Tony Zhou
Hello, listeners. Welcome to our final episode of the Deep Dive with the Schmidt Ocean Institute series. Throughout the series, we’ve shared conversations with the leadership team at the Schmidt Ocean Institute. I am Tony Zhou, a Longitude Fellow at Yale University.

Blake Moya
And I’m Blake Moya, a Longitude fellow at the University of Texas at Austin. We hope you’ve enjoyed the series as much as we have. And in this episode, Tony and I will discuss a few highlights and topics that stood out to us.

Tony
We had the opportunity to interview six members of the Schmidt Ocean Institute team. I had the opportunity to interview Jyotika Virmani. Blake, you had interviewed Miss Corinne Bassin. And we also interviewed four other team members. And the collective understanding was that currently, we’re in a phase where the Schmidt Ocean Institute really is aimed at doing a lot of data collection.

Blake
Yeah, a lot of data collection that requires a huge amount of collaboration with the rest of the oceanographic community. And I think that was a big focus of a lot of the interviews as a part of the series, that bringing the whole community—the whole ocean mapping global team, as it were—together onto one task would be a great way to get it done, and get it done by 2030.

Tony
Right. And I think it really starts with the leadership, making that decision that, okay, this is the initiative that we want to follow through on and how are we going to go about it, and then reaching out to scientists and experts across the world to try to accomplish this task. What were some of your highlights that you had from your interview?

Blake
Well, I was actually gonna jump to one from Jade’s interview. One thing that Jade said in her episode that I think underlies a lot of all of the episodes together of the whole series is that where everyone in a community is driven by the same goal, but has a different perspective, it leads to a surplus of ideas that can propel innovation. And I think that that’s kind of the core of why collaboration helps something like this, like mapping the ocean floor, because as you have so many different people. You have your engineers, your data scientists, and teams from completely different sectors of the global oceanographic landscape, whether commercial or philanthropic, you really have so many different kinds of ideas that as a tinkerer is trying to assemble different ideas into something new. The more parts they have, the more they have to work with, the more interesting kind of things they can put together. And I think that that’s what we see with a lot of the technological aspects of Schmidt ocean Institute’s goals here.

Tony
Yeah, for sure. Having worked on data teams, and done some of grunt work of doing data collection, and probably the analysis part where the data needs to be formatted in a way that we can all use it as a collective team, rather than the data being siloed in individual research teams, because that’s the only way that we can actually come together and collaborate.

Blake
Yeah, when I worked at a neuroscience lab at the University of Texas at Dallas, my lab was actually part of a consortium for neuroimaging data, just like this consortium for seabed mapping data. And it was incredibly useful to have so much data that we didn’t have to go out and collect ourselves for use with testing some kinds of statistical models, or even just validating results of our own. Running an MRI machine is quite expensive, but I can guarantee you it’s nowhere near as expensive as taking a boat out to the middle of an ocean, no matter how small or large the boat is, I guarantee you, it’s quite an undertaking. And so to have people organized to do that in an efficient way is something very, very special for the scientific community that surrounds that data, just like it was for neuroscience.

Tony
Right. Absolutely. I think that’s why the mission at the Schmidt Ocean Institute is so special, because you have from the top down just people really interested in advancing this area of research. And not only are they wanting to improve their data collection, but they’re also improving their systems, as well as their equipment. And even, you know, we had to update that they now have a completely new ship. So now it’s called Falkor (too) and it can now handle the harsher climates in certain extreme areas of the ocean.

Blake
Yeah, and it’s really nice that Falkor (too) can handle those extreme climates. It means that now we’re saving another ship from having to do that, because we know that whatever Falkor (too) collects will become public. And so other people don’t have to be expending resources, there’s less waste in the community the more organized it becomes. And that’s why I think the word “community” is a better fit for what’s happening here, than the word “collaboration,” because while there is so much collaboration going on and it is so valuable, at the core of it, the motive of a project like this both relies on and constructs a community among the scientists who are studying the ocean. And among the people who depend on it, which I think it’s fair to say is everyone. We all depend on the ocean in some way or another, whether it’s because products that we need make their way across the ocean, or because we live on it, or we have to navigate over it. And I think really acknowledging that, you know, this is a planet we all live on. The ocean floor is a part of it. And it’s important to us all. So why shouldn’t we treat it as something that belongs to everyone? I think that community really might be a better word to summarize that principle than collaboration.

Tony
Right. One of the problems that they wanted to work on was building this community up, not only with industry and nonprofit organizations, but also academia, and just having everybody in this community working towards one mission-driven purpose. How would you approach that?

Blake
That’s why I chose Jade’s line there about everyone in the community having the same goal but a different perspective, is that a big challenge is not everyone has the same goal. I think one thing that was mentioned in multiple episodes was that commercial ships will have detailed maps over their trade routes, but there is no interest there. There’s no goal to map anything outside of the relevant route that they’ll traverse across. So it’s hard to actually align the community with that goal, because ships that are gonna travel on a fixed route are basically non-entities in the race to map the ocean floor. So I think it is building that sense of community about the importance of the ocean, fixing the ocean’s PR problem, that will get more people on board, get the program to see the value of this project and this pursuit and to join it.

Tony
I think the Schmidt Ocean Institute, they’re creating great initiatives to try to get people involved. They have their Artist Fellowship, and they also have opportunities where they allow different research teams to come aboard the Falkor and run their experiments, so that anyone who is interested in the ocean can become involved.

Blake
Yeah, it really does harken back to the Edge of Space series that we just finished airing, that it’s all about expanding a community and bringing down barriers to entry to science and discovery and innovation. That’s why I think projects like this are so special, I think it’s a word I might have used a few times, but there really is little else to describe it. And I think that one reason that I very much like these kinds of community-driven projects is because I work a lot with software. And one thing that I talked with Corinne about was the openness of software, open data, open source code. Corinne actually used the phrase “open world” in her vision of the future. I think that is an accurate view. Because the barriers to entry for computer science and software are a bit lower than the barriers to entry of space and the ocean. Just because the primary expense is getting a computer, which of course gets cheaper every year. Once you have that computer with all the open source code that’s around, it’s very easy to get involved with that community. And I think that fields of study with higher barriers are probably going to follow suit, and that is what we’re getting to see the crest of the wave of with the Edge of Space project, the IBM project, and with the Schmidt Ocean Institute here. So it is kind of interesting to get to see it firsthand. It is heartwarming to get to see barriers of entry for all kinds of people get pulled down.

Tony
Right. Especially for the marine biologist. In my interview with Jyotika, she was super enthusiastic about how discovering certain areas of the ocean allowed them to see marine life behave in ways that were completely unexpected, which challenged current theories. And this brings researchers back to the drawing board to rethink some of their theories on certain marine life. And who knows, I’m pretty sure as they continually map the ocean floor, they’re going to discover a lot more things and find a lot more species that we have no idea about.

Blake
And that’s the core of it. We’ve been talking about how, oh, we’re expanding access to this field. But what is this field all about? It’s the study of the ocean, it’s learning what’s beneath the waves, this actual discovery here is really the end result. The more and more people that are able to explore with this data out in the ocean, the more of these discoveries get to be shared, the more people get to be a part of them. And the more often these kinds of discoveries occur. So I think it really is the real goal, the end goal is not just on, let’s understand the ocean and the shape of the ocean floor and have a full map of it, but it’s also understanding the ocean as a whole and the life that’s down there. And what it means for us as other residents of Earth, what our neighbors down below are up to. It’s interesting how global the project gets. I think as someone who doesn’t go to the sea often—I’m from the swampy areas of the Gulf, not much the salty areas—but from someone who doesn’t really feel that tied to the ocean it is kind of crazy to remember like, yeah, that is most of the Earth’s surface.

Tony
Yeah, I know. It’s a lot to explore.

Blake
That’s the PR problem. But not everyone understands that implicitly.

Tony
Yeah. I think within the next decade, there’s going to be a huge explosion. Not only data, but just our understanding of our world. It’s going to be great.

Blake
Yeah. And we’ll get to say that we saw it coming, you heard it here first.

Tony
Yeah, at Longitude (dot site).

Blake
That brings us to the end of our episode in the Deep Dive with SOI series. Thank you all for listening.

Tony
We’re really grateful that the Schmidt Ocean Institute took time to let us learn more about their mission-driven purpose. So follow Longitude on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn to make sure you don’t miss the release of the next Longitude Sound Bytes series. You can also visit our website, longitude dot site, s-i-t-e, for more information and content.

 

Tony Zhou
At the intersection of ideas and action, this is Longitude Sound Bytes, where we bring innovative insights from around the world directly to you.

Hello listeners! Welcome to our latest episode of Deep Dive with the Schmidt Ocean Institute. I’m Tony Zhou, a Longitude fellow from Yale University. Throughout this series, we’ve spoken with the many incredible members of the Schmidt Ocean Institute — a nonprofit organization that conducts scientific marine expeditions. From business operations to data analytics, engineering, and robotics, the Schmidt Ocean Institute has joined the United Nations’ Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development: a global pledge of mapping the entire seabed by 2030.

Over the past decade, the Institute’s research vessel (Falkor) has mapped more than 1.25 million miles of the ocean floor, hosted more than 1,000 scientists on nearly 80 expeditions, and discovered countless new species and deep-sea bathymetry. Today, we are featuring conversational highlights I shared with Dr. Jyotika Virmani, the executive director of the Schmidt Ocean Institute. When not at the helm of advancing the frontiers of global marine research, Jyotika enjoys her ‘spare’ time as an award-winning Science Fiction film producer and writes a humorous informational tropical storm blog.

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Jyotika Virmani
My role here is to oversee the whole enterprise, so not just the operations at sea, but we also have a very robust communications department as well. We’re really building up and developing our data work. We also work with scientists and bringing them on board the vessel, so there’s a lot of things that are going on. My role is to generally oversee all of the different moving parts and make sure it’s all moving in unison.

Tony
Would you be able to tell our listeners how you became involved with the Schmidt Ocean Institute, more or less where you started originally with your education, and the path that led you to where you are now?

Jyotika
I’m from the United Kingdom, and I actually grew up interested in space and astronomy. And living in the UK, one of our big topics of conversation is the weather, so I really got into the ocean through weather and climate and understanding our weather and climate system on the planet. And the ocean is a huge component of that. So I have a PhD in physical oceanography and a master’s in atmospheric science. So that’s really the two big components that control our weather and climate as far as the earth’s ecosystem is concerned, with the sun providing energy from outside. So with my PhD, I have done a few jobs since then. I was Associate Director for the Florida Institute of Oceanography, where we operated research vessels, as well as the Keys Marine Lab. I worked in the UK Met Office, which is a government entity, based in the UK. It’s like the National Weather Service in the US. So I’ve worked for government, and Florida Institute of Oceanography was very much academia. And then I worked also for an organization called XPRIZE, which is- we used to run large international competitions for development of technologies to really address some of the world’s grand challenges. And so I was involved in the ocean technology development projects, prizes, and competitions. And these are multimillion dollar competitions, and they’re global, they’re international. So I was involved in the Wendy Schmidt ocean health XPRIZE, which was to develop pH sensors. So teams from around the world competed about pH sensors to measure ocean acidification changes. We know the climate is changing, it’s impacting the ocean, we didn’t have the technology back then to easily measure those changes. And now we do. I also led the Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE, which was for teams to develop technology to map the sea floor quickly at scale. And now we’re on a track, along with a number of other partners around the world, towards a project called Seabed 2030, which means to map the sea floor by 2030 at a high resolution. Before we launched this competition, which was in 2015, the estimate was it would take two to 300 years to do this. So it’s really pushing that technology forward. That was a nonprofit, so I’ve had experience in different arenas. XPRIZE is my last job before I took this one.

Tony
Yeah, I saw the video of the talk that you gave for XPRIZE on YouTube.

Jyotika
Oh, okay.

Tony
Really interesting. The Longitude series, our podcast series, at least this season, we’ve been interviewing a lot of professionals in the field of oceanography and space. And there’s a lot of parallels between the tech that is needed to do the explorations in ocean and space. Would you say that ocean mapping is probably considered the biggest challenge right now in ocean research? Or are there others?

Jyotika
There are a few big challenges, and technology is certainly helping us to overcome them, because the ocean is so difficult to access and it’s not transparent. To me, mapping the sea floor is fundamental because when you have a map of a place, you have a fundamental understanding of where you are. And it grounds you, kind of, so you know where things are. But the other big challenge is, what’s the biodiversity in the ocean? The ocean encompasses about 95% of the living space on this planet. So if you imagine all the land masses, and the mountains and the forests and the rivers and everything above and all the atmosphere, that’s just 5% of this planet’s living space. And it’s just mind boggling to think of that. So there’s a lot of biodiversity we don’t really even know exists right now.

Tony
Right? So would you say the current data that we have might even be a little biased, because we haven’t explored the depths and the vastness of everything that’s out there in the ocean?

Jyotika
The current data that we have about the ocean is definitely biased. And if you look at history, it’s always been that way. In the old days, people used to think that there was absolutely nothing below the top 100 meters of the ocean, and then someone found something deeper. Technology allowed us to go deeper, and then they realized there’s actually an ecosystem down there. And we’ve got down to the sea floor, on average four and a half thousand meters below the sea surface level. But then the next question is, what’s underneath that as well? So yeah, we’re really very limited in our knowledge,

Tony
In addition to ocean mapping, what are some of the other projects that the Schmidt Ocean Institute is involved in?

