WEBVTT

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We know more about
other planets than our own,

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and today, I want to show you
a new type of robot

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designed to help us
better understand our own planet.

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It belongs to a category

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known in the oceanographic community
as an unmanned surface vehicle, or USV.

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And it uses no fuel.

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Instead, it relies
on wind power for propulsion.

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And yet, it can sail around the globe
for months at a time.

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So I want to share with you
why we built it,

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and what it means for you.

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A few years ago, I was on a sailboat
making its way across the Pacific,

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from San Francisco to Hawaii.

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I had just spent the past 10 years
working nonstop,

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developing video games
for hundreds of millions of users,

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and I wanted to take a step back
and look at the big picture

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and get some much-needed thinking time.

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I was the navigator on board,

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and one evening, after a long session
analyzing weather data

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and plotting our course,

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I came up on deck and saw
this beautiful sunset.

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And a thought occurred to me:

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How much do we really know
about our oceans?

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The Pacific was stretching all around me
as far as the eye could see,

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and the waves were
rocking our boat forcefully,

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a sort of constant reminder
of its untold power.

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How much do we really know
about our oceans?

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I decided to find out.

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What I quickly learned
is that we don't know very much.

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The first reason is just
how vast oceans are,

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covering 70 percent of the planet,

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and yet we know they drive
complex planetary systems

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like global weather,

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which affect all of us on a daily basis,

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sometimes dramatically.

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And yet, those activities
are mostly invisible to us.

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Ocean data is scarce by any standard.

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Back on land, I had grown used to
accessing lots of sensors --

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billions of them, actually.

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But at sea, in situ data
is scarce and expensive.

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Why? Because it relies on
a small number of ships and buoys.

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How small a number
was actually a great surprise.

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Our National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration,

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better known as NOAA,

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only has 16 ships,

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and there are less than
200 buoys offshore globally.

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It is easy to understand why:

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the oceans are an unforgiving place,

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and to collect in situ data,
you need a big ship,

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capable of carrying a vast amount of fuel

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and large crews,

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costing hundreds
of millions of dollars each,

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or, big buoys tethered to the ocean floor
with a four-mile-long cable

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and weighted down
by a set of train wheels,

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which is both dangerous to deploy
and expensive to maintain.

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What about satellites, you might ask?

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Well, satellites are fantastic,

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and they have taught us
so much about the big picture

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over the past few decades.

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However, the problem with satellites

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is they can only see through one micron
of the surface of the ocean.

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They have relatively poor
spatial and temporal resolution,

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and their signal needs to be corrected
for cloud cover and land effects

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and other factors.

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So what is going on in the oceans?

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And what are we trying to measure?

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And how could a robot be of any use?

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Let's zoom in on
a small cube in the ocean.

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One of the key things we want
to understand is the surface,

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because the surface,
if you think about it,

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is the nexus of all air-sea interaction.

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It is the interface through which
all energy and gases must flow.

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Our sun radiates energy,

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which is absorbed by oceans as heat

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and then partially released
into the atmosphere.

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Gases in our atmosphere like CO2
get dissolved into our oceans.

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Actually, about 30 percent
of all global CO2 gets absorbed.

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Plankton and microorganisms
release oxygen into the atmosphere,

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so much so that every other breath
you take comes from the ocean.

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Some of that heat generates evaporation,
which creates clouds

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and then eventually
leads to precipitation.

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And pressure gradients
create surface wind,

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which moves the moisture
through the atmosphere.

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Some of the heat radiates down
into the deep ocean

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and gets stored in different layers,

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the ocean acting as some kind
of planetary-scale boiler

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to store all that energy,

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which later might be released
in short-term events like hurricanes

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or long-term phenomena like El Niño.

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These layers can get mixed up
by vertical upwelling currents

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or horizontal currents,
which are key in transporting heat

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from the tropics to the poles.

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And of course, there is marine life,

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occupying the largest ecosystem
in volume on the planet,

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from microorganisms to fish
to marine mammals,

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like seals, dolphins and whales.

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But all of these
are mostly invisible to us.

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The challenge in studying
those ocean variables at scale

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is one of energy,

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the energy that it takes to deploy
sensors into the deep ocean.

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And of course, many solutions
have been tried --

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from wave-actuated devices

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to surface drifters

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to sun-powered electrical drives --

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each with their own compromises.

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Our team breakthrough came
from an unlikely source --

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the pursuit of the world speed record
in a wind-powered land yacht.

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It took 10 years of research
and development

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to come up with a novel wing concept

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that only uses three watts
of power to control

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and yet can propel a vehicle
all around the globe

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with seemingly unlimited autonomy.

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By adapting this wing concept
into a marine vehicle,

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we had the genesis of an ocean drone.

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Now, these are larger than they appear.

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They are about 15 feet high,
23 feet long, seven feet deep.

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Think of them as surface satellites.

