WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.000 In the spirit of Jacques Cousteau, who said, 00:00:03.000 --> 00:00:05.000 "People protect what they love," 00:00:05.000 --> 00:00:08.000 I want to share with you today what I love most in the ocean, 00:00:08.000 --> 00:00:11.000 and that's the incredible number and variety 00:00:11.000 --> 00:00:14.000 of animals in it that make light. NOTE Paragraph 00:00:14.000 --> 00:00:17.000 My addiction began with this strange looking diving suit called Wasp; 00:00:17.000 --> 00:00:20.000 that's not an acronym -- just somebody thought it looked like the insect. 00:00:20.000 --> 00:00:23.000 It was actually developed for use by the offshore oil industry 00:00:23.000 --> 00:00:26.000 for diving on oil rigs down to a depth of 2,000 feet. 00:00:26.000 --> 00:00:28.000 Right after I completed my Ph.D., 00:00:28.000 --> 00:00:31.000 I was lucky enough to be included with a group of scientists 00:00:31.000 --> 00:00:33.000 that was using it for the first time 00:00:33.000 --> 00:00:35.000 as a tool for ocean exploration. 00:00:35.000 --> 00:00:37.000 We trained in a tank in Port Hueneme, 00:00:37.000 --> 00:00:39.000 and then my first open ocean dive 00:00:39.000 --> 00:00:41.000 was in Santa Barbara Channel. 00:00:41.000 --> 00:00:43.000 It was an evening dive. 00:00:43.000 --> 00:00:46.000 I went down to a depth of 880 feet 00:00:46.000 --> 00:00:48.000 and turned out the lights. 00:00:48.000 --> 00:00:50.000 And the reason I turned out the lights is because I knew I would see 00:00:50.000 --> 00:00:52.000 this phenomenon of animals making light 00:00:52.000 --> 00:00:54.000 called bioluminescence. 00:00:54.000 --> 00:00:56.000 But I was totally unprepared 00:00:56.000 --> 00:00:58.000 for how much there was 00:00:58.000 --> 00:01:01.000 and how spectacular it was. 00:01:01.000 --> 00:01:04.000 I saw chains of jellyfish called siphonophores 00:01:04.000 --> 00:01:06.000 that were longer than this room, 00:01:06.000 --> 00:01:08.000 pumping out so much light 00:01:08.000 --> 00:01:10.000 that I could read the dials and gauges 00:01:10.000 --> 00:01:12.000 inside the suit without a flashlight; 00:01:12.000 --> 00:01:14.000 and puffs and billows 00:01:14.000 --> 00:01:17.000 of what looked like luminous blue smoke; 00:01:17.000 --> 00:01:19.000 and explosions of sparks 00:01:19.000 --> 00:01:21.000 that would swirl up out of the thrusters -- 00:01:21.000 --> 00:01:24.000 just like when you throw a log on a campfire and the embers swirl up off the campfire, 00:01:24.000 --> 00:01:26.000 but these were icy, blue embers. 00:01:26.000 --> 00:01:28.000 It was breathtaking. NOTE Paragraph 00:01:28.000 --> 00:01:31.000 Now, usually if people are familiar with bioluminescence at all, 00:01:31.000 --> 00:01:33.000 it's these guys; it's fireflies. 00:01:33.000 --> 00:01:35.000 And there are a few other land-dwellers that can make light -- 00:01:35.000 --> 00:01:37.000 some insects, earthworms, fungi -- 00:01:37.000 --> 00:01:40.000 but in general, on land, it's really rare. 00:01:40.000 --> 00:01:42.000 In the ocean, it's the rule 00:01:42.000 --> 00:01:44.000 rather than the exception. 00:01:44.000 --> 00:01:46.000 If I go out in the open ocean environment, 00:01:46.000 --> 00:01:48.000 virtually anywhere in the world, 00:01:48.000 --> 00:01:51.000 and I drag a net from 3,000 feet to the surface, 00:01:51.000 --> 00:01:53.000 most of the animals -- 00:01:53.000 --> 00:01:55.000 in fact, in many places, 80 to 90 percent 00:01:55.000 --> 00:01:58.000 of the animals that I bring up in that net -- 00:01:58.000 --> 00:02:00.000 make light. 00:02:00.000 --> 00:02:02.000 This makes for some pretty spectacular light shows. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:02.000 --> 00:02:05.000 Now I want to share with you a little video 00:02:05.000 --> 00:02:07.000 that I shot from a submersible. 