Jyotika
We’re actually at an interesting phase at the Schmidt Ocean Institute. We’ve developed a new strategic framework since I came on board, and we’re also actually transitioning vessels. So the vessel that we were using for the last 10 or so years, the Falkor, we’re shifting from that vessel to a much larger vessel that we acquired in March of 2021, Falkor (too), so we’re going to be moving to that larger vessel. And the kind of work that we do, we invite scientists from around the world to come and bring their projects. We have a proposal process, review process. And it varies from mapping the sea floor to assessing the biodiversity. We’ve had projects that look at the sea surface layer using drones, even above water drones, to really use cameras to look at the sea surface layer and to look at harmful algal blooms. We’ve had scientists who look at hydrothermal vents, which is an entirely fascinating, different kind of ecosystem, and look at the chemical composition and health of the ocean as well. So it’s really a range of scientific activities, but we also support technology development. So for marine technology development, for those working in marine technology, to test new and innovative sensors, to test new and innovative technologies. Last year we tested some really, really interesting underwater technology that basically uses a laser light beam. And so jellyfish, for example, could swim through that, and you get like a 3D scan of what the composition of the jellyfish is. Part of the problem is, some of these creatures are so delicate, it’s hard to bring them to the surface without damaging them to really study them. And so being able to study things underwater in situ is really important.

Tony
That’s really cool. That kind of reminds me of like, holograms and body scans. So would you say then that you’re more involved in the science and the research side, or the financial side? Or do you balance both? And depending on that, what are some things that you consider when assembling effective teams for these projects to surround yourself with?

Jyotika
So the Schmidt Ocean Institute is more involved in science, pushing on the science and technology development. And critically, the open sharing of data is very important to our mission, because we believe the faster you can share data, the faster discoveries are made, and the faster action can be taken. So we offer this research vessel and high performance computing system. We have a very sophisticated underwater robot, all of that at no cost to scientists. And that’s where the philanthropy really comes in and supports that, because it’s quite expensive to go to sea. And in exchange, we ask that they make their data quickly available, openly available as fast as they can, in that spirit of open data sharing. So that’s the Schmidt Ocean Institute. Me personally, I look at the science, but I also look, of course, at the finance. I sometimes work with the communications team on messaging, or talk to data systems architects on data topics. So really I do a variety of things. We have partnerships and collaborations with other entities across the US as well as across the world. We’re a partner in the UN Decade, we’re actually an Ocean Decade Alliance member. And Wendy Schmidt is a patron of the ocean decade. The UN has designated this next decade, 2021 to 2030, as a decade of ocean science for sustainable development goals, so we’re a part of them. We’re a partner with Seabed 2030. We have a number of partnerships and collaborations.

Tony
Very cool. Very interesting. What are some things in the project that have been accomplished which you didn’t necessarily expect along the way?

Jyotika
So I joined right when the pandemic started. Before I joined, we had laid out the expeditions, brilliant people that work at Schmidt Ocean Institute had mapped out what 2020, what 2021 would look like as far as expeditions. And of course, with the pandemic, all of that changed. We were fortunate in that we were off the coast of Australia when it really came about. But one of the things that I worked on with the team here is to make sure that we continue to do safe operations at sea throughout the whole pandemic. So we continued operations, but it meant that we had to do a lot of pivots and changing of plans. So we actually stayed in Australia, and it was really great. We stumbled across the largest sea creature, a siphonophore. It’s about 45 to 50 meters in length. And so that was a serendipitous finding. In October of 2020, we had another surprise discovery. We were doing some systematic mapping off the coast of Northeast Australia, so Coral Sea, Great Barrier Reef region, and we found a new coral reef. It’s like, you know, a 500 meter tall coral reef. It’s pretty tall. So that was a new discovery, the first time something like that has been discovered in about 120 years in that region. And then the same week, we caught the first sighting of what’s called a Ram’s Horn Squid, Spirula, which has never been seen in the wild before, in underwater.

Tony
Is that a giant squid?

Jyotika
No, it’s not very big, but what’s remarkable is every time it has been captured, and it’s in captivity, it swims the other way round, every single time. And this is the first time scientists had seen it swim in its natural habitat. And it swims the other way. It’s like upside down. And so you know, quite literally, that one piece of video turned the squid science community on its head, turned them upside down, because all their theories of how the squid acts in the ocean—because that’s what they’ve seen in captivity—are kind of thrown out of the water really.

Tony
Oh, no.

Jyotika
So that was a surprise finding. Because the ocean is so vast, every time we go down there, there is always something amazing and new, or rarely seen out there.

Tony
Wow. Yeah, very cool. I think I love the water and the ocean, but also one of my biggest fears is being stranded out in the ocean because I would have no idea what’s underneath. I don’t know, is this maybe just a thought in my head.

Jyotika
That’s okay. There’s a word for fear of the oceans. It’s called thalassophobia. So because you can’t see it- that’s why, yeah.

Tony
Right. Yeah.

Jyotika
And we also have a wonderful Artist at Sea program.

Tony
Oh, right. Yeah, I saw that. You do. Would you mind explaining more about that?

Jyotika
Yeah. So the Artists at Sea Program is where we bring an artist on board to sail with the scientists so they can learn about the science that’s going on. They spend whatever amount of time, it could be a two-week cruise, it could be one month long, really learning and interpreting the science in their own way through art. And so we now have a collection of different pieces of art, ranging from paintings and photography to knitting to sound-based art. It’s a program that has been going on for a few years now. It’s a way of reaching audiences and reaching public who may not read the science, but would appreciate the art.

Tony
And to make it more accessible. Yeah, I think now there’s a lot of integration of both the humanities and sciences to try to blend both fields together in a lot of projects. So yeah, that’s very cool, because I do data science right now, but prior to that I studied music.

Jyotika
Oh, perfect.

Tony
It’s really cool to hear about these things. So what are some of the most important lessons you’ve learned over your career? It could be at the Schmidt Institute or anywhere else.

Jyotika
One of the things that I’ve faced repeatedly is perseverance. You start off thinking, this is how things are gonna go, and then something happens. And you shouldn’t get disheartened. You know, I’ve had some big setbacks, but just break down what the steps are. I think if you’re facing a mountain to climb, just break it down into small steps, and take the first, and take the next, and eventually you’ll get to the other side. For example, when I was doing my PhD, I lost my four or five years’ worth of data and work, and I had to kind of restart, not quite, but kind of. So it took me a long time to get my PhD, longer than some of my colleagues, but I did get it, and during the way, I learned so much more. I learned so much that it set me up for afterwards, where I came out of my PhD with all this additional experience and knowledge. So I could have quit after losing that many years of work through no fault of my own. So yes, when things look rough, just don’t panic. Take a deep breath and persevere.

Tony
Yeah, I totally agree. I think those points where you’re at a crossroad are such defining moments, because I personally think they set habits, they mentally set habits into your decision making, and how you will build as a person. It’s really generous of you to share that. So would you say these lessons that you’ve learned, a lot of them are through your own personal experiences? Or would you say you’ve also had the influence of mentors, or people in your life who have helped guide and navigate you?

Jyotika
Yeah, I’ve had a lot of good people surrounding me, especially during those times. For example, the PhD example I just gave, a lot of your audience is students. My PhD advisor was very much like, okay, here are some other options for you to think about and consider, and what do you think about this? Instead of saying, well, that’s it. It was really a collaborative, encouraging environment to keep moving forward. And another example is with the pandemic. That’s a recent example, where many research vessels, many vessels around the world were pulling into port in the early days to basically wait it out. And we instead pulled together the team and worked through it one day by day, there were some days where it was hour by hour that things were changing, but just working through it together with the same end goal, and persevere, and we found some great things in the ocean. So I’m glad we managed to do that.

Tony
So when you pull your team together, do you think you lead with big picture approaches, or are you more detail-oriented? Or little bit of both depending on the situation?

Jyotika
I think it’s both. I think you need to have a big picture that everyone’s aiming towards. But I think things can go awry if you don’t pay attention to the details.

Tony
Yeah. What would you say for students who are interested in working in this field, what are some important qualities or skills that they would have to either build towards or embody to be successful?

Jyotika
I think this is an amazing time to be in oceanography. I think this next 10 years with the ocean decade, and the focus on ocean sciences, means there’s a lot of energy and a lot of resources being put into oceanography. I think the other reason it’s great to be in oceanography right now is because of the technology. We’re undergoing this fourth industrial revolution, or technology revolution, if you like. And technology is allowing us to access the ocean. It’s kind of like exploring a new planet, right? It’s unknown. It’s new discoveries. And the technology is really allowing us to do that. So I think for those two reasons alone, it’s really great to be in oceanography at the moment. It’s a life of adventure, of travel, you get to see things that very few people on the planet really get to see and experience, and what you do is helping everyone. The ocean is such a large portion of our lives, what makes us all live on this planet. But then I think the other thing about oceans is it’s a very difficult place to work. And you made the analogy earlier between ocean and space. It’s a really difficult place to work. I think even if you work in oceanography to start with, there’s always other planets in the future as well.

Tony
Yeah, that’s very interesting to think about.

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Tony
We hope you enjoyed these highlights as much as we did! Mapping the sea floor is a fundamental step that would lay the foundation for a new age of marine discovery. Examples such as how the Ram’s Horn Squid Spirula swims in the wild not only urges researchers to re-examine current theories of this animal, but build upon this mysterious world in the ocean.

Being in the context of a research university, I’m really grateful for how the exponential growth in computation power and data has provided researchers a dynamic edge in our analysis and overall decision-making. Industry 4.0 will no doubt usher in a wave of advancements such as artificial intelligence, robotics, and genomic editing, but it will be ocean exploration and research that builds towards our sustainable future.

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We hope you enjoyed today’s segment. Please feel free to share your thoughts over social media and in the comments, or write to us at podcast@longitude.site. We would love to hear from you. Join us next time for more unique insights on Longitude Sound Bytes.

 

 

Blake Moya
At the intersection of ideas and action, this is Longitude Sound Bytes, where we bring innovative insights from around the world directly to you.

I’m Blake Moya, Longitude fellow from the University of Texas at Austin. Welcome to our Longitudes of Imagination series, where we are exploring the roles of individuals, technologies and research that are helping advance understanding of our oceans!

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We spoke with the members of the Schmidt Ocean Institute, which is a philanthropic foundation that is enabling scientific expeditions on their research vessel Falkor at no cost to the world’s scientists. As part of the UN’s Ocean Science Decade, they are also contributing to a worldwide effort in mapping the entire ocean floor by 2030.

In today’s episode we are featuring highlights from a conversation I led with Corinne Bassin, Data Solutions Architect at SOI. As a Statistics PhD student, I was interested to hear about how researchers handle the massive amounts of data collected so far out at sea. We started our conversation with her explanation of the kinds of data the research vessel Falkor collects.

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Corinne Bassin
My academic background, way back when, is a mix of mathematics and oceanography, in general or science. So I have a bachelor’s in math, and a master’s in interdisciplinary marine science. Over my career, I’ve kind of straddled the areas that are more applied mathematics, and Earth Science, both in academic institutions as well as government. I’ve worked at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and I’ve also spent some time in the tech industry. And so now at Schmidt Ocean Institute, it kind of brings all these pieces together. For me, I’m the Data Solutions Architect. I’m basically working to help create a more standardized pipeline for the data we collect on our research vessel, and getting that data all the way out for students, scientists, anyone really. Open data to be used and made accessible.

Blake
So can you tell me a little bit about this research vessel and the kinds of data that you are cleaning and preparing?

Corinne
Sure, so the vessel that we’ve been using is the research vessel Falkor. And I’ve only been a part of Schmidt Ocean Institute for about nine months, though they have 10 years or more of data. So I’m still, as you can imagine, going through oceans of data, to get up to speed. The vessel has a variety of both Oceanographic and Atmospheric sensors that are always available when the ship is out, and also scientists may come aboard and bring additional sensors as well, or systems. We also have the Remote Operated Vehicle, Subastian, which is tethered to the vessel, but can go down 1000 meters and take video imagery, collect other samples, literally collect samples off of the ocean floor, collect water, and has sensors for getting things like temperature, salinity of the ocean, etc.

Blake
Wow. And that sounds like a lot of sophisticated machinery. So my first thought, as someone who also has to deal with data cleaning as a statistician, is, is the machinery sophisticated enough to come to you, or for the data to come to you in a pretty nice-looking form already? Or are there some common issues that come up?

Corinne
Right. I mean, whenever you’re collecting data, the sensors themselves generally have their own ways of spitting the data out. Most of these sensors have a variety of ways of putting data out, whether it’s in binary form, or just text data to files. We have some software and we’re working on building out more to interconnect these systems and make a more standardized pipeline, both to get the data out into files that are readable for both humans and computers, as well as putting them into databases and taking a step towards creating analysis-ready data.

Blake
Yeah, I worked for a time in neuroimaging, and the lab that I was a part of had joined a data-sharing consortium where all of the data that we collected and added to the database would have to be reformatted to match exactly what the guidelines for the Consortium’s data were, so that it’s more useful for other people.

Corinne
Right, and a lot of times each of these sensors may be taking data in different dimensions, and so you need to deal with- we haven’t even touched on the quality of the data itself. But just getting it onto more standardized time and distance and depth dimensions so that you can use some of the data together. But initially, you also just have to make sure that all the sensors are putting data out, and they haven’t turned off or run into other issues, or are running outside of their calibration or accuracy standards. So there are a lot of steps involved for sure to get there.

Blake
I believe, if I understand correctly, you have a bit of a knack for data visualization, a bit of an interest for it.

Corinne
Yeah, I love data visualization.

Blake
I do too. And I think that there’s a really hard balance to strike between what is easy for a machine to read and communicate, what’s easy to transfer between different computers, and then what’s easy to communicate from the computer to the person on the receiving end of the information. So do you want to talk a bit about how you tackle those kinds of issues, and balancing the communication of what I imagine is very high dimensional, very precise data?