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They're laden with an array
of science-grade sensors

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that measure all key variables,

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both oceanographic and atmospheric,

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and a live satellite link transmits
this high-resolution data

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back to shore in real time.

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Our team has been hard at work
over the past few years,

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conducting missions in some of
the toughest ocean conditions

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on the planet,

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from the Arctic to the tropical Pacific.

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We have sailed all the way
to the polar ice shelf.

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We have sailed into Atlantic hurricanes.

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We have rounded Cape Horn,

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and we have slalomed between
the oil rigs of the Gulf of Mexico.

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This is one tough robot.

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Let me share with you
recent work that we did

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around the Pribilof Islands.

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This is a small group of islands
deep in the cold Bering Sea

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between the US and Russia.

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Now, the Bering Sea is the home
of the walleye pollock,

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which is a whitefish
you might not recognize,

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but you might likely have tasted
if you enjoy fish sticks or surimi.

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Yes, surimi looks like crabmeat,
but it's actually pollock.

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And the pollock fishery
is the largest fishery in the nation,

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both in terms of value and volume --

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about 3.1 billion pounds
of fish caught every year.

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So over the past few years,
a fleet of ocean drones

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has been hard at work in the Bering Sea

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with the goal to help assess
the size of the pollock fish stock.

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This helps improve the quota system
that's used to manage the fishery

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and help prevent a collapse
of the fish stock

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and protects this fragile ecosystem.

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Now, the drones survey
the fishing ground using acoustics,

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i.e., a sonar.

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This sends a sound wave downwards,

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and then the reflection,
the echo from the sound wave

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from the seabed or schools of fish,

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gives us an idea of what's happening
below the surface.

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Our ocean drones are actually
pretty good at this repetitive task,

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so they have been gridding
the Bering Sea day in, day out.

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Now, the Pribilof Islands are also
the home of a large colony of fur seals.

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In the 1950s, there were about
two million individuals in that colony.

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Sadly, these days,
the population has rapidly declined.

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There's less than 50 percent
of that number left,

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and the population
continues to fall rapidly.

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So to understand why,

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our science partner at
the National Marine Mammal Laboratory

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has fitted a GPS tag
on some of the mother seals,

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glued to their furs.

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And this tag measures location and depth

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and also has a really cool little camera

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that's triggered by sudden acceleration.

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Here is a movie taken
by an artistically inclined seal,

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giving us unprecedented insight
into an underwater hunt

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deep in the Arctic,

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and the shot of this pollock prey

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just seconds before it gets devoured.

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Now, doing work in the Arctic
is very tough, even for a robot.

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They had to survive a snowstorm in August

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and interferences from bystanders --

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that little spotted seal enjoying a ride.

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(Laughter)

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Now, the seal tags have recorded
over 200,000 dives over the season,

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and upon a closer look,

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we get to see the individual seal tracks
and the repetitive dives.

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We are on our way to decode
what is really happening

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over that foraging ground,

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and it's quite beautiful.

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Once you superimpose the acoustic data
collected by the drones,

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a picture starts to emerge.

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As the seals leave the islands
and swim from left to right,

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they are observed to dive at a relatively
shallow depth of about 20 meters,

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which the drone identifies
is populated by small young pollock

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with low calorific content.

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The seals then swim much greater distance
and start to dive deeper

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to a place where the drone identifies
larger, more adult pollock,

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which are more nutritious as fish.

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Unfortunately, the calories expended
by the mother seals

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to swim this extra distance

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don't leave them with enough energy
to lactate their pups back on the island,

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leading to the population decline.

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Further, the drones identify that
the water temperature around the island

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has significantly warmed.

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It might be one of the driving forces
that's pushing the pollock north,

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and to spread in search of colder regions.

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So the data analysis is ongoing,

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but already we can see
that some of the pieces of the puzzle

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from the fur seal mystery

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are coming into focus.

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But if you look back at the big picture,

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we are mammals, too.

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And actually, the oceans provide
up to 20 kilos of fish per human per year.

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As we deplete our fish stocks,
what can we humans learn

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from the fur seal story?

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And beyond fish, the oceans
affect all of us daily

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as they drive global weather systems,

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which affect things like
global agricultural output

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or can lead to devastating destruction
of lives and property

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through hurricanes,
extreme heat and floods.

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Our oceans are pretty much
unexplored and undersampled,

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and today, we still know more
about other planets than our own.

NOTE Paragraph

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But if you divide this vast ocean
in six-by-six-degree squares,

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each about 400 miles long,

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you'd get about 1,000 such squares.

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So little by little,
working with our partners,

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we are deploying one ocean drone
in each of those boxes,

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the hope being that
achieving planetary coverage

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will give us better insights
into those planetary systems

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that affect humanity.

NOTE Paragraph

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We have been using robots to study
distant worlds in our solar system

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for a while now.

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Now it is time to quantify our own planet,

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because we cannot fix
what we cannot measure,

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and we cannot prepare
for what we don't know.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)