0:00:00.000,0:00:03.000
In the spirit of Jacques Cousteau, who said,

0:00:03.000,0:00:05.000
"People protect what they love,"

0:00:05.000,0:00:08.000
I want to share with you today what I love most in the ocean,

0:00:08.000,0:00:11.000
and that's the incredible number and variety

0:00:11.000,0:00:14.000
of animals in it that make light.

0:00:14.000,0:00:17.000
My addiction began with this strange looking diving suit called Wasp;

0:00:17.000,0:00:20.000
that's not an acronym -- just somebody thought it looked like the insect.

0:00:20.000,0:00:23.000
It was actually developed for use by the offshore oil industry

0:00:23.000,0:00:26.000
for diving on oil rigs down to a depth of 2,000 feet.

0:00:26.000,0:00:28.000
Right after I completed my Ph.D.,

0:00:28.000,0:00:31.000
I was lucky enough to be included with a group of scientists

0:00:31.000,0:00:33.000
that was using it for the first time

0:00:33.000,0:00:35.000
as a tool for ocean exploration.

0:00:35.000,0:00:37.000
We trained in a tank in Port Hueneme,

0:00:37.000,0:00:39.000
and then my first open ocean dive

0:00:39.000,0:00:41.000
was in Santa Barbara Channel.

0:00:41.000,0:00:43.000
It was an evening dive.

0:00:43.000,0:00:46.000
I went down to a depth of 880 feet

0:00:46.000,0:00:48.000
and turned out the lights.

0:00:48.000,0:00:50.000
And the reason I turned out the lights is because I knew I would see

0:00:50.000,0:00:52.000
this phenomenon of animals making light

0:00:52.000,0:00:54.000
called bioluminescence.

0:00:54.000,0:00:56.000
But I was totally unprepared

0:00:56.000,0:00:58.000
for how much there was

0:00:58.000,0:01:01.000
and how spectacular it was.

0:01:01.000,0:01:04.000
I saw chains of jellyfish called siphonophores

0:01:04.000,0:01:06.000
that were longer than this room,

0:01:06.000,0:01:08.000
pumping out so much light

0:01:08.000,0:01:10.000
that I could read the dials and gauges

0:01:10.000,0:01:12.000
inside the suit without a flashlight;

0:01:12.000,0:01:14.000
and puffs and billows

0:01:14.000,0:01:17.000
of what looked like luminous blue smoke;

0:01:17.000,0:01:19.000
and explosions of sparks

0:01:19.000,0:01:21.000
that would swirl up out of the thrusters --

0:01:21.000,0:01:24.000
just like when you throw a log on a campfire and the embers swirl up off the campfire,

0:01:24.000,0:01:26.000
but these were icy, blue embers.

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It was breathtaking.

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Now, usually if people are familiar with bioluminescence at all,

0:01:31.000,0:01:33.000
it's these guys; it's fireflies.

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And there are a few other land-dwellers that can make light --

0:01:35.000,0:01:37.000
some insects, earthworms, fungi --

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but in general, on land, it's really rare.

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In the ocean, it's the rule

0:01:42.000,0:01:44.000
rather than the exception.

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If I go out in the open ocean environment,

0:01:46.000,0:01:48.000
virtually anywhere in the world,

0:01:48.000,0:01:51.000
and I drag a net from 3,000 feet to the surface,

0:01:51.000,0:01:53.000
most of the animals --

0:01:53.000,0:01:55.000
in fact, in many places, 80 to 90 percent

0:01:55.000,0:01:58.000
of the animals that I bring up in that net --

0:01:58.000,0:02:00.000
make light.

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This makes for some pretty spectacular light shows.

0:02:02.000,0:02:05.000
Now I want to share with you a little video

0:02:05.000,0:02:07.000
that I shot from a submersible.

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I first developed this technique working from a little

0:02:09.000,0:02:12.000
single-person submersible called Deep Rover

0:02:12.000,0:02:14.000
and then adapted it for use on the Johnson Sea-Link,

0:02:14.000,0:02:16.000
which you see here.