00:02:07.000 --> 00:02:09.000 I first developed this technique working from a little 00:02:09.000 --> 00:02:12.000 single-person submersible called Deep Rover 00:02:12.000 --> 00:02:14.000 and then adapted it for use on the Johnson Sea-Link, 00:02:14.000 --> 00:02:16.000 which you see here. 00:02:16.000 --> 00:02:18.000 So, mounted in front of the observation sphere, 00:02:18.000 --> 00:02:21.000 there's a a three-foot diameter hoop 00:02:21.000 --> 00:02:23.000 with a screen stretched across it. 00:02:23.000 --> 00:02:25.000 And inside the sphere with me is an intensified camera 00:02:25.000 --> 00:02:28.000 that's about as sensitive as a fully dark-adapted human eye, 00:02:28.000 --> 00:02:30.000 albeit a little fuzzy. 00:02:30.000 --> 00:02:32.000 So you turn on the camera, turn out the lights. 00:02:32.000 --> 00:02:34.000 That sparkle you're seeing is not luminescence, 00:02:34.000 --> 00:02:36.000 that's just electronic noise 00:02:36.000 --> 00:02:38.000 on these super intensified cameras. 00:02:38.000 --> 00:02:40.000 You don't see luminescence until the submersible 00:02:40.000 --> 00:02:42.000 begins to move forward through the water, 00:02:42.000 --> 00:02:44.000 but as it does, animals bumping into the screen 00:02:44.000 --> 00:02:46.000 are stimulated to bioluminesce. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:46.000 --> 00:02:48.000 Now, when I was first doing this, 00:02:48.000 --> 00:02:50.000 all I was trying to do was count the numbers of sources. 00:02:50.000 --> 00:02:52.000 I knew my forward speed, I knew the area, 00:02:52.000 --> 00:02:54.000 and so I could figure out how many hundreds of sources 00:02:54.000 --> 00:02:56.000 there were per cubic meter. 00:02:56.000 --> 00:02:58.000 But I started to realize that I could actually identify animals 00:02:58.000 --> 00:03:00.000 by the type of flashes they produced. 00:03:00.000 --> 00:03:03.000 And so, here, in the Gulf of Maine 00:03:03.000 --> 00:03:05.000 at 740 feet, 00:03:05.000 --> 00:03:08.000 I can name pretty much everything you're seeing there to the species level. 00:03:08.000 --> 00:03:10.000 Like those big explosions, sparks, 00:03:10.000 --> 00:03:12.000 are from a little comb jelly, 00:03:12.000 --> 00:03:15.000 and there's krill and other kinds of crustaceans, 00:03:15.000 --> 00:03:17.000 and jellyfish. 00:03:17.000 --> 00:03:19.000 There was another one of those comb jellies. 00:03:19.000 --> 00:03:22.000 And so I've worked with computer image analysis engineers 00:03:22.000 --> 00:03:25.000 to develop automatic recognition systems 00:03:25.000 --> 00:03:27.000 that can identify these animals 00:03:27.000 --> 00:03:30.000 and then extract the XYZ coordinate of the initial impact point. 00:03:30.000 --> 00:03:33.000 And we can then do the kinds of things that ecologists do on land, 00:03:33.000 --> 00:03:35.000 and do nearest neighbor distances. NOTE Paragraph 00:03:36.000 --> 00:03:38.000 But you don't always have to go down to the depths of the ocean 00:03:38.000 --> 00:03:40.000 to see a light show like this. 00:03:40.000 --> 00:03:42.000 You can actually see it in surface waters. 00:03:42.000 --> 00:03:45.000 This is some shot, by Dr. Mike Latz at Scripps Institution, 00:03:45.000 --> 00:03:47.000 of a dolphin swimming through bioluminescent plankton. 00:03:47.000 --> 00:03:49.000 And this isn't someplace exotic 00:03:49.000 --> 00:03:52.000 like one of the bioluminescent bays in Puerto Rico, 00:03:52.000 --> 00:03:54.000 this was actually shot in San Diego Harbor. 00:03:54.000 --> 00:03:57.000 And sometimes you can see it even closer than that, 00:03:57.000 --> 00:03:59.000 because the heads on ships -- 00:03:59.000 --> 00:04:02.000 that's toilets, for any land lovers that are listening -- 00:04:02.000 --> 00:04:05.000 are flushed with unfiltered seawater 00:04:05.000 --> 00:04:07.000 that often has bioluminescent plankton in it. 00:04:07.000 --> 00:04:09.000 So, if you stagger into the head late at night 00:04:09.000 --> 00:04:11.000 and you're so toilet-hugging sick 00:04:11.000 --> 00:04:13.000 that you forget to turn on the light, 00:04:13.000 --> 00:04:15.000 you may think that you're having a religious experience. (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:04:16.000 --> 00:04:18.000 So, how does a living creature make light? 