I've been spending my summers
in the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts
And there, what I've been doing is essentially renting a boat.
What I would like to ask you to do
is to come on a boat ride with me tonight.
So, we ride off from Eel Pond into the Vineyard South,
right off the coast of Martha's Vineyard,
equipped with a drone to identify potential spots
from which to peer into the Atlantic.
Earlier I was going to say
into the depths of the Atlantic,
but we don't have to go too deep to reach the unknown.
Here, barely two miles away,
from what is arguably the greatest marine biology lab in the world,
we lower a simple plankton net into the water
and bring up into the surface things that humanity rarely pays attention to
and oftentimes, have never seen before.
Here is one of the organisms that we caught in our net,
this is a jellyfish.
But look closely, living inside this animal is another organism
that is very likely entirely new to science.
A complete new species.
Or how about this other transparent beauty?
With a beating heart, asexually growing,
on top of its head,
progeny that will move on to reproduce sexually.
Now let me say that again,
this animal is growing asexually,
on top of its head,
progeny that is going to reproduce sexually in the next generation.
A weird jellyfish, not quite,
this is an ascidian, this is a group of animals
that now we know we share extensive genomic ancestry with,
and it is perhaps the closest invertebrate species to our own.