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So, mounted in front of the observation sphere,

0:02:18.000,0:02:21.000
there's a a three-foot diameter hoop

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with a screen stretched across it.

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And inside the sphere with me is an intensified camera

0:02:25.000,0:02:28.000
that's about as sensitive as a fully dark-adapted human eye,

0:02:28.000,0:02:30.000
albeit a little fuzzy.

0:02:30.000,0:02:32.000
So you turn on the camera, turn out the lights.

0:02:32.000,0:02:34.000
That sparkle you're seeing is not luminescence,

0:02:34.000,0:02:36.000
that's just electronic noise

0:02:36.000,0:02:38.000
on these super intensified cameras.

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You don't see luminescence until the submersible

0:02:40.000,0:02:42.000
begins to move forward through the water,

0:02:42.000,0:02:44.000
but as it does, animals bumping into the screen

0:02:44.000,0:02:46.000
are stimulated to bioluminesce.

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Now, when I was first doing this,

0:02:48.000,0:02:50.000
all I was trying to do was count the numbers of sources.

0:02:50.000,0:02:52.000
I knew my forward speed, I knew the area,

0:02:52.000,0:02:54.000
and so I could figure out how many hundreds of sources

0:02:54.000,0:02:56.000
there were per cubic meter.

0:02:56.000,0:02:58.000
But I started to realize that I could actually identify animals

0:02:58.000,0:03:00.000
by the type of flashes they produced.

0:03:00.000,0:03:03.000
And so, here, in the Gulf of Maine

0:03:03.000,0:03:05.000
at 740 feet,

0:03:05.000,0:03:08.000
I can name pretty much everything you're seeing there to the species level.

0:03:08.000,0:03:10.000
Like those big explosions, sparks,

0:03:10.000,0:03:12.000
are from a little comb jelly,

0:03:12.000,0:03:15.000
and there's krill and other kinds of crustaceans,

0:03:15.000,0:03:17.000
and jellyfish.

0:03:17.000,0:03:19.000
There was another one of those comb jellies.

0:03:19.000,0:03:22.000
And so I've worked with computer image analysis engineers

0:03:22.000,0:03:25.000
to develop automatic recognition systems

0:03:25.000,0:03:27.000
that can identify these animals

0:03:27.000,0:03:30.000
and then extract the XYZ coordinate of the initial impact point.

0:03:30.000,0:03:33.000
And we can then do the kinds of things that ecologists do on land,

0:03:33.000,0:03:35.000
and do nearest neighbor distances.

0:03:36.000,0:03:38.000
But you don't always have to go down to the depths of the ocean

0:03:38.000,0:03:40.000
to see a light show like this.

0:03:40.000,0:03:42.000
You can actually see it in surface waters.

0:03:42.000,0:03:45.000
This is some shot, by Dr. Mike Latz at Scripps Institution,

0:03:45.000,0:03:47.000
of a dolphin swimming through bioluminescent plankton.

0:03:47.000,0:03:49.000
And this isn't someplace exotic

0:03:49.000,0:03:52.000
like one of the bioluminescent bays in Puerto Rico,

0:03:52.000,0:03:54.000
this was actually shot in San Diego Harbor.

0:03:54.000,0:03:57.000
And sometimes you can see it even closer than that,

0:03:57.000,0:03:59.000
because the heads on ships --

0:03:59.000,0:04:02.000
that's toilets, for any land lovers that are listening --

0:04:02.000,0:04:05.000
are flushed with unfiltered seawater

0:04:05.000,0:04:07.000
that often has bioluminescent plankton in it.

0:04:07.000,0:04:09.000
So, if you stagger into the head late at night

0:04:09.000,0:04:11.000
and you're so toilet-hugging sick

0:04:11.000,0:04:13.000
that you forget to turn on the light,

0:04:13.000,0:04:15.000
you may think that you're having a religious experience. (Laughter)

0:04:16.000,0:04:18.000
So, how does a living creature make light?