00:04:18.000 --> 00:04:20.000 Well, that was the question that 19th century 00:04:20.000 --> 00:04:22.000 French physiologist Raphael Dubois, 00:04:22.000 --> 00:04:24.000 asked about this bioluminescent clam. 00:04:24.000 --> 00:04:27.000 He ground it up and he managed to get out a couple of chemicals; 00:04:27.000 --> 00:04:30.000 one, the enzyme, he called luciferase; 00:04:30.000 --> 00:04:32.000 the substrate, he called luciferin 00:04:32.000 --> 00:04:34.000 after Lucifer the Lightbearer. 00:04:34.000 --> 00:04:37.000 That terminology has stuck, but it doesn't actually refer to specific chemicals 00:04:37.000 --> 00:04:40.000 because these chemicals come in a lot of different shapes and forms. 00:04:40.000 --> 00:04:42.000 In fact, most of the people 00:04:42.000 --> 00:04:44.000 studying bioluminescence today 00:04:44.000 --> 00:04:46.000 are focused on the chemistry, because these chemicals 00:04:46.000 --> 00:04:48.000 have proved so incredibly valuable 00:04:48.000 --> 00:04:51.000 for developing antibacterial agents, 00:04:51.000 --> 00:04:53.000 cancer fighting drugs, 00:04:53.000 --> 00:04:55.000 testing for the presence of life on Mars, 00:04:55.000 --> 00:04:57.000 detecting pollutants in our waters -- 00:04:57.000 --> 00:04:59.000 which is how we use it at ORCA. 00:04:59.000 --> 00:05:01.000 In 2008, 00:05:01.000 --> 00:05:03.000 the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 00:05:03.000 --> 00:05:05.000 was awarded for work done 00:05:05.000 --> 00:05:07.000 on a molecule called green fluorescent protein 00:05:07.000 --> 00:05:10.000 that was isolated from the bioluminescent chemistry 00:05:10.000 --> 00:05:12.000 of a jellyfish, 00:05:12.000 --> 00:05:14.000 and it's been equated to the invention of the microscope, 00:05:14.000 --> 00:05:17.000 in terms of the impact that it has had 00:05:17.000 --> 00:05:20.000 on cell biology and genetic engineering. NOTE Paragraph 00:05:20.000 --> 00:05:22.000 Another thing all these molecules are telling us 00:05:22.000 --> 00:05:25.000 that, apparently, bioluminescence has evolved 00:05:25.000 --> 00:05:28.000 at least 40 times, maybe as many as 50 separate times 00:05:28.000 --> 00:05:30.000 in evolutionary history, 00:05:30.000 --> 00:05:32.000 which is a clear indication 00:05:32.000 --> 00:05:35.000 of how spectacularly important 00:05:35.000 --> 00:05:37.000 this trait is for survival. 00:05:37.000 --> 00:05:39.000 So, what is it about bioluminescence 00:05:39.000 --> 00:05:41.000 that's so important to so many animals? 00:05:41.000 --> 00:05:44.000 Well, for animals that are trying to avoid predators 00:05:44.000 --> 00:05:47.000 by staying in the darkness, 00:05:47.000 --> 00:05:49.000 light can still be very useful 00:05:49.000 --> 00:05:52.000 for the three basic things that animals have to do to survive: 00:05:52.000 --> 00:05:54.000 and that's find food, 00:05:54.000 --> 00:05:56.000 attract a mate and avoid being eaten. 00:05:56.000 --> 00:05:58.000 So, for example, this fish 00:05:58.000 --> 00:06:00.000 has a built-in headlight behind its eye 00:06:00.000 --> 00:06:02.000 that it can use for finding food 00:06:02.000 --> 00:06:04.000 or attracting a mate. 00:06:04.000 --> 00:06:07.000 And then when it's not using it, it actually can roll it down into its head 00:06:07.000 --> 00:06:09.000 just like the headlights on your Lamborghini. 