WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.000 The oceans cover some 70 percent of our planet. 00:00:03.000 --> 00:00:05.000 And I think Arthur C. Clarke probably had it right 00:00:05.000 --> 00:00:08.000 when he said that perhaps we ought to call our planet 00:00:08.000 --> 00:00:10.000 Planet Ocean. 00:00:10.000 --> 00:00:12.000 And the oceans are hugely productive, 00:00:12.000 --> 00:00:14.000 as you can see by the satellite image 00:00:14.000 --> 00:00:16.000 of photosynthesis, the production of new life. 00:00:16.000 --> 00:00:19.000 In fact, the oceans produce half of the new life every day on Earth 00:00:19.000 --> 00:00:22.000 as well as about half the oxygen that we breathe. 00:00:22.000 --> 00:00:25.000 In addition to that, it harbors a lot of the biodiversity on Earth, 00:00:25.000 --> 00:00:27.000 and much of it we don't know about. 00:00:27.000 --> 00:00:29.000 But I'll tell you some of that today. 00:00:29.000 --> 00:00:31.000 That also doesn't even get into the whole protein extraction 00:00:31.000 --> 00:00:33.000 that we do from the ocean. 00:00:33.000 --> 00:00:35.000 That's about 10 percent of our global needs 00:00:35.000 --> 00:00:38.000 and 100 percent of some island nations. NOTE Paragraph 00:00:38.000 --> 00:00:40.000 If you were to descend 00:00:40.000 --> 00:00:42.000 into the 95 percent of the biosphere that's livable, 00:00:42.000 --> 00:00:44.000 it would quickly become pitch black, 00:00:44.000 --> 00:00:46.000 interrupted only by pinpoints of light 00:00:46.000 --> 00:00:48.000 from bioluminescent organisms. 00:00:48.000 --> 00:00:50.000 And if you turn the lights on, 00:00:50.000 --> 00:00:52.000 you might periodically see spectacular organisms swim by, 00:00:52.000 --> 00:00:54.000 because those are the denizens of the deep, 00:00:54.000 --> 00:00:56.000 the things that live in the deep ocean. 00:00:56.000 --> 00:00:59.000 And eventually, the deep sea floor would come into view. 00:00:59.000 --> 00:01:02.000 This type of habitat covers more of the Earth's surface 00:01:02.000 --> 00:01:04.000 than all other habitats combined. 00:01:04.000 --> 00:01:06.000 And yet, we know more about the surface of the Moon and about Mars 00:01:06.000 --> 00:01:08.000 than we do about this habitat, 00:01:08.000 --> 00:01:10.000 despite the fact that we have yet to extract 00:01:10.000 --> 00:01:13.000 a gram of food, a breath of oxygen or a drop of water 00:01:13.000 --> 00:01:15.000 from those bodies. NOTE Paragraph 00:01:15.000 --> 00:01:17.000 And so 10 years ago, 00:01:17.000 --> 00:01:20.000 an international program began called the Census of Marine Life, 00:01:20.000 --> 00:01:22.000 which set out to try and improve our understanding 00:01:22.000 --> 00:01:24.000 of life in the global oceans. 00:01:24.000 --> 00:01:27.000 It involved 17 different projects around the world. 00:01:27.000 --> 00:01:29.000 As you can see, these are the footprints of the different projects. 00:01:29.000 --> 00:01:32.000 And I hope you'll appreciate the level of global coverage 00:01:32.000 --> 00:01:34.000 that it managed to achieve. 00:01:34.000 --> 00:01:36.000 It all began when two scientists, Fred Grassle and Jesse Ausubel, 00:01:36.000 --> 00:01:39.000 met in Woods Hole, Massachusetts 00:01:39.000 --> 00:01:41.000 where both were guests at the famed oceanographic institute. 00:01:41.000 --> 00:01:44.000 And Fred was lamenting the state of marine biodiversity 00:01:44.000 --> 00:01:47.000 and the fact that it was in trouble and nothing was being done about it. 00:01:47.000 --> 00:01:49.000 Well, from that discussion grew this program 00:01:49.000 --> 00:01:51.000 that involved 2,700 scientists 00:01:51.000 --> 00:01:53.000 from more than 80 countries around the world 00:01:53.000 --> 00:01:56.000 who engaged in 540 ocean expeditions 00:01:56.000 --> 00:01:59.000 at a combined cost of 650 million dollars 00:01:59.000 --> 00:02:01.000 to study the distribution, diversity and abundance 00:02:01.000 --> 00:02:04.000 of life in the global ocean. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:04.000 --> 00:02:06.000 And so what did we find? 00:02:06.000 --> 00:02:08.000 We found spectacular new species, 00:02:08.000 --> 00:02:11.000 the most beautiful and visually stunning things everywhere we looked -- 00:02:11.000 --> 00:02:13.000 from the shoreline to the abyss, 00:02:13.000 --> 00:02:16.000 form microbes all the way up to fish and everything in between. 