0:04:18.000,0:04:20.000
Well, that was the question that 19th century

0:04:20.000,0:04:22.000
French physiologist Raphael Dubois,

0:04:22.000,0:04:24.000
asked about this bioluminescent clam.

0:04:24.000,0:04:27.000
He ground it up and he managed to get out a couple of chemicals;

0:04:27.000,0:04:30.000
one, the enzyme, he called luciferase;

0:04:30.000,0:04:32.000
the substrate, he called luciferin

0:04:32.000,0:04:34.000
after Lucifer the Lightbearer.

0:04:34.000,0:04:37.000
That terminology has stuck, but it doesn't actually refer to specific chemicals

0:04:37.000,0:04:40.000
because these chemicals come in a lot of different shapes and forms.

0:04:40.000,0:04:42.000
In fact, most of the people

0:04:42.000,0:04:44.000
studying bioluminescence today

0:04:44.000,0:04:46.000
are focused on the chemistry, because these chemicals

0:04:46.000,0:04:48.000
have proved so incredibly valuable

0:04:48.000,0:04:51.000
for developing antibacterial agents,

0:04:51.000,0:04:53.000
cancer fighting drugs,

0:04:53.000,0:04:55.000
testing for the presence of life on Mars,

0:04:55.000,0:04:57.000
detecting pollutants in our waters --

0:04:57.000,0:04:59.000
which is how we use it at ORCA.

0:04:59.000,0:05:01.000
In 2008,

0:05:01.000,0:05:03.000
the Nobel Prize in Chemistry

0:05:03.000,0:05:05.000
was awarded for work done

0:05:05.000,0:05:07.000
on a molecule called green fluorescent protein

0:05:07.000,0:05:10.000
that was isolated from the bioluminescent chemistry

0:05:10.000,0:05:12.000
of a jellyfish,

0:05:12.000,0:05:14.000
and it's been equated to the invention of the microscope,

0:05:14.000,0:05:17.000
in terms of the impact that it has had

0:05:17.000,0:05:20.000
on cell biology and genetic engineering.

0:05:20.000,0:05:22.000
Another thing all these molecules are telling us

0:05:22.000,0:05:25.000
that, apparently, bioluminescence has evolved

0:05:25.000,0:05:28.000
at least 40 times, maybe as many as 50 separate times

0:05:28.000,0:05:30.000
in evolutionary history,

0:05:30.000,0:05:32.000
which is a clear indication

0:05:32.000,0:05:35.000
of how spectacularly important

0:05:35.000,0:05:37.000
this trait is for survival.

0:05:37.000,0:05:39.000
So, what is it about bioluminescence

0:05:39.000,0:05:41.000
that's so important to so many animals?

0:05:41.000,0:05:44.000
Well, for animals that are trying to avoid predators

0:05:44.000,0:05:47.000
by staying in the darkness,

0:05:47.000,0:05:49.000
light can still be very useful

0:05:49.000,0:05:52.000
for the three basic things that animals have to do to survive:

0:05:52.000,0:05:54.000
and that's find food,

0:05:54.000,0:05:56.000
attract a mate and avoid being eaten.

0:05:56.000,0:05:58.000
So, for example, this fish

0:05:58.000,0:06:00.000
has a built-in headlight behind its eye

0:06:00.000,0:06:02.000
that it can use for finding food

0:06:02.000,0:06:04.000
or attracting a mate.

0:06:04.000,0:06:07.000
And then when it's not using it, it actually can roll it down into its head

0:06:07.000,0:06:09.000
just like the headlights on your Lamborghini.

0:06:10.000,0:06:13.000
This fish actually has high beams.

0:06:13.000,0:06:15.000
And this fish, which is one of my favorites,

0:06:15.000,0:06:18.000
has three headlights on each side of its head.

0:06:18.000,0:06:20.000
Now, this one is blue,

0:06:20.000,0:06:22.000
and that's the color of most bioluminescence in the ocean

0:06:22.000,0:06:24.000
because evolution has selected

0:06:24.000,0:06:26.000
for the color that travels farthest through seawater

0:06:26.000,0:06:28.000
in order to optimize communication.