00:06:10.000 --> 00:06:13.000 This fish actually has high beams. NOTE Paragraph 00:06:13.000 --> 00:06:15.000 And this fish, which is one of my favorites, 00:06:15.000 --> 00:06:18.000 has three headlights on each side of its head. 00:06:18.000 --> 00:06:20.000 Now, this one is blue, 00:06:20.000 --> 00:06:22.000 and that's the color of most bioluminescence in the ocean 00:06:22.000 --> 00:06:24.000 because evolution has selected 00:06:24.000 --> 00:06:26.000 for the color that travels farthest through seawater 00:06:26.000 --> 00:06:28.000 in order to optimize communication. 00:06:28.000 --> 00:06:30.000 So, most animals make blue light, 00:06:30.000 --> 00:06:33.000 and most animals can only see blue light, 00:06:33.000 --> 00:06:35.000 but this fish is a really fascinating exception 00:06:35.000 --> 00:06:38.000 because it has two red light organs. 00:06:38.000 --> 00:06:40.000 And I have no idea why there's two, 00:06:40.000 --> 00:06:42.000 and that's something I want to solve some day -- 00:06:42.000 --> 00:06:45.000 but not only can it see blue light, 00:06:45.000 --> 00:06:47.000 but it can see red light. 00:06:47.000 --> 00:06:50.000 So it uses its red bioluminescence like a sniper's scope 00:06:50.000 --> 00:06:52.000 to be able to sneak up on animals 00:06:52.000 --> 00:06:54.000 that are blind to red light 00:06:54.000 --> 00:06:56.000 and be able to see them without being seen. 00:06:56.000 --> 00:06:58.000 It's also got a little chin barbel here 00:06:58.000 --> 00:07:00.000 with a blue luminescent lure on it 00:07:00.000 --> 00:07:03.000 that it can use to attract prey from a long way off. 00:07:03.000 --> 00:07:06.000 And a lot of animals will use their bioluminescence as a lure. NOTE Paragraph 00:07:07.000 --> 00:07:09.000 This is another one of my favorite fish. 00:07:09.000 --> 00:07:11.000 This is a viperfish, and it's got a lure 00:07:11.000 --> 00:07:13.000 on the end of a long fishing rod 00:07:13.000 --> 00:07:15.000 that it arches in front of the toothy jaw 00:07:15.000 --> 00:07:18.000 that gives the viperfish its name. 00:07:18.000 --> 00:07:20.000 The teeth on this fish are so long 00:07:20.000 --> 00:07:22.000 that if they closed inside the mouth of the fish, 00:07:22.000 --> 00:07:25.000 it would actually impale its own brain. 00:07:25.000 --> 00:07:27.000 So instead, it slides in grooves 00:07:27.000 --> 00:07:29.000 on the outside of the head. 00:07:29.000 --> 00:07:31.000 This is a Christmas tree of a fish; 00:07:31.000 --> 00:07:33.000 everything on this fish lights up, 00:07:33.000 --> 00:07:35.000 it's not just that lure. 00:07:35.000 --> 00:07:37.000 It's got a built-in flashlight. 00:07:37.000 --> 00:07:39.000 It's got these jewel-like light organs on its belly 00:07:39.000 --> 00:07:42.000 that it uses for a type of camouflage 00:07:42.000 --> 00:07:45.000 that obliterates its shadow, 00:07:45.000 --> 00:07:48.000 so when it's swimming around and there's a predator looking up from below, 00:07:48.000 --> 00:07:50.000 it makes itself disappear. 00:07:50.000 --> 00:07:52.000 It's got light organs in the mouth, 00:07:52.000 --> 00:07:54.000 it's got light organs in every single scale, in the fins, 00:07:54.000 --> 00:07:56.000 in a mucus layer on the back and the belly, 00:07:56.000 --> 00:07:58.000 all used for different things -- 00:07:58.000 --> 00:08:00.000 some of which we know about, some of which we don't. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:00.000 --> 00:08:03.000 And we know a little bit more about bioluminescence thanks to Pixar, 00:08:03.000 --> 00:08:05.000 and I'm very grateful to Pixar for sharing 00:08:05.000 --> 00:08:07.000 my favorite topic with so many people. 00:08:07.000 --> 00:08:09.000 I do wish, with their budget, 00:08:09.000 --> 00:08:12.000 that they might have spent just a tiny bit more money 00:08:12.000 --> 00:08:15.000 to pay a consulting fee to some poor, starving graduate student, 00:08:15.000 --> 00:08:17.000 who could have told them that those are the eyes 00:08:17.000 --> 00:08:20.000 of a fish that's been preserved in formalin. 00:08:20.000 --> 00:08:22.000 These are the eyes of a living anglerfish. 