Corinne
Yeah, it’s an interesting question. I see those two as pretty separate pieces. In some ways, although there’s a lot of steps involved in making data flow through a pipeline, and standardizing it, there’s a point where you can say, okay, here is how we are going to standardize the data and make it machine readable. Or you can create an API or say that you’re going to put the data into a JSON or CSV or some kind of format, and you’re going to let other computers know that this is the format, and this is how they get the data. So although that’s challenging to do, you get to specify it. When you’re dealing with humans, even when you think you’ve created something that’s clear, you never know how people are going to interpret it. A computer, you understand how it’s going to interpret it, but people you don’t. So when it comes to visualizing for actual humans, there’s a lot of different things that go into play. I mean, obviously thinking about who is your audience? And what is their use case? Whether it’s someone who’s more technically advanced, or a student, or a policy manager? But also what do they want out of it? And then also, what are you trying to get across? Sometimes we make data visualizations to bring someone into the data to explore and not necessarily to make a point, but maybe just to view and be pulled in by the data versus telling a specific story. People oftentimes think, well, I have this data, this is the kind of graph I can make with it. But realistically you need to think about not just what you have, but what are the questions? What’s the story? Is there a story? It basically becomes a journal article in and of itself.

Blake
Yeah. And I think one large thing, too, though, is you do want to first get people to want to get more involved, especially if it goes to a lay audience, right? To build interest in something like seafloor mapping, you first want people to want to read more about what’s happening. And I think the visualization serves a huge role in actually sparking the initial interest into reading about what is ultimately a bunch of really large spreadsheets.

Corinne
Absolutely. And I think a lot of people will underestimate the really simple pieces of beauty when it comes to data visualization. But thinking about fonts and colors, and whether or not someone is going to be colorblind, or how it’s going to affect them, is a really big step in getting someone to continue to read or look at that data visualization. I think especially in the sciences, earlier in my career, and until recently, a lot of times that wasn’t given as much weight as it should have been in terms of creating some of these visualizations. We would say, well, it’s just for science. But each of these pieces are important, and how even subconsciously you take in the data.

Blake
Yeah, as a statistician I think the whole science comes down to, you have a bunch of data that is not interpretable to humans and you have to get it into a human digestible format. People choose different ways about what the important numbers, the important statistics are to communicate, what the good graphs are to communicate. But the end goal of science as a whole—I might be biased, because I’m a statistician—is to get that communication of what has been discovered or what has been collected by these machines or these vessels.

Corinne
Something else that’s been interesting in the last few years that’s really happened in our larger society with data visualization is that we’re starting to have a more informed audience in terms of data visualizations, especially because of COVID. Prior to COVID, you didn’t see nearly the amount of graphs and maps and things that now are taken for granted, so you don’t need to necessarily explain what the axes are and what they mean. And just having some of this general basic knowledge really changes what we’re able to do with our audience.

Blake
Yeah, the discussion of log scale on graphs at the beginning of the pandemic was a huge one.

Corinne
Right. Exactly.

Blake
Also, this is just a technical question for myself, what programs or what software do you use to generate your visualizations?

Corinne
Yeah, great question. It depends, is the answer. And new things are coming out all the time, and it’s getting a lot easier. I very much used to work a lot with just hand coding in D3, which is a JavaScript library for visualization. Even the original creator of D3 has now moved on to make it simpler to use D3. So it’s getting easier and easier. I am a Python and JavaScript programmer. So there’s a variety of tools available in Python as well, like Bouquet. But sometimes I do things simply in Google Sheets. It just depends. It depends what I’m trying to do.

Blake
So I know that you had given me a disclaimer about your involvement on the Seabed 2030 project, but if you can, would you share what you know about Seabed 2030?

Corinne
Sure. Generally, Seabed 2030 is working as a consortium I think, but with a variety of groups involved, to try and map the symmetry of the ocean by 2030. Less than 20% of the ocean floor is currently mapped. It’s crazy to think about that when you look at how much we know about Mars, really through a combination of both institutions and academic organizations, but even individuals with vessels who might have systems on their vessel for mapping bathymetry, trying to process all of that data and make it available for a variety of uses to move science forward.

Blake
And so the data that you work with of the collection from Falkor and Subastian, not bathymetry?

Corinne
We do have, no, we do- we are definitely part of the Seabed 2030 project. We collect bathymetric data from the RV Falkor, and it is very large data in terms of how many bytes you collect, and it needs to be cleaned and processed, which is a challenge. But we work with other partners who are very good at that, to process it and then put it out into public repositories and send it off to Seabed 2030 as part of that project as well.

Blake
And maybe a question with the silly source that I just thought of, but I imagine while all this data is being collected on the vessel, it’s probably difficult to wirelessly transmit it back to land. So is it wirelessly transmitted? Or is it that it travels by sneakernet? And somebody just walks on the boat and grabs the drive and walks it back?

Corinne
Yeah, this is specifically a problem with bathymetric data because it is very large, but really all of our data. All the data collected, some of it is small, and you could send it wirelessly potentially. Not that long ago it was very common, and still is pretty common, for the data collected on oceanographic research vessels to just be put onto a hard drive. And then once you got to shore, the hard drive is walked off the vessel and sent somewhere. We’re currently working on strategies to make that happen more livestream, especially with new satellite technologies that are coming out. But we’re definitely way in the early stages. We currently use a combination of it. Sometimes we’re able to get some data off the ship wirelessly, and other times we use a system that brings it off the boat on a type of hard drive, but then is put up directly into the cloud, as opposed to handing it to someone. It’s a little bit of everything at the moment. But the amount of data collection and the ability to connect to the cloud when you’re far off on the ocean is an issue.

Blake
I realize now how much I take cloud-based technology for granted because it’s been so long since I’ve needed to actually use a thumb drive. But I remember when people first started talking about- I was like, the cloud, where is the cloud? I don’t know if I trust it. And now it’s pretty much everywhere except for, I guess, in the middle of the ocean.

Corinne
Yeah, it’s interesting, because one of the issues now is that most data architecture systems, or companies that build things, are just trying to make it so simple. Oh, just use our cloud infrastructure. But we don’t always have access to that. And so we have to use a combination of older school methods of doing things, but also have it available to sync to the cloud when we can, or do a little bit of both. So sometimes organizations and businesses move forward quickly, but not everyone is able to take part in the systems they’re building.

Blake
Yeah, I remember hearing about the difficulty in bringing high speed internet to offshore oil rigs. Being from Houston, you know, they’re all out there, so you just hear a lot about it. But one of the things was that the people that are working on the rig, they need break time and you want them to have at least high enough internet to go FaceTime with people back home, but that was a struggle to get a network of that capability out only as far as just beyond the shelf. And even then these rigs aren’t speeding across the entire ocean. So it just leaves the problem of how difficult it really is to connect and network globally, not just overland, not just over static bodies, but even when you’re moving all the way around the globe.

Corinne
Right, exactly. And Schmidt Ocean Institute is definitely looking into new and different ways and really wants to push that ability and make it more possible, not just so that we can get data off the ship in real time, but also to allow people to be effectively on the ship that aren’t on the ship, to allow scientists or people from places that maybe wouldn’t ever have access to be able to really see and be a part of the live data streams. And it was something that I think was of interest before COVID. But again, COVID shows us why it’s so valuable to be able to do things like telepresence, and be able to have people in different places and be a part of that data.

Blake
Yeah, to actually use the global network we’ve been building for the last 30-40 years. One thing that we like to hit on in these interviews is what you think propels innovation, or how you think of new solutions to problems like, you know, mapping the ocean floor and going global with this consortium-style data effort. What you think drives these kinds of solutions to problems in people?

Corinne
Gosh, I don’t know that I have a good answer to that. I think right now, there’s a variety of different things going on in the world. But for me personally, what I’ve seen in the last, I don’t know, 10 years, is a pivot towards more of an open science, open data, open world kind of platform. Meaning that as anyone puts in all these resources to explore the ocean in these vast areas that we know actually very little about, that we’re not just saying, I’m the only one that’s gonna figure this out, but really, if one person goes and collects some data, that they understand that there’s more that can come from the value of sharing it and making it open, and allowing others to use it, especially 10 years down the line, 50 years down the line. It’s possible someone else will use that data in a way that we could have never foreseen. And so the more and more we collect, and the more and more we make open and accessible, the unseen value that we can collect from it down the road.

Blake
Yeah, I think that’s very true. It makes me think, again, I’d mentioned earlier, we’ve spent 30-40 years building up our internet architecture, the global network, and I remember hearing a long time ago that something like 60 to 70% of websites on the internet use this one little script that had been put out somewhere at the core of some CSS script a long time ago. And it’s just spread and proliferated, because they shared it. And it was useful. And now it’s everywhere, right? Which we can see the same throughout. Not just technology that we use for commerce and communication, but science and information knowledge as well. So what do you foresee? Or what do you hope to see as the direction of this kind of ocean science in the next four to five years, both through the communication and the technology?

Corinne
That’s a great question. I think that one, I’m hopeful that we’ll be able to do more as a community, to really bring the public into understanding the value of understanding the ocean, not just inherently, but for what it means for the earth and for climate, and that all these systems are highly interconnected. And I think we do that through a variety of visualization and storytelling. And also, like I said, making data and the science available in a way that it doesn’t feel like it’s held in a tall tower, a tower that is away from everyone. I think we’re finally turning in that direction. And I think it’s also really exciting to see that the up and coming students and new researchers that are coming into oceanography and Earth sciences in general, all have these mixed backgrounds, tend to have ability in computer science that never was there before. And I think we’re gonna see this huge power with the data and software and science moving forward.

Blake
All right, I had expected you to say, hoping for some data standardization to make things a little bit easier, but it’s good. I like the inspirational route, that is beautiful to hear.

Corinne
I’m a little jaded on data standardization, I think. I think it’s more likely we need to all just be aware of what our data actually is. And know that, you know what? Messy can be beautiful, too.

Blake
Yeah, you’re right, it’s actually less optimistic to look forward for the public understanding of the ocean as a whole, the opening up of science, than it is for people to just pick a standard and go for it.

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Blake
My talk with Corinne helped me make an important connection between the sentiment about communication many data scientists share and the sentiment of openness in Corinne’s remark “open science, open data, open world.” Data science is primarily a communication problem: the communication of relevant insights from difficult-to-interpret data. I think people like Corinne and I, who enjoy being able to distill and deliver these insights, want to see them delivered far and wide because we enjoy and value sharing knowledge. It’s no wonder, then, that so many data scientists that I know are so interested in open source programs, open access data, and open access publications. And who can blame them? After hearing from Corinne just how much hard work and creativity goes into developing science like this, it’s no wonder she’ll enjoy seeing it shared by people across the world, who’ll soon be able to peer into the lowest depths of the oceans that surround us.

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We hope you enjoyed today’s segment. Please feel free to share your thoughts over social media and visit Longitude.site for the episode transcript. Join us next time for more unique insights on Longitude Sound Bytes.

 

Chinenye Oguejiofor
At the intersection of ideas and action, this is Longitude Sound Bytes, where we bring innovative insights from around the world directly to you.

My name is Chinenye Oguejiofor, a Longitude fellow from Tilburg University.

Welcome to our Longitudes of Imagination series, where we are exploring the roles of individuals, technologies and research that is helping advance understanding of our oceans!

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In today’s episode we are featuring highlights from a conversation I led with Mr. Errol Campbell, the Remotely Operated Vehicles Manager at Schmidt Ocean Institute, which is a philanthropic foundation that is enabling scientific expeditions on their research vessel at no cost to the world’s scientists. As part of the UN’s Ocean Science Decade, they are also contributing to a worldwide effort in mapping the entire seabed by 2030.        

As a global law student, I was interested to hear about the amount of work it takes to map the ocean floor and what kind of tasks you would have to accomplish to fulfill that goal.

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Errol Campbell
I have been with Schmidt Ocean Institute for just over four years now. I’m in my fifth year with them after many years in other fields as an ROV manager, ROV pilot, technician, supervisor, superintendent, offshore manager, operations manager, etc. My previous time was spent either in the military or in the oil industry. So the split was roughly about 18 years in the military, 18 years in the oil industry, and laterally, my fifth year in science and research with Schmidt Ocean Institute.

Chinenye
That’s fascinating. Regarding Schmidt Ocean Institute, would you mind explaining what Schmidt Ocean Institute is and what an ROV manager’s job is?

Errol
Schmidt Ocean Institute is a philanthropic foundation, a marine science and research institute where we enable the world’s scientists to study what they want to study throughout the world’s oceans. It was founded and funded by Eric and Wendy Schmidt, where they purchased a vessel called the RV Falkor. And latterly, we have just bought just another vessel, which is named Falkor (Too). Currently the Falkor original, as we like to call it- both vessels are in Vigo, Spain. The new vessel was an R&M, oil and gas subsea construction vessel, currently in a shipyard in Vigo to be outfitted to become a science and research vessel. And the other vessel, the Falkor, has just finished all its science, and we brought it over to Vigo to go alongside Falkor (Too) to cross deck and transition all the equipment that we are taking from the original vessel on to the new vessel. So that’s what the vessels are doing at the moment.

We solicit proposals from the world’s leading scientists and we typically get about 300 a year. We have a committee and executive committee that reduce these proposals down to around about maybe 12-ish, that we will decide to support for that coming year. That is based on quite a few different things. It is based on geographical location. Typically we pick an area that we’re going to operate for that calendar year. Obviously it makes sense if, for example, the last couple of years we’ve been circumnavigating Australia, so the bulk of our scientists came from the Southeast Asia and Australia area. And the focuses we had identified for the last couple of years were the plastics, tsunami hazards, coral reefs, coral preservation, etc. So again, depending on the geographical location and the preferred field of study for that period will determine on what scientists we support. Once we decide who we’re going to support we will typically allocate them vessel time. So just for ease, say we pick 12 different science groups, then we would allocate a time slot for each group of scientists.

Chinenye
To study it?