0:06:28.000,0:06:30.000
So, most animals make blue light,

0:06:30.000,0:06:33.000
and most animals can only see blue light,

0:06:33.000,0:06:35.000
but this fish is a really fascinating exception

0:06:35.000,0:06:38.000
because it has two red light organs.

0:06:38.000,0:06:40.000
And I have no idea why there's two,

0:06:40.000,0:06:42.000
and that's something I want to solve some day --

0:06:42.000,0:06:45.000
but not only can it see blue light,

0:06:45.000,0:06:47.000
but it can see red light.

0:06:47.000,0:06:50.000
So it uses its red bioluminescence like a sniper's scope

0:06:50.000,0:06:52.000
to be able to sneak up on animals

0:06:52.000,0:06:54.000
that are blind to red light

0:06:54.000,0:06:56.000
and be able to see them without being seen.

0:06:56.000,0:06:58.000
It's also got a little chin barbel here

0:06:58.000,0:07:00.000
with a blue luminescent lure on it

0:07:00.000,0:07:03.000
that it can use to attract prey from a long way off.

0:07:03.000,0:07:06.000
And a lot of animals will use their bioluminescence as a lure.

0:07:07.000,0:07:09.000
This is another one of my favorite fish.

0:07:09.000,0:07:11.000
This is a viperfish, and it's got a lure

0:07:11.000,0:07:13.000
on the end of a long fishing rod

0:07:13.000,0:07:15.000
that it arches in front of the toothy jaw

0:07:15.000,0:07:18.000
that gives the viperfish its name.

0:07:18.000,0:07:20.000
The teeth on this fish are so long

0:07:20.000,0:07:22.000
that if they closed inside the mouth of the fish,

0:07:22.000,0:07:25.000
it would actually impale its own brain.

0:07:25.000,0:07:27.000
So instead, it slides in grooves

0:07:27.000,0:07:29.000
on the outside of the head.

0:07:29.000,0:07:31.000
This is a Christmas tree of a fish;

0:07:31.000,0:07:33.000
everything on this fish lights up,

0:07:33.000,0:07:35.000
it's not just that lure.

0:07:35.000,0:07:37.000
It's got a built-in flashlight.

0:07:37.000,0:07:39.000
It's got these jewel-like light organs on its belly

0:07:39.000,0:07:42.000
that it uses for a type of camouflage

0:07:42.000,0:07:45.000
that obliterates its shadow,

0:07:45.000,0:07:48.000
so when it's swimming around and there's a predator looking up from below,

0:07:48.000,0:07:50.000
it makes itself disappear.

0:07:50.000,0:07:52.000
It's got light organs in the mouth,

0:07:52.000,0:07:54.000
it's got light organs in every single scale, in the fins,

0:07:54.000,0:07:56.000
in a mucus layer on the back and the belly,

0:07:56.000,0:07:58.000
all used for different things --

0:07:58.000,0:08:00.000
some of which we know about, some of which we don't.

0:08:00.000,0:08:03.000
And we know a little bit more about bioluminescence thanks to Pixar,

0:08:03.000,0:08:05.000
and I'm very grateful to Pixar for sharing

0:08:05.000,0:08:07.000
my favorite topic with so many people.

0:08:07.000,0:08:09.000
I do wish, with their budget,

0:08:09.000,0:08:12.000
that they might have spent just a tiny bit more money

0:08:12.000,0:08:15.000
to pay a consulting fee to some poor, starving graduate student,

0:08:15.000,0:08:17.000
who could have told them that those are the eyes

0:08:17.000,0:08:20.000
of a fish that's been preserved in formalin.

0:08:20.000,0:08:22.000
These are the eyes of a living anglerfish.

0:08:22.000,0:08:24.000
So, she's got a lure that she sticks out

0:08:24.000,0:08:26.000
in front of this living mousetrap

0:08:26.000,0:08:28.000
of needle-sharp teeth

0:08:28.000,0:08:31.000
in order to attract in some unsuspecting prey.