00:08:22.000 --> 00:08:24.000 So, she's got a lure that she sticks out 00:08:24.000 --> 00:08:26.000 in front of this living mousetrap 00:08:26.000 --> 00:08:28.000 of needle-sharp teeth 00:08:28.000 --> 00:08:31.000 in order to attract in some unsuspecting prey. 00:08:31.000 --> 00:08:33.000 And this one has a lure 00:08:33.000 --> 00:08:36.000 with all kinds of little interesting threads coming off it. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:36.000 --> 00:08:39.000 Now we used to think that the different shape of the lure 00:08:39.000 --> 00:08:41.000 was to attract different types of prey, 00:08:41.000 --> 00:08:44.000 but then stomach content analyses on these fish 00:08:44.000 --> 00:08:47.000 done by scientists, or more likely their graduate students, 00:08:47.000 --> 00:08:49.000 have revealed that 00:08:49.000 --> 00:08:51.000 they all eat pretty much the same thing. 00:08:51.000 --> 00:08:53.000 So, now we believe that the different shape of the lure 00:08:53.000 --> 00:08:55.000 is how the male recognizes the female 00:08:55.000 --> 00:08:57.000 in the anglerfish world, 00:08:57.000 --> 00:08:59.000 because many of these males 00:08:59.000 --> 00:09:01.000 are what are known as dwarf males. 00:09:01.000 --> 00:09:03.000 This little guy 00:09:03.000 --> 00:09:06.000 has no visible means of self-support. 00:09:06.000 --> 00:09:08.000 He has no lure for attracting food 00:09:08.000 --> 00:09:10.000 and no teeth for eating it when it gets there. 00:09:10.000 --> 00:09:13.000 His only hope for existence on this planet 00:09:13.000 --> 00:09:15.000 is as a gigolo. (Laughter) 00:09:15.000 --> 00:09:17.000 He's got to find himself a babe 00:09:17.000 --> 00:09:20.000 and then he's got to latch on for life. 00:09:20.000 --> 00:09:22.000 So this little guy 00:09:22.000 --> 00:09:24.000 has found himself this babe, 00:09:24.000 --> 00:09:26.000 and you will note that he's had the good sense 00:09:26.000 --> 00:09:29.000 to attach himself in a way that he doesn't actually have to look at her. 00:09:29.000 --> 00:09:31.000 (Laughter) 00:09:31.000 --> 00:09:33.000 But he still knows a good thing when he sees it, 00:09:33.000 --> 00:09:36.000 and so he seals the relationship with an eternal kiss. 00:09:36.000 --> 00:09:38.000 His flesh fuses with her flesh, 00:09:38.000 --> 00:09:40.000 her bloodstream grows into his body, 00:09:40.000 --> 00:09:43.000 and he becomes nothing more than a little sperm sac. 00:09:43.000 --> 00:09:45.000 (Laughter) 00:09:45.000 --> 00:09:47.000 Well, this is a deep-sea version of Women's Lib. 00:09:47.000 --> 00:09:49.000 She always knows where he is, 00:09:49.000 --> 00:09:51.000 and she doesn't have to be monogamous, 00:09:51.000 --> 00:09:53.000 because some of these females 00:09:53.000 --> 00:09:55.000 come up with multiple males attached. NOTE Paragraph 00:09:55.000 --> 00:09:58.000 So they can use it for finding food, for attracting mates. 00:09:58.000 --> 00:10:01.000 They use it a lot for defense, many different ways. 00:10:01.000 --> 00:10:04.000 A lot of them can release their luciferin or luferase in the water 00:10:04.000 --> 00:10:06.000 just the way a squid or an octopus will release an ink cloud. 00:10:06.000 --> 00:10:08.000 This shrimp is actually 00:10:08.000 --> 00:10:10.000 spewing light out of its mouth 00:10:10.000 --> 00:10:12.000 like a fire breathing dragon 00:10:12.000 --> 00:10:14.000 in order to blind or distract this viperfish 00:10:14.000 --> 00:10:16.000 so that the shrimp can swim away into the darkness. 00:10:16.000 --> 00:10:19.000 And there are a lot of different animals that can do this: 00:10:19.000 --> 00:10:21.000 There's jellyfish, there's squid, 00:10:21.000 --> 00:10:23.000 there's a whole lot of different crustaceans, NOTE Paragraph 00:10:23.000 --> 00:10:25.000 there's even fish that can do this. 00:10:25.000 --> 00:10:28.000 This fish is called the shining tubeshoulder 00:10:28.000 --> 00:10:30.000 because it actually has a tube on its shoulder 00:10:30.000 --> 00:10:32.000 that can squirt out light. 