Errol
Once a year. One will join in January and conduct science typically for a month. And then we’ll take them back in and bring on the next group and take them out. We also have provided whatever platforms they need to conduct their science on our vessel. And depending on what they’re studying, if they need the ROV, if they want the ROV, if they want all our science sensors, if they want to do mapping, if they want to take whatever kind of samples, we plan ahead of time, and we prepare accordingly to accommodate the relevant science group. We have two ROV’s. We have our ROV Subastian, which is a big work class ROV, typically the size of a big SUV, has robotic arms and sensors, the ability to take samples, whatever the samples may be. They may be rock samples, sediment samples, it could be gas, water, whatever samples, and obviously, we film everything as well in 4k video, and live stream most of our dives on YouTube.

Chinenye
Yes, I watched them! Some of your YouTube videos. It was very fascinating.

Errol
Yeah, it is really good. And that’s one of our goals, is to attract a larger audience and pass on our knowledge. And that is the key driver of the big deliverable from the science community, is that everything we do find has to be shared and accessible, so that’s one of the caveats to our supporting scientists. Okay, we will take you to where really want to go, we’ll enable you to do what you want to do, but you’ve got to share what you find.

Chinenye
I recently read an article that said that within the US specifically, since that is where SOI is based, people assume because scientists who study ocean mapping are doing this based off of taxpayers’ money, that all the information has to be shared. Would you say that this is the situation all around the world? Because, as far as I’m aware, as of 2017, that’s when ocean mapping became more of a phenomenon worldwide- would you say that it’s the case that around the world, they do tend to share the data that they get when mapping the ocean floors?

Errol
Yes, I would say. Obviously there’s been certain types of mapping or whoever done for self-interest in the commercial world. But I think the push for Seabed 2030 is bringing everyone together to share the data. So I can’t say for certain who pays for the data acquisition, but I think the trend now and the objective of this is for everyone to share their data.

Chinenye
Honestly I find it very interesting.

Errol
There’s many reasons you map the ocean floor, you know. So obviously, it’s great to map it to know what we’ve got and it gives us a knowledge of what’s where, and helps our studies or the world’s ocean, whether that be for whatever reason you’re studying it. The most exciting thing from an ROV perspective is we can identify areas of interest, because there’s so many areas, depends on your perspective on it, right? It makes us so much more efficient from a scientific perspective. If the area has been marked, for example, when it identifies hydrothermal vents or whatever, wheel falls or whatever it identifies, we can target dive with our ROVs much more efficiently, we can go straight to where we want to dive and dive, it means the ROV is not looking for something to dive on, you’re not wasting days and days of ROV time, vessel time, trying to find what you want to study. You know if the seabed has been marked for example, then you know exactly where you want to go.

Chinenye
So you enjoy having that certainty of knowing where your ROV is going?

Errol
Yeah, it just makes everything so much more efficient because you’ve taken a team of scientists offshore. The last thing you want to do is waste days and days looking for something you really want to be getting samples 24/7 if possible.

Chinenye
Understandable.

Errol
I would say the biggest highlight for me would be identifying targets of interest.

Chinenye
Speaking of your ROV management, as a Remotely Operated Vehicle manager, what would you say is the hardest part of your job?

Errol
People probably. There are several things. We’re quite fortunate in this situation with SOI, because I’ve got a very long experienced background and a lot of contacts in the ROV industry globally. I’m from Scotland. I’ve lived in America, lived in Singapore, have operated globally for many years. So I have a really good network. So that helps, but keeping good people in the pandemic impact has been a big challenge for us. Our ROV Subastian goes to four and a half thousand meters deep. So if you’re putting a high voltage and electronics and hydraulics and everything, four and a half thousand meters below the ocean, it’s always challenging. So it varies, really. Making sure you’ve got good, competent people, and then dealing with all the technical challenges, dealing with scientific challenges. There’s nothing really bad, but there’s lots of different challenges. There’s nothing that I dread and nothing that we can’t overcome. But, you know, there’s different challenges, different times, sometimes weather is a challenge, anything.

Chinenye
Well, as they say, teamwork makes the dream work. And you surely put that to practice.

Errol
Yeah, absolutely. If you listen to all our scientists, we do end the trip with briefs from all our science groups. And when you hear them, that’s one of the biggest things they say about SOI and the Falkor original, how good it was, and how accommodating it was, and how much of a team spirit there is. Everybody helps. If something breaks, every department will help to fix it, whether that’s the ROV technicians, whether we have to involve the engineers or the marine technicians. And so you’re right about the teamwork.

Chinenye
I really appreciate it. Because as technology keeps evolving, and as we’re moving on centuries, it seems that people keep relying more on machinery as compared to human beings. We can fix said machinery in the event that something goes wrong, so it is nice to see an initiative that focuses more on the core teamwork that helps make the machines run in the first place. Now in regards to how creative you can be on the job, I understand with being an ROV manager and working with the different types of scientists that you have, and the proposals that they bring in at the same time, is there any room for creativity in your research process? Or in your collection process as well?

Errol
Yeah. Always. But for most of the science we do, it can be repetitive. Some you’ve done before, whether it be using gas tights, or majors, or niskin bottles for water samplers, or rock boxes, core samplers, whatever. It can be repetitive, you know what I mean. But we’re always making things for the scientists and the scientists are always bringing new pieces to integrate onto our ROV, and there’s always room to make things better. And it’s just an ever-evolving process. If you bring something to put on the ROV tomorrow, and my team can look at that and say, it would be better if we did this, or if we did that, or whatever, then we’re always working together to enable the scientists to do what they need to do, and do it more efficiently.

Chinenye
So there’s always some sort of room for creativity with the different minds that come together to make this project a success.

Errol
Absolutely.

Chinenye
That’s always nice to hear.

Errol
Yeah. Again, typically, you’re well-prepared ahead of time. Because when we do this process of cruise planning, then we know. We have cruise calls, like six months out, three months out, a month out, so we’re really addressing all your questions in the months preceding up to your cruise, with a goal of being totally prepared. Although it does happen on the job, and always will, we try to be as best prepared as possible. Sometimes we’ll test things before the cruise. We’ve got engineers that take the drawings of whatever we’re trying to integrate, and we’ll have planned integration on to the ROV ahead of time so we’re not trying to figure it out and waste your time when you arrive.

Chinenye
With that in mind, what would you say exactly is, or if there is, a sort of formula to get the results that you intend to get? As you said, you have routine checks six months before the cruise, six months before the research itself is done. But for there to be room for creativity and imagination in garnering of your results, is there any formula to it, do you say? One person checks whether the ROV’s are working, another person checks where the other scientists are lined up, etc., and they assess whether the scientists have any creative ideas? Is there some sort of formula for it?

Errol
There is a process. A formula? I’m not so sure.

Chinenye
But a process instead of a formula.

Errol
The processes and procedures we have in place for everything, everybody’s working on it. We look at a science proposal, and then once we’ve got all that information, then many teams are working on it. The outreach media teams now are all working on how we’re going to live stream these. The ROV team are looped in and planning on integration sensors or whatever. The MTs, marine department, are looking at what their deliverables are from a mapping perspective, or a sample perspective, right up to the chief officer and the captain of the vessel. They’re involved in it, they know where they need to go, what they need to do. Are we transiting from A to B? Are we mapping this? You know what I mean?

Chinenye
Yes.

Errol
It’s a collective effort for sure, right from the Executive Director down to the people on the vessel. Everybody is involved, whether it’s- their chefs know that they need to cook for X amount of people. Everybody’s involved.

Chinenye
I think it’s very innovative. With innovation in mind, what would you foresee the future being for those who plan to map ocean floors? Are those within your field of work, whether it be for Schmidt Ocean Institution or any other group that seeks to map the ocean floor? Perhaps so as to reach the 2030 goal specifically.

Errol
Yeah, that’s a good question. And I think everybody who can needs to get involved in it. If you’re mapping from one vessel, you’re only mapping where you’re going, right? You can’t do anything else, you’re mapping where you’re going. There are other options. Whether you work in ASVs, and AUVs, and things like that, it could be expanding your footprint. They could be sent out on autonomous machines to mark X areas or wherever, and then rejoin you for the run. So maximizing potential I think has to be the way forward for everybody. Obviously it’s different for different organizations, but I think from our organization we will expand our remote footprint over the coming years and enhance our ability to map the seabed by more assets, such as ASV’s AUVs, and things like that.

Chinenye
It is my understanding that mapping the ocean for us is a very expensive endeavor to take on for any institution. It does seem like that would be a lot of work for anyone in the future, no matter what it is.

Errol
Yeah. But it’s like everything. Communication and collaboration is going to make it better. I think the commercial world needs to get more involved as well. For example, we have millions of vessels going all over the world every minute, every day. The more we can get involved, the more we can get mapping, the quicker we can attain our goal to map the seabed by 2030. Again, there’s areas that are more accessible than others, like, for example, can we involve the commercial industry? Everyone in all these shipping groups, whatever kind of vessels, can we get their buy-in to this? How do we get their buy-in? Because obviously, they are commercially driven and they want to get from A to B as quickly as possible, from a commercial perspective, so I don’t have the answers on how we can fully engage the commercial world. And then the other challenge is the more remote areas that- people don’t typically go and map these areas, right, there’s a huge cost involved, time, you got to have the assets to do it. So I think all of the like-minded institutions need to collaborate openly. For example, there’s no point in you going to the same place as me. So if we talk and I say, I’m going here, and you can say, Okay, well I’ll go there, you know, and-

Chinenye
Makes the work faster. Division of labor.

Errol
Yeah.

Chinenye
With your 18 plus years of experience, was there any set person, or were there a set of people, that helped you get to where you are today, with your background? Having gone to college and to where you are now, were there people that guided you along the path that you took?

Errol
Yeah, definitely. That’s like any work, any focus in life, any area of study. You’re always going to be working with people and learning from them. What we called back in the day, it was like journeyman, or tradesman, or whoever will take care of you for a certain period of time during your mentoring procession, and then you move on and you actually progress and become one of these mentors for the more junior people. So yeah, that happens everywhere, happens in the military, happens in the oil industry, it happens in science and research. That’s the case. You go in, you’re employed for this at the level and the skill sets that you have, and then you progress.

Chinenye
Slowly but surely, yes.

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Chinenye
It is amazing to know that there are people out there who take it upon themselves to map the great ocean floor. One crucial thing that stuck with me from talking to Mr. Campbell is that there is always room for change. And if not, it just means you are happy with your finished product. Specifically when it comes to mapping the ocean floor, you know that there is so much that needs to be done, so much that needs to be accomplished, and at the end of the day sometimes your best really is all that you can do, which was really eye opening to hear, especially with the task as big as mapping the ocean floor. I hope that whoever hears this, and whoever gets to hear this interview, has an eye-opening experience just as I did and remembers that teamwork makes the dream work, and that working together can bring us much further than we ever thought we could.

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We hope you enjoyed today’s segment. Please feel free to share your thoughts over social media and visit Longitude.site for the episode transcript. Join us next time for more unique insights on Longitude Sound Bytes.

 

 

Jade McAdams
At the intersection of ideas and action, this is Longitude Sound Bytes, where we bring innovative insights from around the world directly to you.

I’m Jade McAdams, a Longitude fellow from Rice University. Welcome to our Longitudes of Imagination series, where we are exploring the roles of individuals, technologies and research that is helping advance understanding of our oceans!

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In today’s episode we are featuring highlights from a conversation I led with Jason Williams, the Lead Mechanical Engineer at the Schmidt Ocean Institute, which is a philanthropic foundation that is enabling scientific expeditions on their research vessel Falkor at no cost to the world’s scientists. As part of the UN’s Ocean Science Decade, they are also contributing to a worldwide effort in mapping the entire seabed by 2030.

As a mechanical engineering major myself, I was interested to hear about the design and development aspects and the engineering mindset behind the Schmidt Ocean Institute’s creation of the Falkor.

We started our conversation with Jason’s experiences in engineering that led him to build the ROV, Subastian, at SOI. An ROV is a remotely operated vehicle, or an underwater robot that is connected to a ship, like the Falkor, by cables that allow for the transmission of control signals between the operator and the vehicle.

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Jason Williams
I started actually in the forestry industry with a company that did underwater logging, so that was my first introduction to ROVs. I was with a small team to develop the very first submersible vehicle to cut down trees underwater and bring them to the surface. So I went from the logging background immediately into the subsea world and brought in all my hydraulics experience and my mechanical design experience. And from there, I moved on to the science ROV world. My first job with the ROV science world was with ocean observatories. There’s a big cable observatory off of Vancouver Island. Canada was actually one of the very first ocean observatories, and I was part of the team to install all those different instrument platforms in the cabling networks subsea. There are cameras and different instruments that are streaming live back to shore from this observatory right now. I was part of that team. And from there, I heard that Schmidt Ocean Institute was looking to develop new vehicles. As a mechanical engineering student, I’m sure you can appreciate that. They wanted to go full ocean depth, and they wanted to develop three vehicles. The goal was to build a 4500-meter vehicle, then a 7500, and an 11,000 meter vehicle. So I was brought down there to develop that. We kind of changed direction after the first build, but that’s kind of what brought me to Schmidt Ocean Institute, was that challenge. The motivation behind all of SOI’s work is really- it’s very rewarding. We’re not after financial gains, so making different decisions, and we’re able to take these bigger risks, it just really allows you to expand in a lot of different directions, which is exciting.

Jade
So kind of following off of that, and also something that I think about a lot as a mechanical engineering student, is the idea of design and autonomy and what you’re creating, because for me, the reason that I came into engineering, when I decided to go to college, was I wanted to really be able to build something from scratch and come up with something new and create, because I just find that amazing. I’m sure you feel the same way. So I wanted to ask about when you came on board for building this 4500 meter depth Subastian, how was that process of ideation and implementation? Like the problem solving process that you followed to get there?