0:08:31.000,0:08:33.000
And this one has a lure

0:08:33.000,0:08:36.000
with all kinds of little interesting threads coming off it.

0:08:36.000,0:08:39.000
Now we used to think that the different shape of the lure

0:08:39.000,0:08:41.000
was to attract different types of prey,

0:08:41.000,0:08:44.000
but then stomach content analyses on these fish

0:08:44.000,0:08:47.000
done by scientists, or more likely their graduate students,

0:08:47.000,0:08:49.000
have revealed that

0:08:49.000,0:08:51.000
they all eat pretty much the same thing.

0:08:51.000,0:08:53.000
So, now we believe that the different shape of the lure

0:08:53.000,0:08:55.000
is how the male recognizes the female

0:08:55.000,0:08:57.000
in the anglerfish world,

0:08:57.000,0:08:59.000
because many of these males

0:08:59.000,0:09:01.000
are what are known as dwarf males.

0:09:01.000,0:09:03.000
This little guy

0:09:03.000,0:09:06.000
has no visible means of self-support.

0:09:06.000,0:09:08.000
He has no lure for attracting food

0:09:08.000,0:09:10.000
and no teeth for eating it when it gets there.

0:09:10.000,0:09:13.000
His only hope for existence on this planet

0:09:13.000,0:09:15.000
is as a gigolo. (Laughter)

0:09:15.000,0:09:17.000
He's got to find himself a babe

0:09:17.000,0:09:20.000
and then he's got to latch on for life.

0:09:20.000,0:09:22.000
So this little guy

0:09:22.000,0:09:24.000
has found himself this babe,

0:09:24.000,0:09:26.000
and you will note that he's had the good sense

0:09:26.000,0:09:29.000
to attach himself in a way that he doesn't actually have to look at her.

0:09:29.000,0:09:31.000
(Laughter)

0:09:31.000,0:09:33.000
But he still knows a good thing when he sees it,

0:09:33.000,0:09:36.000
and so he seals the relationship with an eternal kiss.

0:09:36.000,0:09:38.000
His flesh fuses with her flesh,

0:09:38.000,0:09:40.000
her bloodstream grows into his body,

0:09:40.000,0:09:43.000
and he becomes nothing more than a little sperm sac.

0:09:43.000,0:09:45.000
(Laughter)

0:09:45.000,0:09:47.000
Well, this is a deep-sea version of Women's Lib.

0:09:47.000,0:09:49.000
She always knows where he is,

0:09:49.000,0:09:51.000
and she doesn't have to be monogamous,

0:09:51.000,0:09:53.000
because some of these females

0:09:53.000,0:09:55.000
come up with multiple males attached.

0:09:55.000,0:09:58.000
So they can use it for finding food, for attracting mates.

0:09:58.000,0:10:01.000
They use it a lot for defense, many different ways.

0:10:01.000,0:10:04.000
A lot of them can release their luciferin or luferase in the water

0:10:04.000,0:10:06.000
just the way a squid or an octopus will release an ink cloud.

0:10:06.000,0:10:08.000
This shrimp is actually

0:10:08.000,0:10:10.000
spewing light out of its mouth

0:10:10.000,0:10:12.000
like a fire breathing dragon

0:10:12.000,0:10:14.000
in order to blind or distract this viperfish

0:10:14.000,0:10:16.000
so that the shrimp can swim away into the darkness.

0:10:16.000,0:10:19.000
And there are a lot of different animals that can do this:

0:10:19.000,0:10:21.000
There's jellyfish, there's squid,

0:10:21.000,0:10:23.000
there's a whole lot of different crustaceans,

0:10:23.000,0:10:25.000
there's even fish that can do this.

0:10:25.000,0:10:28.000
This fish is called the shining tubeshoulder

0:10:28.000,0:10:30.000
because it actually has a tube on its shoulder

0:10:30.000,0:10:32.000
that can squirt out light.

