave
Gallo you know I happen to have the
privilege of standing up and sharing
this with you the people that are heroes
here like in many cases our names you
never hear Greg Packard Mike Purcell
Silva and passcode people and those are
guys are women too
that went out there to see that I
already spent two months out there away
from their families in horrible
conditions and now we’re about to go out
for three more months and spend trying
to find the plane with no no there’s no
reward at the end of it all that they
were doing it because they wanted to
help bring some closure and relief to
the families so this is a ship we went
out with we went to that spot and lo and
behold after about seven days there was
a smudge on the sea floor that’s an
image made with sound but it’s very
peculiar you can see it stands out that
little smudge in the middle it’s about
six football fields long and one
football field wide and so we told the
robots go back and take a picture of
that and lo and behold there’s the two
of the engines and the landing gear of
Air France flight 447
now I had just left the ship in Brazil I
was going to take the second of the
three months and I was stopped in Miami
he was just pulling in our driveway at
home and my phone rang and it was the
ship Mike Purcell and ship saying we’ve
been successful I and I was just about
in the same position I looked up in the
sky and there were the planes going over
to to Europe again and it was an
incredibly satisfying moment because our
work instead of being something esoteric
like what do these mountain ranges doing
over the next 100 million years we were
able to help Society
immediately so the next thing we did was
we wanted to bring back a map because
the trick was to find the black boxes
and so this was akin to looking for
something the size of two shoeboxes in
the Rocky Mountains at night with a
flashlight not easy to do so we took
85,000 digital images and made a map
that we were able to turn over to the
investigators the B EA and they sent
another ship out and lo and behold again
there are the black boxes one on the
upper left of two boxes that’s the
flight data recorder in the cockpit
voice recorder and the information was
still on there after two years so this
was your number two and so that was
amazing to me and and we had some
discussions after that that this you
know they said you’ll never find the
plane that planes lost forever and
mostly when a ship sinks in the deep sea
even today we still say we commit
the ship or the plane and the souls
aboard for eternity to the deep and now
here we are we’ve crossed into what we
call eternity so it makes you rethink to
what eternity might be so this was good
and it was not cause for celebration but
it was a moment to reflect on what this
means to the insurance companies to the
aircraft manufacturer Airbus to Air
France and to mostly to those to the
survivors the families of the victims of
this air crash and the thing that made
me happy was I thought we educated the
the airline community about how
difficult it is to find something at sea
and that never again should we allow a
plane to criss cross across the ocean
without being tracked every minute even
after a minute it’s difficult to because
they’re moving at about ten miles a
minute and that’s a big area to search
and when are they talking about that
deep in that rugged and everyone agreed
and then this came along Malaysian
flight 370 on the way from Kuala Lumpur
to baking still missing this was March
8th 2014 the team and there’s been a
team of people out there three boats the
Australian Transportation Safety Board
is running the survey the teams have
been out there they’re getting the
nameless people but out there day and
night for two years and they just came
in to wrap up the first the first part
of that survey and I know how they feel
they feel horrible you know they’ve been
out there all this time because you
start to have self-doubt did we miss it
did maybe the equipment didn’t work
right what do we do next where do we
look if it’s not there where’s the
haystack and so they’re going through
all of that now and the only comfort I
can give them is to tell them that the
plane didn’t leave the planet most
likely so it’s out there and it’s just a
matter of regrouping and going through
all the evidence again find a new
haystack and go look for the sake again
of the aircraft manufacturers and the
Malaysian Airlines but also most
importantly for the 238 victims of their
families and loved ones that’s where
they’re looking along that arc it’s it’s
when they’re done it will be the most
incredible map
were made in terms of area covered on
this planet no one’s ever made that kind
of a map of the seafloor just an
incredible bit of work I just did the
snapshot yesterday at this time just to
give you’ve never seen how many planes
are in the air this is called
flightradar24 so it gives you a snapshot
and I think at any given time there’s
thousands of planes that are Criss
crossing the oceans and in this case
it’s morning so they’re coming from
Europe to North America and then the
afternoon that switches back and they
had from from North America back to
Europe it’s an incredibly safe mode of
transportation it really is it’s it’s
nothing to worry about in fact in two
hours I’ll be hopping on a plane back up
north but what I think the important
message here is that on this planet you
know we’re learning to understand that
the ocean is important to us sometimes
we go there because our curiosity drives
us there we want to know about the life
that lives there we want to know about
things like climate change weather
patterns rainfall patterns all those
things you know the oceans give you
every other breath of fresh air that you
take comes out of the sea two billion
people on the planet depend on the
oceans for food and almost 90 percent of
the rainfall is determined by the ocean
waters about where the heat is and
humidity isn’t not so it behooves us and
so we go because of curiosity but
sometimes we have to go because of a
plane like Malaysian air 370 or Air
France 447 but and thankfully we can go
today no shipwreck or airplane that’s
lost at sea is beyond our reach but it’s
thanks to the ingenuity of people and
the dedicated dedication of people that
build the robots that could take those
robots out to sea and make them work and
are willing to go out there 24 hours a
day for months at a time in harm’s way
to bring back information for us I’ll
leave you with a quote from Marcel
Proust and he said that the true voyage
of exploration or discovery is not so
much in seeking new landscapes which we
do but in having new eyes and in this
case technology has given us new eyes to
see
into the sea and for once actually be
able to penetrate into what we used to
call it turn ‘ti thank you very much [Applause]