00:10:32.000 --> 00:10:34.000 And I was luck enough to capture one of these 00:10:34.000 --> 00:10:36.000 when we were on a trawling expedition 00:10:36.000 --> 00:10:39.000 off the northwest coast of Africa for "Blue Planet," 00:10:39.000 --> 00:10:41.000 for the deep portion of "Blue Planet." 00:10:41.000 --> 00:10:43.000 And we were using a special trawling net 00:10:43.000 --> 00:10:45.000 that we were able to bring these animals up alive. 00:10:45.000 --> 00:10:48.000 So we captured one of these, and I brought it into the lab. 00:10:48.000 --> 00:10:50.000 So I'm holding it, 00:10:50.000 --> 00:10:52.000 and I'm about to touch that tube on its shoulder, 00:10:52.000 --> 00:10:55.000 and when I do, you'll see bioluminescence coming out. 00:10:56.000 --> 00:10:58.000 But to me, what's shocking 00:10:58.000 --> 00:11:00.000 is not just the amount of light, 00:11:00.000 --> 00:11:02.000 but the fact that it's not just luciferin and luciferase. 00:11:02.000 --> 00:11:04.000 For this fish, it's actually whole cells 00:11:04.000 --> 00:11:06.000 with nuclei and membranes. 00:11:06.000 --> 00:11:08.000 It's energetically very costly for this fish to do this, 00:11:08.000 --> 00:11:11.000 and we have no idea why it does it -- 00:11:11.000 --> 00:11:14.000 another one of these great mysteries that needs to be solved. NOTE Paragraph 00:11:16.000 --> 00:11:18.000 Now, another form of defense 00:11:18.000 --> 00:11:20.000 is something called a burglar alarm -- 00:11:20.000 --> 00:11:22.000 same reason you have a burglar alarm on your car; 00:11:22.000 --> 00:11:24.000 the honking horn and flashing lights 00:11:24.000 --> 00:11:26.000 are meant to attract the attention of, hopefully, 00:11:26.000 --> 00:11:28.000 the police that will come and take the burglar away -- 00:11:28.000 --> 00:11:30.000 when an animal's caught in the clutches of a predator, 00:11:30.000 --> 00:11:32.000 its only hope for escape may be 00:11:32.000 --> 00:11:34.000 to attract the attention of something bigger and nastier 00:11:34.000 --> 00:11:36.000 that will attack their attacker, 00:11:36.000 --> 00:11:39.000 thereby affording them a chance for escape. 00:11:39.000 --> 00:11:41.000 This jellyfish, for example, has 00:11:41.000 --> 00:11:43.000 a spectacular bioluminescent display. 00:11:43.000 --> 00:11:45.000 This is us chasing it in the submersible. 00:11:45.000 --> 00:11:48.000 That's not luminescence, that's reflected light from the gonads. 00:11:48.000 --> 00:11:51.000 We capture it in a very special device on the front of the submersible 00:11:51.000 --> 00:11:54.000 that allows us to bring it up in really pristine condition, 00:11:54.000 --> 00:11:56.000 bring it into the lab on the ship. 00:11:56.000 --> 00:11:58.000 And then to generate the display you're about to see, 00:11:58.000 --> 00:12:00.000 all I did was touch it once per second 00:12:00.000 --> 00:12:02.000 on its nerve ring with a sharp pick 00:12:02.000 --> 00:12:04.000 that's sort of like the sharp tooth of a fish. 00:12:04.000 --> 00:12:07.000 And once this display gets going, I'm not touching it anymore. 00:12:07.000 --> 00:12:10.000 This is an unbelievable light show. 00:12:10.000 --> 00:12:12.000 It's this pinwheel of light, 00:12:12.000 --> 00:12:14.000 and I've done calculations that show that this could be seen 00:12:14.000 --> 00:12:17.000 from as much as 300 feet away by a predator. 00:12:17.000 --> 00:12:19.000 And I thought, "You know, 00:12:19.000 --> 00:12:21.000 that might actually make a pretty good lure." 00:12:21.000 --> 00:12:24.000 Because one of the things that's frustrated me 00:12:24.000 --> 00:12:26.000 as a deep-sea explorer 00:12:26.000 --> 00:12:29.000 is how many animals there probably are in the ocean that we know nothing about 00:12:29.000 --> 00:12:32.000 because of the way we explore the ocean. NOTE Paragraph 00:12:32.000 --> 00:12:35.000 The primary way that we know about what lives in the ocean 00:12:35.000 --> 00:12:38.000 is we go out and drag nets behind ships. 