0:10:32.000,0:10:34.000
And I was luck enough to capture one of these

0:10:34.000,0:10:36.000
when we were on a trawling expedition

0:10:36.000,0:10:39.000
off the northwest coast of Africa for "Blue Planet,"

0:10:39.000,0:10:41.000
for the deep portion of "Blue Planet."

0:10:41.000,0:10:43.000
And we were using a special trawling net

0:10:43.000,0:10:45.000
that we were able to bring these animals up alive.

0:10:45.000,0:10:48.000
So we captured one of these, and I brought it into the lab.

0:10:48.000,0:10:50.000
So I'm holding it,

0:10:50.000,0:10:52.000
and I'm about to touch that tube on its shoulder,

0:10:52.000,0:10:55.000
and when I do, you'll see bioluminescence coming out.

0:10:56.000,0:10:58.000
But to me, what's shocking

0:10:58.000,0:11:00.000
is not just the amount of light,

0:11:00.000,0:11:02.000
but the fact that it's not just luciferin and luciferase.

0:11:02.000,0:11:04.000
For this fish, it's actually whole cells

0:11:04.000,0:11:06.000
with nuclei and membranes.

0:11:06.000,0:11:08.000
It's energetically very costly for this fish to do this,

0:11:08.000,0:11:11.000
and we have no idea why it does it --

0:11:11.000,0:11:14.000
another one of these great mysteries that needs to be solved.

0:11:16.000,0:11:18.000
Now, another form of defense

0:11:18.000,0:11:20.000
is something called a burglar alarm --

0:11:20.000,0:11:22.000
same reason you have a burglar alarm on your car;

0:11:22.000,0:11:24.000
the honking horn and flashing lights

0:11:24.000,0:11:26.000
are meant to attract the attention of, hopefully,

0:11:26.000,0:11:28.000
the police that will come and take the burglar away --

0:11:28.000,0:11:30.000
when an animal's caught in the clutches of a predator,

0:11:30.000,0:11:32.000
its only hope for escape may be

0:11:32.000,0:11:34.000
to attract the attention of something bigger and nastier

0:11:34.000,0:11:36.000
that will attack their attacker,

0:11:36.000,0:11:39.000
thereby affording them a chance for escape.

0:11:39.000,0:11:41.000
This jellyfish, for example, has

0:11:41.000,0:11:43.000
a spectacular bioluminescent display.

0:11:43.000,0:11:45.000
This is us chasing it in the submersible.

0:11:45.000,0:11:48.000
That's not luminescence, that's reflected light from the gonads.

0:11:48.000,0:11:51.000
We capture it in a very special device on the front of the submersible

0:11:51.000,0:11:54.000
that allows us to bring it up in really pristine condition,

0:11:54.000,0:11:56.000
bring it into the lab on the ship.

0:11:56.000,0:11:58.000
And then to generate the display you're about to see,

0:11:58.000,0:12:00.000
all I did was touch it once per second

0:12:00.000,0:12:02.000
on its nerve ring with a sharp pick

0:12:02.000,0:12:04.000
that's sort of like the sharp tooth of a fish.

0:12:04.000,0:12:07.000
And once this display gets going, I'm not touching it anymore.

0:12:07.000,0:12:10.000
This is an unbelievable light show.

0:12:10.000,0:12:12.000
It's this pinwheel of light,

0:12:12.000,0:12:14.000
and I've done calculations that show that this could be seen

0:12:14.000,0:12:17.000
from as much as 300 feet away by a predator.

0:12:17.000,0:12:19.000
And I thought, "You know,

0:12:19.000,0:12:21.000
that might actually make a pretty good lure."

0:12:21.000,0:12:24.000
Because one of the things that's frustrated me

0:12:24.000,0:12:26.000
as a deep-sea explorer

0:12:26.000,0:12:29.000
is how many animals there probably are in the ocean that we know nothing about

0:12:29.000,0:12:32.000
because of the way we explore the ocean.

0:12:32.000,0:12:35.000
The primary way that we know about what lives in the ocean

0:12:35.000,0:12:38.000
is we go out and drag nets behind ships.

