today and we’ll start with something
that belongs to you the planet Earth
that doesn’t belong to anybody more than
it belongs to you and the thing about
Earth I’m an oceanographer so I study
oceans and guess what most of the earth
is ocean so all we did here is rotate
the world around take away the clouds
and guess what
all blue and average depth of the ocean
is about two and a half miles so it’s
not easy to explore there in fact today
I’d say we explored about maybe eight
percent of the oceans so if the oceans
earth is mostly ocean that’s like 70%
and we’ve only explored eight percent
that means we’re living at an unexplored
planet we don’t know what’s out there so
it’s not been done it’s not been
explored and the thing that most people
think about the oceans they think it’s a
big blue fishbowl right to stand at the
beach to look out there so they’re
sharks there’s whales if you watch Shark
Week there’s a octopuses and all sorts
of other fish but you know we live on
this planet 7 billion of us live on this
planet so we rely on the ocean so every
breath of fresh air that you take you
can count on the oceans for that half of
the oxygen we breathe comes out of the
sea almost all the rain you get whether
whether it rains or you get droughts all
that rain comes out of the ocean right
90 something percent of the rain comes
out of the ocean the food you eat
there’s about 2 billion people on earth
so 7 billion altogether two billion rely
on the ocean for food so the air you
breathe the food you eat the water you
drink belongs comes out of that ocean
controlled by the ocean and we haven’t
even explored it yet and the thing is
that what we know today is it’s changing
really quickly the chemistry of the
water is changing the temperature the
water is changing things aren’t what
they used to be in fact that’s one of
the big headlines is that this planet
that first picture I showed you was a
snapshot but this planet is constantly
changed mountains come and go oceans
come and go takes hundreds of millions
of years but they do you have
earthquakes volcanoes hurricanes floods
droughts constant change and so what
we’re trying to do is to you know
oceanography split up into two kinds of
directions
one is the exciting stuff what’s out
there at the bottom of the sea you know
and every time we go out we find
something new the other parts the
important part what’s it mean to us you
know what is it that we do that
influenced the ocean and you need to
know that because you’re going to have
to deal with that in the coming decades
ahead and then what does the ocean do
that impacts us you know storms and
things like that so we need to know
about our relationship with the sea but
it all starts with exploring and so if
you take away the water and look at the
bottom of the ocean guess what there’s a
huge mountain range that runs all the
way around the earth it’s just like the
seams on a baseball it’s you can see if
they’re in the middle of the oceans it’s
called the mid-ocean ridge 50,000 miles
long it’s huge it Dwarfs any mountain
range on earth there’s thousands of
peaks along that mountain mountain range
and valleys as well so we’ve got the
world’s greatest mountains the world’s
greatest mountain range the world’s
deepest and widest values are like five
to ten times wider and deeper than the
Grand Canyon
we’ve got underwater rivers we call them
currents when they’re at the surface
there’s a current out there but they’re
at the bottom of the ocean too and and
they’re like rivers they actually move
along the bottom of the ocean just like
river if your average every have a warm
drink whether it’s tea or coffee or
something like that and pour cold cream
in it you’ll see that the cream goes
right to the bottom of the cup that’s
what happens in the ocean the North Pole
South Pole really cold water to equate
our really warm water and when they mix
the cold water goes low and the warm
water stays high so we’re finding all
those things and the most important
thing is that every place we look in the
oceans even in the deepest darkest
places when we go exploring you know my
friend Jim Cameron the guy that did
Titanic Terminator and avatar he built a
submarine with his team and he actually
went to the very deepest part of the
ocean seven miles down by himself and
even in the deepest part of the ocean he
sees life so one of the messages we have
to is that life really does want to
happen on this planet so we find life
everywhere you know the theme here is
illuminate and when we go to the oceans
to explore we have to bring lights with
us there’s no sunlight in most of the
ocean that’s a completely dark world
there’s a close-up of that underwater
mountain range and
what’s neat about it is you see that it
looks like this snake shape in the
middle of the Atlantic Ocean but look at
Africa fits right into it
North America fits right into it South
America fits right into it all those
pieces used to be together so even the