Jason
It’s a super exciting process. I can’t say that I can tell you exactly, we did this, this, and this. It’s a little bit more fluid than that. But we definitely started with a blank piece of paper. And for me for doing a design like this, it’s so complex in so many different systems, I kind of figured out all the small pieces first. So I figured out, like with the hydraulic system, and the flotation system, and all the different systems, and I worked from the smaller side, and the actual final design of the vehicle came at the end. To be honest, there were some people that questioned my process, but I didn’t. I knew that the vehicle had to be so balanced, both in air and in water, that I wanted to position all the different components and all this kind of stuff. So I did systematic breakdown, I’m sure you guys have talked about that in design classes and whatnot. You break it down to those small pieces, and then you build it up, and then you mold it into this general shape. So it was really exciting to be able to do that and literally start from a blank piece of paper and 16 months later, I was testing it in MBARI’S test tank.

Jade
Yeah, that kind of makes me think, because the way you said about finding- doing each subsystem first and then putting it together, is very similar to my capstone project that I have to do to actually get a mechanical engineering degree that I’m working on now. So that’s really interesting. I’m glad to see that it does pan out in the workforce as well. And that’s how people are doing such things.

Jason
Yeah, I think about that a lot. A lot of times people get overwhelmed with these big type projects, because to start with a blank piece of paper, and then to be going 4500 meters depth off of Guam a year and a half later, it’s very daunting. So to break them down, I always break things down to their smallest components, and it’s so much easier to be able to address that. So you look at them and you figure out the requirements, the constraints, your assumptions, all those basics, and you just go from there. It’s a fun process.

Jade
Yeah, absolutely. So in line with that process part of it, what would you say has been the biggest challenge that you’ve had to overcome working with the Schmidt Ocean Institute, whether that’s a technical problem that you had to overcome, or people, or regulations, or anything like that?

Jason
Yeah, no, that’s a good question. The early days of Subastian, the timeframe was so tight, we didn’t have the people on staff to be actually to be able to do it. It was such a huge project. And doing it in 16 months, that was the biggest challenge just because of the timeframe and the amount of limited people. But we did it. And it was all successful. And it’s still working out there today. So it’s a bit of a good feeling story.

Jade
Yeah. Awesome. So once you had successfully completed Subastian, and like you said, it’s out there working. So once you had done that, how do you come up with a vision or move forward into designing new things? Or finding new interests? And what are you working on now?

Jason
Yeah, so there’s a few things there. We offer up our ship to the scientists, and each cruise is different. So every year I’m not really sure exactly what I’m going to be doing, which is kind of fun and exciting, because I get to work with all these different groups. And some of them need more assistance than others. But I usually help them integrate their equipment onto the ROV, or help them build new equipment. So as an example, we had NASA come on board, and they wanted to look for meteorites off the coast of Oregon. So I worked with one of the scientists from NASA to develop a meteorite collection device that was ROV-operated. It was basically like lawn mowing underwater with this meteorite suction sampler. That was a fun little project. So that’s kind of my day-to-day tasks. But I do a fair amount of research into new technologies, new subsea ocean vehicle technology. I did a lot of research into AUVs and ASVs, which are autonomous underwater vehicles and autonomous surface vehicles. And over the last five years those systems have really taken off, so I’ve tried to educate myself as much as possible, talking to different professionals and experts in the field to see where I can kind of apply those technologies to SOI. And right now, we’re going through a bit of a transition period. I have worked with some scientists in the past who have brought those as guest vehicles on the ship, but I’m hoping down the road with our new ship, we’ll be able to kind of utilize these a little bit more. And that takes me into what I’m doing now, is we bought a new ship, it’s Falkor (too). It’s a massive upgrade to our existing system. And so part of my job right now is to integrate not only Subastian ROV onto that ship, but to look at what capabilities we can do with the ship down the road, and AUVs and ASVs and those kinds of systems will probably play a big role in that. So I evaluate different technologies, different systems. I do a lot of operations as well. So not only do I do the design work and development, I usually go offshore and run the vehicles as well. I don’t do that as much anymore, I hand it off to the teams. But as we integrate new stuff, I usually go offshore and help figure out how to operate, deploy this. My goal right now is to develop Falkor (too) into a more capable vessel. So there’s teams that are working on the ship itself, part of my role will be to see what kind of operational capabilities can we add to this ship so it has more output. So instead of just an ROV collecting samples, maybe we’ll have the ROV as well as an ASV and AUVs working at the same time, things on the back deck going off a frame and that kind of stuff. So I have a really big open kind of playbook right now, and it’s quite an exciting time for us.

Jade
Awesome. Yeah. So following up on the ASVs and AUVs, I guess I’m curious to see where you think the future of your field- do you think ROVs are going to become almost obsolete in the next five to 10 years? Or do you think those are still going to be a big part, just integrated in with AUVs? I want to hear your opinion as someone who has a lot of knowledge on the topic of the field as a whole.

Jason
Well, to be honest I don’t think ROVs are gonna go away, just like HOVs, human occupied vehicles, aren’t going to go away. They do similar stuff but some of them do it better than others. Like right now I see ASVs as going ahead and doing the reconnaissance mapping of the sea floor and whatever other kind of science experiments and data they can collect. AUVs go in after them, after we process the data from the ASVs, The AUVs kind of go in and go to a little bit more specific targeted locations and do a little bit more detailed mapping, and then the ROVs come in and actually go to those specific sites and do that data collection. So I see them all working together as more of a system and maximizing the best parts of all three different kinds of vehicles.

Jade
I like that, it’s collaboration between the three to really maximize efficiency. Like an AUV to do something that an ROV can do just as well, if not better.

Jason
Exactly. And there will be times- they are working on different kinds of technologies where the ROV works on its own, so instead of the pilot flying the vehicle over a vent field and taking a sample, and doing each one of those step-by-step processes, they’ll just say, okay, I want to go over there at this speed and collect that sample, and then the vehicle will do that. That’s the kind of autonomy that will be starting to get implemented. And it’s being done right now. So instead of everyone doing each function, or each step, it’s, this is this step, or this is the whole process it’s going to do, if that makes sense.

Jade
Yeah, absolutely. So you mentioned different aspects of your job, sometimes actually piloting the vehicle, sometimes being more on the design side of things, starting with a blank piece of paper, breaking everything down. Out of everything you do with your role, which seems to be quite a diverse set of experiences, what would your favorite part be, or favorite aspect?

Jason
It’s probably the most stressful, but the testing of the actual equipment. So like with Subastian, taking it from my computer, I do SolidWorks and modeling and design work and engineering work, and I designed it and see it on the computer. Then to actually physically put it together on the floor, I literally bolted on the manipulators, and the foam and positioning all that kind of stuff. And then also taking it to the test tank, but then taking it offshore, like in 2016 I went offshore, I’m in Guam and actually taking it- I flew it for the first time down to 4500 meters. And to be able to actually do that, and successfully do that, that’s probably the biggest kind of accomplishment that I can say I’ve had. The second phase of that was then to do our next science cruise. And then to actually see my previous job, I worked with another vehicle that was already existing, working with scientists to collect samples and whatnot, that was really exciting and interesting. But to be able to say that I built this vehicle, I designed this vehicle, I was part of the team, and to see the scientists come up and collect samples and swarming the vehicle and collecting all their specimens from the bio boxes and the push cores. And it was working. So it’s just that success of starting with that blank piece of paper and actually checking the box off. It’s kind of fun.

Jade
I imagine it’s a very rewarding experience to see something that you’ve designed from scratch to be incredibly successful.

Jason
Yeah, no, it’s very fun.

Jade
What do you think is one of the most important lessons you’ve learned throughout your career? And a sub-question to that, what do you think is one of the most important things when you’re trying to be creative? What propels ideation and creativity?

Jason
So one of the most important lessons I learned, I learned fairly early on in my career, actually with one of the forestry companies I worked for. There’s different levels of the company. There’s people putting this stuff together, there’s the engineers, there’s the salesmen, there’s people on the field and mechanics. One thing I really learned was, they all have something to offer, and to be able to respect each one of them, and to be able to respect everybody’s input and opinion and be able to work with people, because you can get so much more done by that team environment and collaboration than doing it on your own. Never think that you know it all, because there’s always someone, even like someone that’s just started on the shop floor, or whatever, they may have an opinion on something that you can use. So I use that as an added resource. Instead of just looking in books and trying to figure things myself, I look at people as an extra resource, and different people with different experiences have that different input.

Jade
Yeah, I think that must be incredibly integral in designing what you’re designing now, because like you said, the scientist plays such a big role in coming on the ship and collecting the data. So I’m curious to know, when you were designing Subastian, for example, was input from scientists something that you really looked to as like, what do I need this ship to be capable of? What do I need this ship to have for them? Was that a big part of it?

Jason
It was the biggest part in the beginning. Before I actually started they did a huge survey of all the scientists, the ocean scientists, probably 100 of them or whatnot. They went through and got input from all of them and consolidated it, and that built our design requirements. After that period though, we didn’t go back as much. We had peer group reviews each time. So there’s a conceptual design review, preliminary design review, and a detailed design review of peers that we brought in. Not just scientists, though, we brought engineers in from MBARI and different groups like that, that have experience with our ROVs, that provided input to us and direction and evaluated how we were going about it. So I thought that was really valuable.

Jade
Yeah, absolutely.

Jason
You don’t always take their input and say, oh, I’m going to do their idea. Sometimes it spurs on other ideas. And that’s part of the brainstorming process. And I find the brainstorming process another really exciting time. Everybody throwing in ideas and building off of other people’s ideas is a fun process.

Jade
So what is your favorite thing about Falkor, being part of that?

Jason
My favorite thing about the Falkor, I think, and this is said a lot actually by the scientists, is the community that’s on the ship itself, including the scientists that come on board. It’s such a unity of everyone thinking the same kind of things and working together as a group. I don’t know, they’re just all focused on the same driven goals of those cruises and working together with the ship’s crew as well as the science team, it’s just a really enjoyable process.

Jade
On that note, you mentioned some of the things that you’re mainly looking at to do with the Falkor (too) are the autonomous vehicles. Is there one other thing that you really want to implement in Falkor (too)? Like your big passion project, something that you want to see happen on this ship?

Jason
I don’t know if you’ve looked at the ship, but we got 150-ton crane on here. It’s the biggest crane that’s really available to the research community. And to be able to have a project that utilizes the full capabilities of that crane is kind of something in the back of my head. It not only can pick up something that weighs 150 tons, it actually can lower things down to the sea floor, down to like 2000 or 3000 meters, that weighs 100 and 115 tons. There isn’t really that capability out there right now, and so the possibilities are endless. So I’m constantly thinking of different things to use that crane’s capabilities, like can we put down a whole ocean observatory? That’s a big structure that weighs 50 to 100 tons down to 2000 meters and plop it down on the sea floor. It reflects on my background with ocean observatories. I would say that’s probably the one thing that’s in the back of my head, is utilizing that big crane, becauseit’s like a piece of NASA equipment.

Jade
Oh, wow. Yeah, that’s amazing technology. I’m sure you’ll come up with something good.

Jason
Yeah, it’s exciting.

Jade
So I’m curious, if you could go back and you were either in college or just out of college, what’s one thing that you would tell yourself or change about what you did, if anything, or if you feel like you did it perfectly then?

Jason
Well, I feel very fortunate with my career paths, I’m very happy with how things have gone, but one thing I would probably say to my younger self is: step out of the comfort zone. And I do say this to my kids and other people too is: if you’re too comfortable, and everything’s just a little bit too easy, you get a little bit relaxed and, you know, life doesn’t change. So you got to push yourself a little bit to take those risks and step out of your comfort zone. And I say this to my kids too. It’s like, you got to be miserable a little bit to get to the good stuff, really pushing yourself beyond your comfort level.

Jade
That’s definitely something that I’m trying to do as I graduate and move into the real world.

Jason
Yeah, yeah, I’d take those risks, . Obviously calculated risks, but don’t be afraid to make that kind of leap.

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Jade
Personally, some of the most interesting aspects of Jason’s experiences with the Schmidt Ocean Institute come from his remarks on collaboration and community. Jason highlights the value of a community where everyone is driven by the same goal but has a different perspective – this leads to a surplus of ideas and knowledge that in turn propel success and innovation. He learned the importance of taking everyone’s ideas and thoughts seriously when he was working in the forestry industry, and has taken that forward into his career at SOI.

With the Schmidt Ocean Institute, the scientists on board the vessel provide inspiration to Jason and other engineers by sharing what they need the vessel to be capable of. Then Jason as an engineer attempts to achieve those capabilities. He highlights that all the people on board the Falkor, including the scientists, the engineers, and the crew, are focused on the same end goal, which creates an enjoyable environment and leads to success that can be shared by everyone.

As a graduating mechanical engineer, I hope I can find myself in such a community in my future careers, and have the chance to learn from those around me while working towards a shared goal.

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We hope you enjoyed today’s segment. Please feel free to share your thoughts over social media and visit Longitude.site for the episode transcript. Join us next time for more unique insights on Longitude Sound Bytes.

 

 

Wendy Liu
At the intersection of ideas and action, this is Longitude Sound Bytes, where we bring innovative insights from around the world directly to you.

I’m Longitude fellow Wendy Liu. Welcome to our Longitudes of Imagination series, where we are exploring the roles of individuals, technologies and research that is helping advance understanding of our oceans!

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We spoke with the members of the Schmidt Ocean Institute, which is a philanthropic foundation that is enabling scientific expeditions on their research vessel Falkor at no cost to the world’s scientists.

In today’s episode we feature highlights from a conversation I led with Eric King, Senior Director of Operations at SOI.       

As a young professional who studied physics, worked on seismic data analysis projects, and is now learning about the EdTech field, I was interested to hear about how Eric got started at SOI and brought together the oceanographic community around the world to successfully help launch a wide variety of pioneer research projects.