00:12:38.000 --> 00:12:40.000 And I defy you to name any other branch of science 00:12:40.000 --> 00:12:43.000 that still depends on hundreds of year-old technology. 00:12:43.000 --> 00:12:45.000 The other primary way is we go down 00:12:45.000 --> 00:12:47.000 with submersibles and remote-operated vehicles. 00:12:47.000 --> 00:12:50.000 I've made hundreds of dives in submersibles. 00:12:50.000 --> 00:12:52.000 When I'm sitting in a submersible though, 00:12:52.000 --> 00:12:55.000 I know that I'm not unobtrusive at all -- 00:12:55.000 --> 00:12:57.000 I've got bright lights and noisy thrusters -- 00:12:57.000 --> 00:13:00.000 any animal with any sense is going to be long gone. 00:13:00.000 --> 00:13:03.000 So, I've wanted for a long time 00:13:03.000 --> 00:13:05.000 to figure out a different way to explore. NOTE Paragraph 00:13:05.000 --> 00:13:08.000 And so, sometime ago, I got this idea for a camera system. 00:13:08.000 --> 00:13:11.000 It's not exactly rocket science. We call this thing Eye-in-the-Sea. 00:13:11.000 --> 00:13:13.000 And scientists have done this on land for years; 00:13:13.000 --> 00:13:16.000 we just use a color that the animals can't see 00:13:16.000 --> 00:13:18.000 and then a camera that can see that color. 00:13:18.000 --> 00:13:20.000 You can't use infrared in the sea. 00:13:20.000 --> 00:13:22.000 We use far-red light, but even that's a problem 00:13:22.000 --> 00:13:24.000 because it gets absorbed so quickly. 00:13:24.000 --> 00:13:26.000 Made an intensified camera, 00:13:26.000 --> 00:13:28.000 wanted to make this electronic jellyfish. 00:13:28.000 --> 00:13:31.000 Thing is, in science, 00:13:31.000 --> 00:13:34.000 you basically have to tell the funding agencies what you're going to discover 00:13:34.000 --> 00:13:36.000 before they'll give you the money. 00:13:36.000 --> 00:13:38.000 And I didn't know what I was going to discover, 00:13:38.000 --> 00:13:40.000 so I couldn't get the funding for this. 00:13:40.000 --> 00:13:43.000 So I kluged this together, I got the Harvey Mudd Engineering Clinic 00:13:43.000 --> 00:13:46.000 to actually do it as an undergraduate student project initially, 00:13:46.000 --> 00:13:49.000 and then I kluged funding from a whole bunch of different sources. NOTE Paragraph 00:13:49.000 --> 00:13:51.000 Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute 00:13:51.000 --> 00:13:54.000 gave me time with their ROV 00:13:54.000 --> 00:13:56.000 so that I could test it and we could figure out, 00:13:56.000 --> 00:13:59.000 you know, for example, which colors of red light we had to use 00:13:59.000 --> 00:14:02.000 so that we could see the animals, but they couldn't see us -- 00:14:02.000 --> 00:14:05.000 get the electronic jellyfish working. 00:14:05.000 --> 00:14:08.000 And you can see just what a shoestring operation this really was, 00:14:08.000 --> 00:14:11.000 because we cast these 16 blue LEDs in epoxy 00:14:11.000 --> 00:14:13.000 and you can see in the epoxy mold that we used, 00:14:13.000 --> 00:14:16.000 the word Ziploc is still visible. 00:14:16.000 --> 00:14:19.000 Needless to say, when it's kluged together like this, 00:14:19.000 --> 00:14:22.000 there were a lot of trials and tribulations getting this working. 00:14:22.000 --> 00:14:24.000 But there came a moment when it all came together, 00:14:24.000 --> 00:14:26.000 and everything worked. 00:14:26.000 --> 00:14:28.000 And, remarkably, that moment got caught on film 00:14:28.000 --> 00:14:30.000 by photographer Mark Richards, 00:14:30.000 --> 00:14:32.000 who happened to be there at the precise moment 00:14:32.000 --> 00:14:35.000 that we discovered that it all came together. 00:14:35.000 --> 00:14:37.000 That's me on the left, 00:14:37.000 --> 00:14:39.000 my graduate student at the time, Erika Raymond, 00:14:39.000 --> 00:14:42.000 and Lee Fry, who was the engineer on the project. 