0:12:38.000,0:12:40.000
And I defy you to name any other branch of science

0:12:40.000,0:12:43.000
that still depends on hundreds of year-old technology.

0:12:43.000,0:12:45.000
The other primary way is we go down

0:12:45.000,0:12:47.000
with submersibles and remote-operated vehicles.

0:12:47.000,0:12:50.000
I've made hundreds of dives in submersibles.

0:12:50.000,0:12:52.000
When I'm sitting in a submersible though,

0:12:52.000,0:12:55.000
I know that I'm not unobtrusive at all --

0:12:55.000,0:12:57.000
I've got bright lights and noisy thrusters --

0:12:57.000,0:13:00.000
any animal with any sense is going to be long gone.

0:13:00.000,0:13:03.000
So, I've wanted for a long time

0:13:03.000,0:13:05.000
to figure out a different way to explore.

0:13:05.000,0:13:08.000
And so, sometime ago, I got this idea for a camera system.

0:13:08.000,0:13:11.000
It's not exactly rocket science. We call this thing Eye-in-the-Sea.

0:13:11.000,0:13:13.000
And scientists have done this on land for years;

0:13:13.000,0:13:16.000
we just use a color that the animals can't see

0:13:16.000,0:13:18.000
and then a camera that can see that color.

0:13:18.000,0:13:20.000
You can't use infrared in the sea.

0:13:20.000,0:13:22.000
We use far-red light, but even that's a problem

0:13:22.000,0:13:24.000
because it gets absorbed so quickly.

0:13:24.000,0:13:26.000
Made an intensified camera,

0:13:26.000,0:13:28.000
wanted to make this electronic jellyfish.

0:13:28.000,0:13:31.000
Thing is, in science,

0:13:31.000,0:13:34.000
you basically have to tell the funding agencies what you're going to discover

0:13:34.000,0:13:36.000
before they'll give you the money.

0:13:36.000,0:13:38.000
And I didn't know what I was going to discover,

0:13:38.000,0:13:40.000
so I couldn't get the funding for this.

0:13:40.000,0:13:43.000
So I kluged this together, I got the Harvey Mudd Engineering Clinic

0:13:43.000,0:13:46.000
to actually do it as an undergraduate student project initially,

0:13:46.000,0:13:49.000
and then I kluged funding from a whole bunch of different sources.

0:13:49.000,0:13:51.000
Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute

0:13:51.000,0:13:54.000
gave me time with their ROV

0:13:54.000,0:13:56.000
so that I could test it and we could figure out,

0:13:56.000,0:13:59.000
you know, for example, which colors of red light we had to use

0:13:59.000,0:14:02.000
so that we could see the animals, but they couldn't see us --

0:14:02.000,0:14:05.000
get the electronic jellyfish working.

0:14:05.000,0:14:08.000
And you can see just what a shoestring operation this really was,

0:14:08.000,0:14:11.000
because we cast these 16 blue LEDs in epoxy

0:14:11.000,0:14:13.000
and you can see in the epoxy mold that we used,

0:14:13.000,0:14:16.000
the word Ziploc is still visible.

0:14:16.000,0:14:19.000
Needless to say, when it's kluged together like this,

0:14:19.000,0:14:22.000
there were a lot of trials and tribulations getting this working.

0:14:22.000,0:14:24.000
But there came a moment when it all came together,

0:14:24.000,0:14:26.000
and everything worked.

0:14:26.000,0:14:28.000
And, remarkably, that moment got caught on film

0:14:28.000,0:14:30.000
by photographer Mark Richards,

0:14:30.000,0:14:32.000
who happened to be there at the precise moment

0:14:32.000,0:14:35.000
that we discovered that it all came together.

0:14:35.000,0:14:37.000
That's me on the left,

0:14:37.000,0:14:39.000
my graduate student at the time, Erika Raymond,

0:14:39.000,0:14:42.000
and Lee Fry, who was the engineer on the project.

0:14:42.000,0:14:45.000
And we have this photograph posted in our lab in a place of honor

0:14:45.000,0:14:48.000
with the caption: "Engineer satisfying two women at once." (Laughter)

0:14:49.000,0:14:51.000
And we were very, very happy.