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Eric King
I came on to the organization right at the very beginning, right at 2010, when this organization purchased a used vessel and began to convert it into an oceanographic research ship. All we had was this idea, this concept of the ship. At the time when we first began, we knew that the oceanographic science community globally needed some additional players, they needed some additional assets, and some new opportunities to provide the scientists and researchers, engineers, and technologists the chance to go to sea not just to collect data, but to perhaps troubleshoot and test some of their robotic systems or some of their theories with new systems to collect that data.

So I came in a role that was called a Marine Operations Manager, then over the years moved through the ranks. But really there were no ranks, because that was one of the first employees to be hired. What we’ve done over the years, and what I’ve been primarily focused on, are really three things.

The first is the overall operation of our research ship, Falkor. And now we’re transitioning to our replacement vessel called Falkor (too). So everything that has to do with ship operations and ship management and ship logistics, and that includes overseeing and ensuring that all of the scientific gear and equipment are in a state of pretty much cutting edge.

The second is related to the operation of our actual science mission. So once we decide what type of program that we’re going to support, what group of scientists, what’s the specific discipline or multi-discipline that this group of scientists want to conduct on our ship as part of a collaboration, and partnering because that’s what we’re about. First and foremost, it’s about collaboration and partnerships. Because we can’t do this alone. We can only do this, what we do within the oceanographic community, with partners. But once we’ve decided who we’re going to partner with for the next year or the next couple of years, then I oversee the team that actually puts that program together. So we work very closely with the scientists to make sure that before they come, and we plan this a year in advance for a one or two-month cruise or an expedition. So my responsibility is to make sure that we have our team working with the scientists, so that we’re making sure that all the equipment on board is going to meet what they need to have to be successful in their program. And then once they get on board the vessel, to ensure that we are actually doing the work.

And the third part is communication of what we’re doing and helping to connect with those outside of our organization. I spend a lot of time working with other research organizations around the world within the international ship community, not just within the United States of course, but across all continents: Oceana, Asia, Canada, South America, Europe, Scandinavia. And together what we’re trying to do, and what I’m trying to do within our organization, because we’re very young, we’re only 10 years- we’ve been doing this a short amount of time, is build these partnerships and these collaborations. So we don’t want to collaborate with just the scientists and researchers, we need to collaborate with the other organizations that are either government-funded or philanthropically funded like we are. One of the things that makes us unique, Wendy, is that we’re solely funded through the philanthropy of our founders, Eric Schmidt and Wendy Schmidt. And because of that, that gives us some freedom to maneuver in some unique ways that that others aren’t always able to. So those are the three areas that I’m primarily responsible for and working on a day-to-day basis.

Wendy
Thank you, Eric. That’s really cool. So you mentioned how you manage the external relationship with the rest of the oceanographic community. And you also mentioned that your trip to Spain here is to have an ongoing conversion of your ship into an oceanographic research vessel. So can you tell me more about that, and how that lines up with the vision of SOI?

Eric
Sure. So when Eric Schmidt and Wendy Schmidt decided that they wanted to have an oceanographic research vessel that would be made available to the greater scientific community around the world, they were very smart in their approach. Their tactic was to find a vessel we could convert into a platform that had state-of-the-art systems, and that could pretty much sail the majority of the oceans, and that would be an environment for communication and discussion, and that could also serve as a catalyst to inspire others to perhaps do something similar or to come along with us on our journey. Over the past 10 years we’ve supported hundreds of scientists, we’ve mapped the sea floor, well over a million kilometers square kilometers of the sea floor, supported 1000s of miles of collecting data. And what we’ve learned over the years doing this is that the ship that we have actually was good, but we can do better, so that we can expand on what we’ve been doing and provide even greater assets and greater capabilities to the science community. So last year, our founders identified another vessel that they wanted to bring into the organization to replace the one that we have now. A vessel that could support more scientists, stay at sea longer, work in the deep ocean, support robotic systems, be far more capable and stable as a platform for working in a variety of harsher climates and environments. And one that was going to be really reliable for decades to come.

It was built in 2011, here in Vigo, Spain, where I am now. And we brought the ship back to its original shipyard. It was originally built as an energy sector support vessel. And now we are taking this ship and completely converting some of the interior spaces into scientific laboratories. We’re adding a tremendous amount of multi-beam and single-beam echo sounders and scientific sonars to the ship, and they’re all going to be installed in the hull. It’s going to be actually one of the largest suites or arrays of scientific echo sounders and sonars on any oceanographic research vessel, and then we’re putting in additional capabilities for launching and recovering robotic systems off the side of the vessel and off the start of the vessel. And we’re adding capabilities and capacities for additional scientists. So by the end of this year, we’re going to have a ship that really is going to be absolutely fantastic for the scientific community to use. And this ship is being offered to the scientists around the world at no cost to them. So we’re funding the entire program to scientists, when they’re on board they will have access to all of the equipment, including our robotic vehicle that we built. It’s called Subastian. We built that in 2014 and 15. And we’ve had nearly 500 deep-sea dives with the vehicle with our science collaborators over the years. And we’re going to make all this available to them at no cost. It’s going to be quite a quite a facility. The facility part of it is integral, the ship, which is now called the Falkor—and that’s t-o-o, too, and it’s in parentheses too by the way, it’s Falkor and too in parentheses.

We’re providing now so much more than just a research vessel. We’re working with communities, really trying to bring awareness to ocean health, to conservation, to the importance of understanding the ocean, You cannot just look at the ocean and one square, one cube of water by itself, and understand the ocean. The Earth is a living, breathing planet, it is one massive system, but to understand that system is incredibly hard. And of course, the closer that you look, the more complex it becomes. And yes, the more data that you collect, you realize that to understand that data, you actually need more data. And to understand that data takes an incredible amount of computation power. So it’s a really exciting time. And we share what we’re doing with the rest of the science community, those that are operating research ships, and we’re also trying to learn from them.

Wendy
Exactly. But for 10 years, you guys are super impressive from what I just heard, because you just told me about the big picture of operating marine vessels around the world, and all the key components such as the data transmission, and also the crew operation and all that. It’s amazing how you are building this facility for the world to use for free. So what types of research projects are managed at SOI? Can you give some examples where your team or other scientists on board accomplish something amazing, something you didn’t necessarily expect in the first place?

Eric
So a few good things have come out of COVID. Mostly it’s been very unfortunate, very bad, but the few good things that have happened, one of them in particular to us, to Schmidt Ocean Institute and our operations, is that we kept our ship Falkor In Australia for a year and a half. We’d only meant to be in Australia working for about nine months. But because of COVID, the beginning of 2020, we found ourselves needing to keep our ship there for logistics purposes, for the health and safety of our crew and those that we were working with, and our other operational considerations. Staying in Australia was the best decision.

And what we did in Australia, we really advanced our abilities to support scientists who are working from home. So we had several expeditions where we didn’t have any scientists on board, it was just our crew, our technicians. And we allowed them to participate remotely through what we’re calling telepresence and telecommunications and teledata. And that means that the scientists could actually see in real time and also direct the operations from their perspectives, from the things that were important to them as scientists for a particular expedition, for a month or even two months. While at sea we were mapping the sea floor, or we were sending our robotic vehicle down to look at specific targeted areas at their requests, based on the data that they were getting in real time from the areas that we were mapping. And in particular we spent months mapping the Great Barrier Reef, off the east coast of Australia, we’ve mapped hundreds and hundreds of square kilometers. Thousands actually, of square kilometers of sea floor. It was one of the largest seafloor mapping campaigns that ever been done in Australia and the Great Barrier Reef. And we were so dedicated to mapping the Great Barrier Reef in an area called the Coral Sea that we are now featured as a very special exhibit at the Australian National Maritime Museum in Sydney.

Being there in Australia for a year and a half was really unprecedented. It’s the longest time for sure any non-Australian research vessel has been working in their waters. We made really great friends. The collaboration was fantastic. The creativity of the scientists that we were working with, and trying to figure out how we could make best use of our ship in their waters, was just unprecedented. It was a fantastic opportunity.

Wendy
When you mentioned about the contribution to Australia, Marine Science and how you’re able to make great friends there, that kind of reminds me of another thing I want to ask you about, which is your interest in this field. Did you always know that you wanted to work with the ocean when you were younger? When did you first develop your interest? And how did your career take you to the Schmidt Institute?

Eric
So I went to this school for four years. It was called Maine Maritime Academy. It’s one of the five maritime academies in the country. And I learned how to be a sailor on commercial vessels, but while I was there I took a couple courses in oceanography. And I always had this parked in the back of my mind, that interest in what’s happening below the surface of the ocean. And back then I didn’t really comprehend how vital the ocean was to the entire ecosystem of the planet. I did a few things after I graduated from college. Then I met some people from the University of Washington and I learned that there was a job opening at the School of Oceanography for someone to come and manage their oceanographic research vessel that went out to sea for months at a time and worked with scientists from all over the United States. And I didn’t know anything about ocean sciences, but I knew ships. I’d been working with ships for four years before then. And I thought, My gosh, this is really an interesting opportunity. So I became an employee of the University of Washington School of Oceanography, about 20 years ago. I really quickly fell in love with the work that we were doing, the people that we were connecting with, the benefit of the science that we’re doing. Suddenly the work had real meaning, you know, I was able to take this very tangible, technical knowledge of vessel operations, and now add to that this growing understanding, this learning of the oceanographic community and the ocean sciences. I found myself really excited about working. After about eight years at the University of Washington, I had gone back to graduate school there and completed a degree in public administration, I learned about this opportunity, where I am today, about this new organization that was just starting. It was a nonprofit organization funded by a philanthropic family that wanted to bring this new platform, this oceanographic research vessel, to the scientific community. It was just an idea at the time, an opportunity that I couldn’t pass up. And since then, every day is learning so much more. And our strategic plan is going to bring us over the decade to a place where we can far expand what we’re doing, and move it beyond just what we’re doing on the water surface. We’re looking into the sky, into the atmosphere, we’re looking inwards to land, trying to bring that all together as such a dream for me that I never even knew existed, in that rural town of Maine back in the 1980s.

Wendy
Wow, this is a great story. You mentioned how the scientists are collaborating together and you’re doing something that’s so new. And I just wonder if you can share something about creativity? How much room is there for creativity in your field? Can you share some examples?

Eric
Scientists have been collaborating since the beginning of time, really, and that’s no different with the ocean sciences. They collaborate with other organizations, and there’s different levels of collaborations and different meanings behind collaboration and partnering as well. But one of the things that we’re trying to do, to expand on how we collaborate and how we partner, is through opportunities. And giving the scientists and the researchers, the technologists, the engineers that we seek out and we hope they seek us out, is to do just as we’re talking about, being creative. There are certain ways that we think science should be conducted. There are certain ways that we think we should collect data. There’s certain ways that we think that we should process information. But that was how we thought about things yesterday, the day before. What we’re really most interested in is technology, and how technology can surprise people in ways that we never could have imagined. But to do that, you have to open your mind, and we don’t talk about thinking outside of the box. We actually want to push to all corners of the box, we want to push beyond the corners of the box and expand the box really. To do that, though, is a bit of some retraining, perhaps, of the way that we’ve been doing business for hundreds of years, and even the way ocean sciences are taught today. And we’re seeing that happen already.

We now know, you can’t just study one spot of the ocean, we have space and time issues. And we also have to look what’s above the surface, or even at the very top layer of the surface. It’s a whole ecosystem just at the surface of the ocean. And then we look inland to understand what’s happening inland, thousands of miles inland. We have to have an understanding of what’s happening in the ocean, and even at the deepest parts of the ocean. So to pull all this together, when we’re talking about creativity, we need technology. We need robotics, we need software, we need artificial intelligence, we need machine-based learning. We need minds that are trained and taught in new ways. We need people from all over the world to come and join us, not just from the United States or the North America, or from the largest landmass in Oceania, from Australia, where we made such great friends and collaborators. But there are brilliant people all over the world. And some of those brilliant people don’t happen to live in areas where they have access to facilities like our new ship. So we need to reach them. And we also have to understand what is important to them, right? So we don’t have the answer. Our organization is trying to be a catalyst, we’re trying to provide opportunities, especially to those people that don’t have such access, those that are in small island developing nations, or coastal states, where they, as I mentioned, don’t have any resources. Our ways of conventionally looking at science in the ocean and doing oceanographic research may not be their conventional ways. So how do we connect those two? How do we connect the ways that we’re looking to do science on a big ship, like what we’re building with incredible technologies, a massive amount of its infrastructure, but pair that with communities in coastal states that don’t have access to or haven’t thought about doing research the way that we’re doing it, and the partners that we’ve worked with over the past decade. The same thing for us. There’s a lot of observational data and a lot of observational research that’s done in small island developing nations and other coastal states by those who have been living in the lands far longer than we’ve been sailing the sea. So the creativity part is really exciting. Especially when we’re trying to think about doing ocean science in ways that we haven’t thought of before. And sometimes you have to take a step back, take a breath, and actually look out of the windows every once in a while and not just at the screens that are in front of you that you’ve been staring at processing the sea floor data.

Wendy
I know, right. And that applies to so many other fields too, you have to step back and take a break. And once you walk away and walk back, the problem is solved. And I really like how you mentioned how it’s not necessarily thinking out of the box, per se, it’s just to get into every corner of the box and expand the box. I also like your approach of how you are seeking for talents around the world, especially in those less representative areas, and try to kind of level the playing field to get the technology accessible to them, try to make it accessible and understandable by every talent. That is really a good approach.

And before your podcast goes out to influence other people, you have influenced me, actually, to a point that- you know, when you’re saying how you’re in Australia, and how you made so many friends and imaged the ocean floor, the coral reefs, and I just feel like I want to be there, I want to do that. So I’ll look into this.