00:14:42.000 --> 00:14:45.000 And we have this photograph posted in our lab in a place of honor 00:14:45.000 --> 00:14:48.000 with the caption: "Engineer satisfying two women at once." (Laughter) 00:14:49.000 --> 00:14:51.000 And we were very, very happy. NOTE Paragraph 00:14:51.000 --> 00:14:53.000 So now we had a system 00:14:53.000 --> 00:14:55.000 that we could actually take to some place 00:14:55.000 --> 00:14:57.000 that was kind of like an oasis on the bottom of the ocean 00:14:57.000 --> 00:15:00.000 that might be patrolled by large predators. 00:15:01.000 --> 00:15:03.000 And so, the place that we took it to 00:15:03.000 --> 00:15:05.000 was this place called a Brine Pool, 00:15:05.000 --> 00:15:07.000 which is in the northern part of the Gulf of Mexico. 00:15:07.000 --> 00:15:09.000 It's a magical place. 00:15:09.000 --> 00:15:11.000 And I know this footage isn't going to look like anything to you -- 00:15:11.000 --> 00:15:13.000 we had a crummy camera at the time -- 00:15:13.000 --> 00:15:15.000 but I was ecstatic. 00:15:15.000 --> 00:15:17.000 We're at the edge of the Brine Pool, 00:15:17.000 --> 00:15:20.000 there's a fish that's swimming towards the camera. 00:15:20.000 --> 00:15:22.000 It's clearly undisturbed by us. 00:15:22.000 --> 00:15:25.000 And I had my window into the deep sea. 00:15:25.000 --> 00:15:28.000 I, for the first time, could see what animals were doing down there 00:15:28.000 --> 00:15:31.000 when we weren't down there disturbing them in some way. 00:15:32.000 --> 00:15:34.000 Four hours into the deployment, 00:15:34.000 --> 00:15:36.000 we had programmed the electronic jellyfish 00:15:36.000 --> 00:15:38.000 to come on for the first time. 00:15:38.000 --> 00:15:40.000 Eighty-six seconds after 00:15:40.000 --> 00:15:42.000 it went into its pinwheel display, 00:15:42.000 --> 00:15:44.000 we recorded this: 00:15:45.000 --> 00:15:47.000 This is a squid, over six feet long, 00:15:47.000 --> 00:15:49.000 that is so new to science, 00:15:49.000 --> 00:15:52.000 it cannot be placed in any known scientific family. 00:15:53.000 --> 00:15:56.000 I could not have asked for a better proof of concept. NOTE Paragraph 00:15:56.000 --> 00:15:58.000 And based on this, I went back to the National Science Foundation 00:15:58.000 --> 00:16:01.000 and said, "This is what we will discover." 00:16:01.000 --> 00:16:03.000 And they gave me enough money to do it right, 00:16:03.000 --> 00:16:06.000 which has involved developing the world's first deep-sea webcam -- 00:16:06.000 --> 00:16:08.000 which has been installed in 00:16:08.000 --> 00:16:10.000 the Monterey Canyon for the past year -- 00:16:10.000 --> 00:16:12.000 and now, more recently, 00:16:12.000 --> 00:16:14.000 a modular form of this system, 00:16:14.000 --> 00:16:16.000 a much more mobile form 00:16:16.000 --> 00:16:18.000 that's a lot easier to launch and recover, 00:16:18.000 --> 00:16:21.000 that I hope can be used on Sylvia's "hope spots" 00:16:21.000 --> 00:16:23.000 to help explore 00:16:23.000 --> 00:16:25.000 and protect these areas, 00:16:25.000 --> 00:16:27.000 and, for me, learn more about 00:16:27.000 --> 00:16:30.000 the bioluminescence in these "hope spots." NOTE Paragraph 00:16:30.000 --> 00:16:33.000 So one of these take-home messages here 00:16:33.000 --> 00:16:36.000 is, there is still a lot to explore in the oceans. 00:16:36.000 --> 00:16:38.000 And Sylvia has said 00:16:38.000 --> 00:16:41.000 that we are destroying the oceans before we even know what's in them, 00:16:41.000 --> 00:16:43.000 and she's right. 00:16:43.000 --> 00:16:45.000 So if you ever, ever get an opportunity 00:16:45.000 --> 00:16:47.000 to take a dive in a submersible, 00:16:47.000 --> 00:16:50.000 say yes -- a thousand times, yes -- 00:16:50.000 --> 00:16:52.000 and please turn out the lights. 00:16:52.000 --> 00:16:54.000 I promise, you'll love it. NOTE Paragraph 00:16:54.000 --> 00:16:56.000 Thank you. NOTE Paragraph 00:16:56.000 --> 00:16:58.000 (Applause)