0:14:51.000,0:14:53.000
So now we had a system

0:14:53.000,0:14:55.000
that we could actually take to some place

0:14:55.000,0:14:57.000
that was kind of like an oasis on the bottom of the ocean

0:14:57.000,0:15:00.000
that might be patrolled by large predators.

0:15:01.000,0:15:03.000
And so, the place that we took it to

0:15:03.000,0:15:05.000
was this place called a Brine Pool,

0:15:05.000,0:15:07.000
which is in the northern part of the Gulf of Mexico.

0:15:07.000,0:15:09.000
It's a magical place.

0:15:09.000,0:15:11.000
And I know this footage isn't going to look like anything to you --

0:15:11.000,0:15:13.000
we had a crummy camera at the time --

0:15:13.000,0:15:15.000
but I was ecstatic.

0:15:15.000,0:15:17.000
We're at the edge of the Brine Pool,

0:15:17.000,0:15:20.000
there's a fish that's swimming towards the camera.

0:15:20.000,0:15:22.000
It's clearly undisturbed by us.

0:15:22.000,0:15:25.000
And I had my window into the deep sea.

0:15:25.000,0:15:28.000
I, for the first time, could see what animals were doing down there

0:15:28.000,0:15:31.000
when we weren't down there disturbing them in some way.

0:15:32.000,0:15:34.000
Four hours into the deployment,

0:15:34.000,0:15:36.000
we had programmed the electronic jellyfish

0:15:36.000,0:15:38.000
to come on for the first time.

0:15:38.000,0:15:40.000
Eighty-six seconds after

0:15:40.000,0:15:42.000
it went into its pinwheel display,

0:15:42.000,0:15:44.000
we recorded this:

0:15:45.000,0:15:47.000
This is a squid, over six feet long,

0:15:47.000,0:15:49.000
that is so new to science,

0:15:49.000,0:15:52.000
it cannot be placed in any known scientific family.

0:15:53.000,0:15:56.000
I could not have asked for a better proof of concept.

0:15:56.000,0:15:58.000
And based on this, I went back to the National Science Foundation

0:15:58.000,0:16:01.000
and said, "This is what we will discover."

0:16:01.000,0:16:03.000
And they gave me enough money to do it right,

0:16:03.000,0:16:06.000
which has involved developing the world's first deep-sea webcam --

0:16:06.000,0:16:08.000
which has been installed in

0:16:08.000,0:16:10.000
the Monterey Canyon for the past year --

0:16:10.000,0:16:12.000
and now, more recently,

0:16:12.000,0:16:14.000
a modular form of this system,

0:16:14.000,0:16:16.000
a much more mobile form

0:16:16.000,0:16:18.000
that's a lot easier to launch and recover,

0:16:18.000,0:16:21.000
that I hope can be used on Sylvia's "hope spots"

0:16:21.000,0:16:23.000
to help explore

0:16:23.000,0:16:25.000
and protect these areas,

0:16:25.000,0:16:27.000
and, for me, learn more about

0:16:27.000,0:16:30.000
the bioluminescence in these "hope spots."

0:16:30.000,0:16:33.000
So one of these take-home messages here

0:16:33.000,0:16:36.000
is, there is still a lot to explore in the oceans.

0:16:36.000,0:16:38.000
And Sylvia has said

0:16:38.000,0:16:41.000
that we are destroying the oceans before we even know what's in them,

0:16:41.000,0:16:43.000
and she's right.

0:16:43.000,0:16:45.000
So if you ever, ever get an opportunity

0:16:45.000,0:16:47.000
to take a dive in a submersible,

0:16:47.000,0:16:50.000
say yes -- a thousand times, yes --

0:16:50.000,0:16:52.000
and please turn out the lights.

0:16:52.000,0:16:54.000
I promise, you'll love it.

0:16:54.000,0:16:56.000
Thank you.

0:16:56.000,0:16:58.000
(Applause)