face of the earth the continents are
constantly moving you know we used to be
together Africa and North America and
South America used to be together about
180 million years ago and then they
started moving apart and they’re still
moving apart and so eventually they’re
going to come back together again when
they move apart they make oceans when
they come together they make mountains
it’s an amazing planet so how do we
explore this underwater world and you’ve
got to have technology and that’s our
ship called the Atlantis 50 people go on
that boat they go out thousands of miles
in the middle of nowhere and that’s our
submarine Alvin Alvin helps three people
in a tiny little capsule it’s like it’s
like a miniature car but there’s three
people sitting inside there they will
you out on deck you’re really nervous
it’s hot it’s sweaty at the deck of the
ship everyone wonders should I go to the
bathroom one more time before I go to
the bottom and it’s a long day it’s like
10 hours and this crane picks you up off
the back of the ship puts you over the
side and the minute you hit the water
because you know the surface ship is
noisy there’s machinery there’s all
sorts of stuff going on you hit the
water right there boom totally different
world that blue color penetrates inside
the sphere of the sub you start to hear
the sounds you don’t hear the ship
anymore but you start to hear animals
you hear the pinging of a sonar going
down to the bottom and back up some
divers check you out and say it’s okay
to dive if you push a couple of buttons
down you go three of you so you’re on a
journey into this unknown world the
first half hour you go light blue medium
blue dark blue and then for two hours
pitch-black and we thought there’d be no
life at all down there in the darkness
but guess what full of life the animals
like this this animal here is only about
eight inches long it’s got all these
different working parts
he’s got fishing lures on the bottom and
tentacles and individual stomachs lots
of different stomachs and jet thrusters
and a lightness head full grown to be
longer than this room is wide okay and
so what we used to do with animals like
this like that one looks like it’s out
of Star Wars so this is all work done by
the
advanced imaging lab atwood told my
buddy billy lange and his team and so
now we build cameras now that we know
they’re there okay we never thought they
would be we can go inside there was
really special cameras and have a look
at these animals where they live and
they’ve all got light so like fireflies
in the dark that’s how they communicate
that’s how they attract prey that’s how
they avoid beating so they got all
different ways of using chemicals to
make light and they’re like these death
stars floating around eating those all
those little things you see some of them
are like little jet fighters like little
shrimp and things like that but these
animals even though they’re big and slow
can catch could catch those things and
inside there even though it’s a clear
body they’ve got teeth just like sharks
really sharp little teeth that animals
about that big this guy that’s an
octopus he’s about that big got a great
scientific name squishy you know hey
look at his head you can see through his
head you can see his fins flapping so
every time we go we’re finding stuff
like this you know and that’s the
amazing thing about oceanography and I
I’ve been really privileged to be part
of this for about 30 years so that you
know it’s every time you go down there
and turn on the lights you’re looking at
either a new landscape something new or
some new creature comes out of the
darkness that one’s about 10 inches long
and that’s the real color so it’s like
neon down there at the bottom of the
ocean and with those tentacles it could
be about that that long floating in the
darkness and I’m a geologist by training
so I can just look at animals and say
wow that’s really cool other times you
know we go to the bottom of the sea and
we know what we’re going to find we’re
looking for something like Titanic this
is video from Titanic and the Titanic is
amazing right sank in 1912 over a
hundred years ago and we’ve been
exploring it for the last couple of
decades and aiko led the last expedition
out there with premiere exhibitions and
in NOAA and a couple of other groups and
we’re learning every time we go to
Titanic we learn something every single
year big ships like this sink to the
bottom of the ocean but they’re not
luxury liners like Titanic they’re
they’re usually carrying or or oil or
something like that
and each one’s got their own story so
but from Titanic view we’re sitting
right on the deck right now in the front
of Titanic that’s where the captain
would have been standing in this
would have been when you go to these
spots it’s awesome it’s really
emotionally powerful to be at these
spots when you know what what went on
there so long ago those are some of the
officers cabins on Titanic you know just