Eric
Oh you should, Wendy. I mean, it is amazing. Just like I was saying before, the more data that we collect, the more that we learn, then the more we realize how little we know, and how much more data we need to collect. Now we have the ability to even listen more closely and to study the animals that are in the ocean. It forces us to rethink how we go about our business and- maybe not just rethink how we go about the business, but maybe retrain ourselves and also look for other ways, or new areas that we should be studying. I mean, it’s just, it’s incredible. It’s a great time to be in the ocean sciences world right now.

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Wendy
After having the opportunity to speak with Eric, I have come to appreciate the role of collaboration and communication for the success of each mission. Besides his expertise in maritime science and a strong will to do good, Eric demonstrated to me that strong leadership skills are also critical for bringing large groups of scientists together. I appreciated learning about his experiences and want to hone my own communication skills so that I can unite people from different backgrounds to make an impact in my endeavors.

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We hope you enjoyed today’s segment. Please feel free to share your thoughts over social media and visit Longitude.site for the episode transcript. Join us next time for more unique insights on Longitude Sound Bytes.

 

 

Jaena Kim
At the intersection of ideas and action, this is Longitude Sound Bytes, where we bring innovative insights from around the world directly to you.

This is Jaena Kim, Longitude Fellow from the University of Ottawa. Thanks for plunging into the 3rd series of Longitudes of Imagination, where we continue to explore the wonders of our ocean to celebrate the UN’s proclamation of the next decade dedicated to ocean science and sustainable development.

Keep treading on for conversational highlights I shared with Dr. Carlie Wiener, fellow Canadian and the Director of Communications and Engagement Strategy at the Schmidt Ocean Institute. We first started with exploring Dr. Wiener’s academic background and just how little we know about our planet’s salty waters.

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Carlie Wiener
I’ve been with the organization since 2014. I did my doctorate research, both in biological and social sciences, so I’ve always been interested in the human interface and interpretation of science. So Schmidt Ocean Institute is a philanthropic nonprofit organization. And we operate a research vessel or a ship named Falkor- in fact, actually, Falkor is going to be moving on, and we have a new research vessel that is currently being refit for science called Falkor (too). Essentially, the goal of Schmidt Ocean institute is to catalyze discoveries and understand our oceans. So a lot is not known about our ocean, and the ocean is so critical to the health of our planet. What we focus on is impactful science, so doing a lot of research, technology advancement, and then making that data publicly available. So open sharing of information and public engagement, getting people excited about the ocean and meeting people where their interests lie and trying to bring the ocean to them.

Jaena
How did you come to be first involved with the Institute?

Carlie
When I learned about Schmidt Ocean Institute in 2013, I was really keen to join the mission, and it was very cutting edge at that point. Since then there’s been a lot of other research vessels that have come on board, but Schmidt Ocean Institute was really one of the first that was working within an international community, making science publicly available. And I was really lucky enough to come in early into the program and help develop and expand our communications work. One of the unique things about Schmidt Ocean Institute is that it’s a great convener as well. So we do a lot of partnership work and collaborations with others in the field. And we recently in 2019 brought together all the research operators that are working with philanthropic organizations, and a group called the Pink Flamingo Society, so that we can align and collaborate some of the work that we do together, and our organization has done something similar as well for the operators of underwater robotics or ROVs.

Jaena
That’s fantastic. Actually, that’s a great segue, because my next question was going to be about your responsibilities as Director of Communications and Engagement Strategy. Could you share a bit about what you do on a day-to-day, maybe what falls within your scope of responsibilities and what you oversee?

Carlie
So I have a different day every day. It’s never the same day, which is kind of exciting for me. I like the variety in that. I’m really essentially responsible for the management of how we create and share content with the world. So how we are collaborating, engaging with stakeholders, how we’re sharing things across different platforms from—maybe it’s social media—to our impact reports, to workshops, to exhibits with aquariums and museums and also in the communities where we bring our ship. For us, the last few years have looked a little bit differently because of COVID, and, we’ve had to scale back some of our in-person engagement that we would typically do during ship tour days in the communities that we’re working in. But it’s also been an opportunity to rethink how we share science and engaging more with folks online. And so that’s something that I’ve really been fortunate to work on. The other big project or program that I coordinate is our Artist at Sea and student opportunities program. And the Artist at Sea program is my absolute favorite. It is bringing artists, all different types of artists, onto the ship to engage and learn and participate in the science and work with scientists and then take that knowledge that they gained and incorporated into the arts. And this really creates this new way that people can engage with science in a more approachable format. So it’s been a really fun time to work on communications and science communications. We just launched our 10-year strategic framework, so we have a really clear idea of where we’re going and how we’re going to campaign our new research vessel Falkor (too), which will come online later this year.

Jaena
That’s so exciting. Well, huge congratulations for all that hard work and effort, especially around COVID. I can’t imagine it would have been easy at all. I am so happy you brought up the Schmidt Artist at Sea program, because that’s something I read while I was doing some research. I’m not sure if you know, but the overarching theme of Longitude at the moment is Longitudes of Imagination. And so we’re really seeing the role that imagination plays in different sectors, and especially in more technical fields, such as science. Imagination isn’t a word I commonly associate with it, but the Schmidt Artist at Sea program sounds like a direct correlation between science and creativity producing this awesome and positive outcome. Maybe just jumping ahead, and then we can go back. In your everyday role as Director of Communications in a sector of marine communications and marine research, is there a role of creativity?

Carlie
Absolutely, yeah, there is a lot, especially in my role, for creativity, but I think in everybody’s role. I agree with you imagination doesn’t come up that often. But imagination is something that not only artists do, referring to the Artist at Sea program, but the scientists do. It takes a lot of creativity and problem solving skills to go out to sea where you don’t have everything at your disposal. Sometimes things break, and you have to invent things on the spot or and engineer things, or you have to look at problems in a creative way, right? So a lot of times scientists are looking at these new phenomena that we’re understanding about our ocean and trying to figure out why that’s happening. And that takes a creative person to think about what’s going on and using the data or the science to help formulate a hypothesis about what’s happening. And from a communication standpoint, we really have to use our imagination in different ways to engage audiences with the ocean and sharing science topics. And this is something that we really think about in our brainstorming when we look at a campaign or a new partnership. And the ocean itself definitely requires imagination. I think that the ocean is so weird and wonderful, especially the deep sea where we work, you know, you see all these incredible species. And the deeper you go, the weirder it gets. And so it’s almost like we’re operating real science fiction in real life. And technology has really transformed our ability to explore the ocean and to address and access these new other worlds that we’ve never been able to see before.

Jaena
Wow. I also heard your expert testimony at the hearing on the ocean exploration, I think back in 2019, in Washington. As a law student, I kind of have to geek out over that. I thought everybody provided such amazing expert testimony, but especially I loved that you touched- so there was a specific question. And you brought up like, why do we know more about the moon than the deep sea? And you know, as a regular person that doesn’t really think much about space or sea, that was a very surprising fact to me, considering that the sea is here, not necessarily at our disposal, but it’s on our planet, we know. But to access the moon you have to get a lot of materials and resources together and then fly them out. And one of the fellow witnesses, Mr. Lane, mentioned that outer space exploration is being led by entrepreneurs like Elon Musk, and Jeffrey Bezos, and you had shared that space has done a good job branding itself. From my knowledge, though, neither Musk nor Bezos started out in the space industry or as space experts. Do you think the same possibilities lie with the ocean, and maybe up and coming entrepreneurs, to make that same connection and broadcast the weird and wonderfulness of the sea, as you mentioned?

Carlie
So I think we’re there actually, I think we’re absolutely there. And I think the biggest thing that’s holding us back is that the ocean has a bit of a PR problem. I mean, look at popular culture and how much space is a part of that when we were growing up. You know, there’s all this space exploration and heroism around going to outer space and discovering new planets, where we’re not even discovering right now our own planet. It’s like looking at your neighborhood before even looking in your own house or your basement. We really need to, what people call ‘explore Inner Earth’ or, you know, the inner exploration of what we have already. And a lot of this is because the ocean is so vast, it can be overwhelming. And there’s so many different things happening with the ocean, different areas that people study, from coral reefs to the deep sea to the middle water column. And so many people looking at different aspects of it, from high seas, to deep sea mining, to fishing, to- there’s all of these doom and gloom scenarios out there and not enough emphasis on the wonder and the amazement of what actually is in the ocean, how important it is for us. And so I think making broader connections and using some of the incredible imagery that we have of the ocean is something that we’re starting to look to change, and that will inspire more explorers, more discovers, and really allow us to understand a lot more. The other thing is the technology piece. We just didn’t have the technology development to access a lot of areas of the ocean until the last 20 years. And so now that we do have a lot of that technology, and it’s continually improving, we’re able to do so much more. I mean, Schmidt Ocean Institute live streams all of our dives. So anybody around the world in real time can watch as we’re going to these new deep depths that no one’s ever seen before, discovering hydrothermal vents and new species, and are able to listen to commentary from the scientists as they’re seeing this for the first time, and engage in question and answer. And so we have this ability now, it’s just a matter of getting everybody on board.

Jaena
Yeah, I like how you brought up that- or you framed it in kind of a cute way that ocean has this PR problem. And you know, your role as Director of Communications, I see a direct correlation there. Because I feel like maybe that’s the crux of your job, you’re faced with this- almost this grand problem that everybody in ocean research is seemingly facing together. And yet it is your job to imagine ways to overcome that. Are there skills that you regularly use? Sorry, let’s backtrack a bit maybe, I first want to ask, what is it that you love most about your work? So going back to this huge problem that you’re faced with, this PR problem. And as a director of communication, being able to tackle that, it doesn’t seem easy, and I feel like if you weren’t driven and motivated it might be a bit much to handle. But all I see is enthusiasm and excitement to tackle this challenge and imagine that you love what you do.

Carlie
I do. You definitely, I think, in any field, have to have passion for what you’re doing to succeed at it. And one of the things that we get to do at our organization is the freedom to think about how we engage the public with the ocean. And this is a really exciting space to do that in. So as I mentioned, the key thing is partnerships and working together. And Schmidt Ocean Institute last year created a partnership with Nekton mission, which is based in the UK, and together we created a white paper called Ocean Rising and a workshop called Ocean Rising, and really what we focused on is, how do we get ocean into pop culture? And we looked at eight areas from restaurants, to gaming, to literature, to fashion, and how we can look at these areas of popular interest and bring the oceans into these spaces. So that’s something that’s a little bit different. And something that we’re really excited to move forward with and do a deeper dive in for each of these areas now, but that’s just one example. Managing the program, we do different things every day. And so from communicating different exploration and discoveries and how big the species are, and how people might relate to them, is another piece. So it’s always using your creative skills to think about how to share some of this information with the rest of the world.

Jaena
And I noticed that you have both a degree in communications and environmental studies, did that play any role in how you ended up in the field of Marine Science Communications? And actually, if you could briefly explain if there is a difference between other scientific communications and marine science communications?

Carlie
Yeah, I could definitely do that. So I think some of this is happenstance, and some of it definitely helped to inform where I was. Since I was three years old, I wanted to be a marine biologist. I was always enamored with the ocean. But growing up in Toronto, as you know, there’s not a lot of ocean opportunities there. And so going out of province or even out of country wasn’t really a tenable option for me for my undergrad. And I also really enjoyed people and communicating. So I started with an undergrad in communications, but I could not quiet that voice in my head that was just fascinated with the ocean and really wanted to be a part of science. And so luckily, I found a really interdisciplinary program that allowed me to do both for my Master’s and PhD. And then going into science early on in my career, I found that I kept gravitating to public outreach and working with communities and breaking down the science. And it happened at a time where really, science communication wasn’t its own field like it is now, you know, it’s really evolved and developed in the last 10 years. And so I feel like as that’s developed I sort of developed along with it, and just found myself in different roles where I was communicating, breaking down science, to get me to the point where I am today.

Jaena
Well, that was so organic in that transition. And although you say happenstance, I bet you’re a very talented communicator, and then you were able to meld your passion into something you’re good at. And I think that’s kind of the dream for especially the younger generation these days when we look for work that we think is meaningful, but also both makes an impact. So you’re living the dream, that’s for sure.

Carlie
I am very fortunate and very thankful for all the opportunities that I’ve had.

Jaena
Do you think mentorship or collaboration plays any role in cultivating one’s creativity or broadening one’s imagination?

Carlie
Oh, that’s a good question. Yeah, I think it does as we learn from each other. And we spark ideas from talking and traveling and doing different jobs and positions. So absolutely, I would not be where I am today without incredible mentors along the way that showed me new ways of doing things and sparking new ideas for how I approached my work. So I think that is a critical piece, yes.

Jaena
And maybe, actually, so I know that you were the producer and host of the All Things Marine radio show for six years, and you produced 70 episodes, which is an amazing amount. So I have a suspicion that you have a specific approach, or some ideas, to engaging with creativity or imagination.

Carlie
You’re absolutely dating me with like, radio show and not podcast. I enjoyed doing the radio show, it was great to interview other people and be on the other side of this. But I think I have so many things happening all at the same time. I’m a working mother, I’m running a program. I like to keep an ideas journal with me at all times, so if something pops up, I write it down. And I find that typing it into my phone or my computer I don’t remember it as much, unless I write it down. So I have a physical journal. And that might not work for everybody. But I always like to keep an ideas book close by. And it’s always nice to reread it and go through it every six months or so. And, you know, the other thing you mentioned too is being open to learning, and I don’t think I’ve ever stopped learning and being like, Okay, that’s it, I’m done. I got my PhD, no more learning for me. I think I’m constantly learning and doing creative things. And I really gain a lot from going to or participating in conferences where you’re getting inspired with other people’s projects and seeing what they’re doing, and being exposed to different areas of science and different areas of communication, and playing around with that and developing new ideas.

Jaena
Okay, even hopping back, you mentioned the Falkor and how it seems like one of the biggest components of the Schmidt Ocean Institute. Would you mind just telling us a bit about the Falkor?