00:02:16.000 --> 00:02:19.000 And the limiting step here wasn't the unknown diversity of life, 00:02:19.000 --> 00:02:21.000 but rather the taxonomic specialists 00:02:21.000 --> 00:02:23.000 who can identify and catalog these species 00:02:23.000 --> 00:02:25.000 that became the limiting step. 00:02:25.000 --> 00:02:28.000 They, in fact, are an endangered species themselves. 00:02:28.000 --> 00:02:30.000 There are actually four to five new species 00:02:30.000 --> 00:02:32.000 described everyday for the oceans. 00:02:32.000 --> 00:02:35.000 And as I say, it could be a much larger number. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:35.000 --> 00:02:38.000 Now, I come from Newfoundland in Canada -- 00:02:38.000 --> 00:02:40.000 It's an island off the east coast of that continent -- 00:02:40.000 --> 00:02:43.000 where we experienced one of the worst fishing disasters 00:02:43.000 --> 00:02:45.000 in human history. 00:02:45.000 --> 00:02:47.000 And so this photograph shows a small boy next to a codfish. 00:02:47.000 --> 00:02:49.000 It's around 1900. 00:02:49.000 --> 00:02:51.000 Now, when I was a boy of about his age, 00:02:51.000 --> 00:02:53.000 I would go out fishing with my grandfather 00:02:53.000 --> 00:02:55.000 and we would catch fish about half that size. 00:02:55.000 --> 00:02:57.000 And I thought that was the norm, 00:02:57.000 --> 00:02:59.000 because I had never seen fish like this. 00:02:59.000 --> 00:03:02.000 If you were to go out there today, 20 years after this fishery collapsed, 00:03:02.000 --> 00:03:05.000 if you could catch a fish, which would be a bit of a challenge, 00:03:05.000 --> 00:03:07.000 it would be half that size still. 00:03:07.000 --> 00:03:10.000 So what we're experiencing is something called shifting baselines. 00:03:10.000 --> 00:03:12.000 Our expectations of what the oceans can produce 00:03:12.000 --> 00:03:14.000 is something that we don't really appreciate 00:03:14.000 --> 00:03:17.000 because we haven't seen it in our lifetimes. NOTE Paragraph 00:03:17.000 --> 00:03:20.000 Now most of us, and I would say me included, 00:03:20.000 --> 00:03:22.000 think that human exploitation of the oceans 00:03:22.000 --> 00:03:24.000 really only became very serious 00:03:24.000 --> 00:03:26.000 in the last 50 to, perhaps, 100 years or so. 00:03:26.000 --> 00:03:28.000 The census actually tried to look back in time, 00:03:28.000 --> 00:03:31.000 using every source of information they could get their hands on. 00:03:31.000 --> 00:03:33.000 And so anything from restaurant menus 00:03:33.000 --> 00:03:35.000 to monastery records to ships' logs 00:03:35.000 --> 00:03:37.000 to see what the oceans looked like. 00:03:37.000 --> 00:03:39.000 Because science data really goes back 00:03:39.000 --> 00:03:41.000 to, at best, World War II, for the most part. 00:03:41.000 --> 00:03:43.000 And so what they found, in fact, 00:03:43.000 --> 00:03:45.000 is that exploitation really began heavily with the Romans. 00:03:45.000 --> 00:03:48.000 And so at that time, of course, there was no refrigeration. 00:03:48.000 --> 00:03:50.000 So fishermen could only catch 00:03:50.000 --> 00:03:52.000 what they could either eat or sell that day. 00:03:52.000 --> 00:03:54.000 But the Romans developed salting. 00:03:54.000 --> 00:03:56.000 And with salting, 00:03:56.000 --> 00:03:59.000 it became possible to store fish and to transport it long distances. 00:03:59.000 --> 00:04:02.000 And so began industrial fishing. NOTE Paragraph 00:04:02.000 --> 00:04:05.000 And so these are the sorts of extrapolations that we have 00:04:05.000 --> 00:04:07.000 of what sort of loss we've had 00:04:07.000 --> 00:04:10.000 relative to pre-human impacts on the ocean. 00:04:10.000 --> 00:04:12.000 They range from 65 to 98 percent 00:04:12.000 --> 00:04:14.000 for these major groups of organisms, 00:04:14.000 --> 00:04:16.000 as shown in the dark blue bars. 00:04:16.000 --> 00:04:19.000 Now for those species the we managed to leave alone, that we protect -- 00:04:19.000 --> 00:04:21.000 for example, marine mammals in recent years and sea birds -- 00:04:21.000 --> 00:04:23.000 there is some recovery. 