a really powerful really powerful moment
to see that and think about what
happened and one of the things we enjoy
doing is getting these stories out of
the sea back from Neptune and Poseidon
and bringing bringing them back so you
can share them too we can share them
with you there used to be when ship sank
we’d say they were gone for eternity to
the deep we committed them for eternity
to the deep well now with technology
were there you know with our robots and
submarines where we’ve crossed this
boundary called eternity now it’s not
just a deep water even in shallow water
strange things happen you know you’ve
got to be pretty good to be able to
survive when a barracuda is looking for
you in octopuses cephalopods can do that
so check this one out this is my work
work of Roger Hanlon at Marine
Biological Laboratory there’s some algae
sitting there but watch this
Roger creeps up on the algae boom that’s
an octopus a big guy too
and that’s his eye right there so once
he’s seen you see what he did he threw
up a cloud of ink and off he goes and
Rogers right behind him but Roger caught
him pretty easily once he was seen and
he tries to bluff by making his ice pot
really big by making his body really big
so we’re going to roll this backwards
and so it’s hard to believe that that
animal on the right
smooth skin light color can turn into
that stuff on the left so he’s got to be
able to prinkle his skin up change the
color of his skin but he does it and he
doesn’t like that boom gone really good
at doing stuff like that so but you saw
what happened once the octopus was
thought he was seeing he took off so
barracuda could learn if I can scare an
octopus it’ll take off then I got it I
don’t have to actually see it so what
octopus is learned to do is shape-shift
so these are optical is that instead of
camouflaging that’s camouflage but here
it looks like a flatfish in some cases
they shape-shift into a piece of coral
that’s an octopus he’s walking on two
legs crinkled up six legs over his head
and sometimes they bundle up like a
coconut sunk to the bottom of the ocean
and they escaped on their two legs which
is really amazing to me there you go so
a barracuda could be looking right at
that and saying I know there’s an
octopus around here but that’s not an
octopus that’s a coconut floating across
the bottom so just amazing things that
that animal can do and that’s the the
bottom line here I think so you know we
could go on and on and on and on there’s
thousands of new species we found
there’s all sorts of stories to be told
from ancient times to shipwrecks
modern-day wrecks and things like that
there’s a whole issue of climate change
there’s a whole thing about not
polluting the oceans so you know it’s
most of the planet but it does belong to
you you know if you don’t care about it
who should care about it so what I
encourage you to do you know if you want
to get into this kind of field you can
be an engineer you can be a scientist
you can be a technician you could be a
cook work on the deck of a ship it’s an
amazing world and that’s the one thing
that those and you know those animals do
amazing things and I promise you that
you can do amazing things too it’s in
all of us our curiosity if you keep your
curiosity alive and get curious about
something you’ll find a way to explore
it and to satisfy your curiosity and I
promise you that in someplace like the
ocean you set you go to find one answer
to one problem you’ll find ten more
questions that get your attention you
know I’ve got a TD it wasn’t easy for me
to get through school but once I got
into exploring the ocean it’s amazing
you know every time I turn around
there’s some new discovery to be made
it’s just it’s just great robots the
whole new world of robots are coming so
that you’ll be able we could actually
sit in this audience right here and and
drive a robot around the Titanic you
could do it on your on your iPhone if
you wanted to but there’s really nothing
like actually being there so in the
future when you see an image like this
one think about that planet and think
you know that’s your planet everybody
all of our ancestors lived on this
planet and for the near future – I mean
you want to go to Mars okay who’s in
kind of virus but after about a hundred
days of nothing but sand I think you’re
going to get a little bit bored up on
Mars this is an amazing planet it’s
still unexplored we still don’t know
what’s out there I’m not here to say hey
look at all the stuff we found and
there’s nothing so we
Lord 8% 92% the rest of it there’s
probably nothing out there I know that
that 92% of the oceans got absolutely
incredible credible things some of them
startling almost all of them surprising
and some of them revolutionary and you
don’t know until you go with your
curiosity out on a boat out on a ship
into a submarine and explore for your
very soul so keep your spirit of
curiosity alive thank you very much [Applause]