Carlie
Absolutely. It is basically a floating research platform that really is cutting edge in terms of the science that it allows for. It’s very modular: we have all different types of science that comes on the ship. And so we’ll, like I mentioned earlier, do things from hydrothermal vents to sea mounts to deep sea corals, and looking at all different aspects of that. So that might be using our underwater robot, Subastion, which is another huge component of the science that we complete. It allows us to get 4K imagery in real time. It allows us to do sampling to look at water columns, or sediments, or corals, or even species collections, to get an assessment of biodiversity. We’re finding new species all the time. And you may think, well, why do you need to do that? Why is that important? But we, as you mentioned, don’t know a lot about these ecosystems. And we have to understand how they work with each other and how they support our ocean. And Falkor itself has been able to do incredible missions. We’ve done year round science since 2013. We even conducted work throughout the global pandemic. And we’re now at the point where we’ve outgrown that vessel. And so we are very, very excited to bring on Falkor (too) later this year, which is three times the size. That’s going to expand even further our capacity for technology development, for new science, and for the regions in the world we can go to, going to further latitudes. So it’s a really exciting time to be part of our organization.

Jaena
Absolutely huge congratulations.

Carlie
Thank you.

Jaena
Does Falkor have a home base?

Carlie
Falkor does not have a home port, or Falkor (too), because we try to achieve as much science as we can, and so we are constantly traveling around the world. Our goal is to do regional science moving forward with the new vessel, and so that will stay in one area for a year, and then move on to really maximize our capacity and what we’re able to accomplish in that region.

Jaena
That’s so exciting. I think this is a two-part question, but what do you hope to accomplish individually in the future? I can also give you a time frame for that, if that helps. And what would you also hope to accomplish through the Institution, let’s say in five years?

Carlie
We just put out our strategic framework for the next 10 years, which is kind of a rare thing to do. That’s pretty ambitious to have this 10-year strategy. But it really outlines our desire to go big, and to be able to conduct science and understand and characterize more in all seven oceans in seven areas of science that we’ve decided to focus on. As I mentioned, it’s sort of deeper water work. And so I think that really lays a foundation for what we’re doing moving forward. Schmidt Ocean Institute is really evolving now that we’ve been around for a while, and it’s not just focused on the ship and the science, but what land based capacity can we do? And what can we do with the research after the fact once it’s collected, and not just the science, but through technology, through the data, through sharing the data, and through public engagement with projects like Ocean Rising? And for me, personally, I’d say my goals are very much aligned with that. My goal is to see that we are communicating about the science and about the ship, and to really reach global audiences.

Jaena
Yeah, that’s really inspiring because the ocean, even though I don’t know much about it, I have this gut reaction that it plays such a big part in our lives and the well-being of our planet, and I know that we as humanity haven’t really treated our planet the nicest, and that it is our goal to work towards a more environmentally friendly future. But I don’t have much knowledge in how ocean research could connect to the prosperity of humanity. What is it that we can use ocean research for, beyond the ocean, if you could provide some insight?

Carlie
Well, put very simply, everything is connected. If we don’t have a healthy ocean, we don’t have a healthy planet. We absolutely need the ocean to live. And I think that that point is lost on a lot of people that say, well, I don’t live by the ocean, so it doesn’t impact me. Well, if you like breathing, if you like oxygen, you like the ocean, which is responsible for more than half of our oxygen production. Most people also don’t realize that the ocean is a major absorber of carbon dioxide. So in terms of climate regulation, and really trying to help us sort through a changing climate, the ocean is our best friend in this sense. It’s also a huge area of nutrition. For a lot of countries it’s a major protein source, and protects us from large storms, cyclones, really saves a lot of land and infrastructure that we have. So what we do on land does impact the ocean, even if you’re not living in a coastal area. And so that is a really important point. And in terms of how we use research for human prosperity, the options are endless. I mean, we’re looking to the deep sea now to look at how it can be a carbon sink in helping to really address our climate change problem. A lot of these deep sea species and even things as small as microbes we don’t know a lot about, and their potential to help with human disease. There are some examples of that. We are able to transform human society with the ocean. And so really supporting the exploration and understanding of it and protection of it is absolutely critical.

Jaena
With ocean research, you mentioned the innovations and technology, even just from 2013 – 2014 when you jumped on, have exponentially grown. Is it possible that we could use ocean technology? Is it transferable to other sectors in the area, or is ocean technology pretty specific to the ocean?

Carlie
No. And actually, we’re using a lot of technologies from other areas to apply to the ocean. the ocean has the issue that it’s vast, so you need to be able to have something that can characterize and understand and process very quickly. So artificial intelligence and machine learning are two areas of development that have been absolutely important to the changes that we’ve had with ocean technology. And then also the abilities to access these really harsh environments. You know, the deep sea, it’s not like swimming in 30 meters of water or your beach environment that you’re usually used to. You’re dealing with crushing pressures, extreme cold temperatures, changes in salinity and even light. It’s very dark down there, so having the ability to access that with tech development is really important. And even now, going back to space, doing a full 360 throwback, there are tools that we are testing in the deep sea now that are being adapted by NASA for space. So we’ve gone full circle here, in that we use this otherworldly environment on our planet to test things that we might be able to use on ocean planets in the future.

Jaena
That’s so exciting. I really like that close connection between ocean and space, it seems that the more creative you are in a technical field such as science, you have all these positive outcomes, and they really help each other and help us progress further. Why does the ocean get such a bad rep? I would love to know what advice you have for us.

Carlie
I think being able to understand and know a little bit more about the ocean is the other thing that will help perpetuate that. Learning more, and informing yourself, even if you’re not a coastal person, is really critical. Taking some appreciation for the positive things about how beautiful our ocean is, and all these great discoveries. And Schmidt Ocean has a wonderful library of short three-minute videos that take you through the science in a really digestible and understandable way. I encourage people to check us out either on social or our YouTube page at Schmidt Ocean.

Jaena
Just before I wrap up, because this has been playing in my head since you mentioned it, the transition of the ocean and bringing up its popularity through pop culture. Do you have any ideas or any big picture dreams that you would love to establish?

Carlie
Yes, I mean, all of it. I want to see the oceans in pop culture everywhere. You know, you walk into a Target here in the US and you see all kinds of NASA branding on clothing items, like, let’s get the oceans out there. Big concerts on those big screens, when we go back to large concerts, can we have the ocean playing in the background? Like amazing, inspiring imagery. What can we what can we bring to restaurants about sustainable fish and learning more about the ocean as that comes in, how can we get all the writers in Hollywood together to create more stories about the ocean, and more accurate stories. Just being captivated by the wonder and the beauty of it, I think, really can inspire people to be a little bit more positive and proactive about how we learn more and get to a better place.  Please feel free to look me up if you guys have ideas.

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Jaena
As a law student, I spent this month learning about the inaccessibility of legal services and resources. Globally, more than 5 billion people lack meaningful access to justice according to The Justice for All Report, published by a multi-stake partnership between UN member states, international organizations, civil society, and the private sector. The most common ideas to address this issue include public education and understanding of the justice system.

Thanks to Dr. Wiener and the Institute’s work of catalyzing their ocean research and making that data publicly available, we can access information to deepen our understanding of the ocean that plays a vital role in the prosperity of the human race.

So, I’m encouraging myself, and our listeners, to find one thing within our scope of expertise, and to share that discovery with a friend, or stranger, that is completely unfamiliar with the subject. We often forget how much we know, and that someone out there is probably waiting for that chance to learn something new. For me? That’ll be on how to decode overtly complicated legal procedures so everyone is able to exercise their full legal rights.

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We hope you enjoyed the second episode of Deep Dive with SOI! We’d also love to hear your brilliant thoughts on how to tackle ocean’s PR problem. You can reach us on our social media and visit Longitude.site for this episode transcript. Join us next time for more unique insights on Longitude Sound Bytes.

 

 

Jaena Kim
Welcome back to Longitude Sound Bytes, bringing innovative insights from around the world directly to you. You’re right on time for the romantic Valentine’s Day launch of our next Longitudes of Imagination series. I’m Jaena Kim, Longitude fellow and law student from the University of Ottawa.

Tony Zhou
I’m Tony Zhou, a Longitude fellow and data scientist at Yale University. The Schmidt Ocean Institute, or SOI, is a philanthropically funded non-profit foundation that enables scientific exploration at no cost to the world’s scientists. To date, the Institute’s research vessel (Falkor) has mapped over 1.25 million miles of the ocean floor, hosted more than 1,000 scientists on nearly 80 expeditions, and discovered countless new species and deep-sea bathymetry.

Jade McAdams
For this Valentine’s Day, we’re excited to share with you – our listeners – a special sneak peek of the Deep Dive with SOI series with members Carlie Wiener, Eric King, Jason Wiliams, Errol Campbell, Corinne Bassin, and Jyotika Virmani. I’m Longitude fellow Jade McAdams and a mechanical engineering student at Rice University.

Blake Moya
The United Nations has proclaimed a decade of ocean science for sustainable development, or UN Decade of Ocean Sciences, to support efforts to reverse the cycle of decline in ocean health and create improved conditions for sustainable development of the ocean. I’m Blake Moya, Longitude Fellow and a Statistics PhD student at the University of Texas at Austin.

Wendy Liu
SOI is contributing to a worldwide effort to map the entire ocean floor by 2030 through their oceanographic research vessel, Falkor – and soon to be – Falkor (too). I’m Wendy Liu, Longitude Fellow and alum of Rice University currently working in education technology.

Chinenye Oguejiofor
I’m Chinenye Oguejiofor, Longitude Fellow and global law student at Tilburg University. Discover the various roles of individuals, technologies, and research that help advance the understanding of our oceans through the profound work of organizations such as the Schmidt Ocean Institute.

Jade
Deep Dive with SOI is our second series on innovative ocean research! A big thanks to the shipmates of the Mayflower Autonomous Ship featured on the first Longitudes of Imagination, which is available for listening on our website and various podcast platforms. Working with the crew of the MAS400 inspired us to look further into possibilities in the realm of ocean research, and the Schmidt Ocean Institute gave us the chance to speak with a talented group of individuals, learn from them, and then share that knowledge with our listeners. Errol Campbell says a similar learning process has been key in his journey.

Errol Campbell
You’re always going to be working with people and learning from them. What we called back in the day, it was like journeyman, or tradesman, or whoever will take care of you for a certain period of time, during your mentoring procession, and then you move on, and you actually progress and become one of these mentors for the more junior people.

Chinenye
Despite the progression of knowledge among those who study the ocean, we still know more about space than our oceans right here on Earth. In contrast to space being completely silent, the ocean makes millions of indescribable sounds. Both deserve our undivided attention; we need to discover what we can, both the known unknowns and the unknown unknowns.

Corinne Bassin
Less than 20% of the ocean floor is currently mapped. It’s crazy to think about that when you look at how much we know about Mars.

Jaena
With members of the Schmidt Ocean Institute, we deeply explore global value creation that floats along with better understanding of our oceans. Dr. Wiener and I dive into the significance of the ocean’s role and potential in improving our everyday lives in the very next episode of Deep Dive with SOI.

Carlie Wiener
And in terms of how we use research for human prosperity, the options are endless. We’re looking to the deep sea now to look at how it can be a carbon sink in helping to address our climate change problem. A lot of these deep sea species and even things as small as microbes we don’t know a lot about, and their potential to help with human disease. And there are some examples of that. And so we are able to transform human society with the ocean. Supporting the exploration and understanding of it and protection of it is absolutely critical.

Blake
Though the technology, as fast as it’s evolving, may not be where ocean researchers are hoping it to be, that doesn’t mean it can’t pave the way for more creativity. Though necessity is the mother of invention, creativity is the mother of innovation– and already researchers at SOI are planning on how to use the tech available to them to push the limits of ocean science.

Jason Williams
There isn’t really that capability out there right now. And so the possibilities are endless. So I’m constantly thinking of different things to use that crane’s capabilities, like can we put down a whole ocean observatory?

Wendy
With that creativity also comes an open mind to new ways to conduct even methods of the past.

Eric King
There are certain ways that we think science should be conducted. There are certain ways that we think we should collect data. There’s certain ways that we think that we should process information. But that was how we thought about things yesterday, the day before. What we’re really most interested in is technology and how technology can surprise people in ways that we never could have imagined. But to do that, you have to open your mind, and we don’t talk about thinking outside of the box. We actually want to push to all corners of the box, we want to push beyond the corners of the box and expand the box really. To do that, though, is a bit of some retraining, perhaps, of the way that we’ve been doing business for the hundreds of years and even the way ocean sciences are taught today. And we’re seeing that happen already.

Tony
And a preview of the wondrous finds at the Schmidt Ocean Institute, which could reconceive our understanding of marine biology such as squid behavior. Jyotika and I discuss how essential it is to map the sea floor as a fundamental step towards improving our understanding of the ocean, and how advances in ocean robotics, data-sharing, and high-performance computing will create exciting new dimensions.

Jyotika Virmani
We stumbled across the largest sea creature, a siphonophore. It’s about 45 to 50 meters in length. And so that was a serendipitous finding. In October of 2020, we had another surprise discovery. We were doing some systematic mapping off the coast of Northeast Australia, so Coral Sea, Great Barrier Reef region, and we found a new coral reef. It’s like a 500 meter tall coral reef. It’s pretty tall. So that was a new discovery. The first time something like that has been discovered in about 120 years in that region. And then the same week, we caught the first sighting of what’s called a Ram’s Horn Squid, Spirula, which has never been seen in the wild before, in underwater.

Chinenye
This brings us to the end of our introductory episode.

Wendy
We can’t wait for you to deep dive into SOI with its incredible members, and us!

Blake
Follow Longitude on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn to make sure you don’t miss the continuation of Longitudes of Imagination in collaboration with the Schmidt Ocean Institute.

Jade
You can also visit our website at Longitude.Site, for more information and content.