00:04:23.000 --> 00:04:25.000 So it's not all hopeless. 00:04:25.000 --> 00:04:28.000 But for the most part, we've gone from salting to exhausting. NOTE Paragraph 00:04:28.000 --> 00:04:30.000 Now this other line of evidence is a really interesting one. 00:04:30.000 --> 00:04:33.000 It's from trophy fish caught off the coast of Florida. 00:04:33.000 --> 00:04:36.000 And so this is a photograph from the 1950s. 00:04:36.000 --> 00:04:38.000 I want you to notice the scale on the slide, 00:04:38.000 --> 00:04:40.000 because when you see the same picture from the 1980s, 00:04:40.000 --> 00:04:42.000 we see the fish are much smaller 00:04:42.000 --> 00:04:44.000 and we're also seeing a change 00:04:44.000 --> 00:04:46.000 in terms of the composition of those fish. 00:04:46.000 --> 00:04:48.000 By 2007, the catch was actually laughable 00:04:48.000 --> 00:04:50.000 in terms of the size for a trophy fish. 00:04:50.000 --> 00:04:52.000 But this is no laughing matter. 00:04:52.000 --> 00:04:54.000 The oceans have lost a lot of their productivity 00:04:54.000 --> 00:04:57.000 and we're responsible for it. NOTE Paragraph 00:04:57.000 --> 00:04:59.000 So what's left? Actually quite a lot. 00:04:59.000 --> 00:05:02.000 There's a lot of exciting things, and I'm going to tell you a little bit about them. 00:05:02.000 --> 00:05:04.000 And I want to start with a bit on technology, 00:05:04.000 --> 00:05:06.000 because, of course, this is a TED Conference 00:05:06.000 --> 00:05:08.000 and you want to hear something on technology. 00:05:08.000 --> 00:05:10.000 So one of the tools that we use to sample the deep ocean 00:05:10.000 --> 00:05:12.000 are remotely operated vehicles. 00:05:12.000 --> 00:05:15.000 So these are tethered vehicles we lower down to the sea floor 00:05:15.000 --> 00:05:18.000 where they're our eyes and our hands for working on the sea bottom. 00:05:18.000 --> 00:05:21.000 So a couple of years ago, I was supposed to go on an oceanographic cruise 00:05:21.000 --> 00:05:24.000 and I couldn't go because of a scheduling conflict. 00:05:24.000 --> 00:05:27.000 But through a satellite link I was able to sit at my study at home 00:05:27.000 --> 00:05:30.000 with my dog curled up at my feet, a cup of tea in my hand, 00:05:30.000 --> 00:05:32.000 and I could tell the pilot, "I want a sample right there." 00:05:32.000 --> 00:05:34.000 And that's exactly what the pilot did for me. 00:05:34.000 --> 00:05:37.000 That's the sort of technology that's available today 00:05:37.000 --> 00:05:39.000 that really wasn't available even a decade ago. 00:05:39.000 --> 00:05:41.000 So it allows us to sample these amazing habitats 00:05:41.000 --> 00:05:43.000 that are very far from the surface 00:05:43.000 --> 00:05:45.000 and very far from light. NOTE Paragraph 00:05:45.000 --> 00:05:48.000 And so one of the tools that we can use to sample the oceans 00:05:48.000 --> 00:05:50.000 is acoustics, or sound waves. 00:05:50.000 --> 00:05:52.000 And the advantage of sound waves 00:05:52.000 --> 00:05:54.000 is that they actually pass well through water, unlike light. 00:05:54.000 --> 00:05:56.000 And so we can send out sound waves, 00:05:56.000 --> 00:05:59.000 they bounce off objects like fish and are reflected back. 00:05:59.000 --> 00:06:02.000 And so in this example, a census scientist took out two ships. 00:06:02.000 --> 00:06:04.000 One would send out sound waves that would bounce back. 00:06:04.000 --> 00:06:06.000 They would be received by a second ship, 00:06:06.000 --> 00:06:09.000 and that would give us very precise estimates, in this case, 00:06:09.000 --> 00:06:11.000 of 250 billion herring 00:06:11.000 --> 00:06:13.000 in a period of about a minute. 00:06:13.000 --> 00:06:16.000 And that's an area about the size of Manhattan Island. 00:06:16.000 --> 00:06:18.000 And to be able to do that is a tremendous fisheries tool, 00:06:18.000 --> 00:06:21.000 because knowing how many fish are there is really critical. NOTE Paragraph 00:06:21.000 --> 00:06:23.000 We can also use satellite tags 00:06:23.000 --> 00:06:25.000 to track animals as they move through the oceans. 00:06:25.000 --> 00:06:27.000 And so for animals that come to the surface to breathe, 00:06:27.000 --> 00:06:29.000 such as this elephant seal, 00:06:29.000 --> 00:06:31.000 it's an opportunity to send data back to shore 00:06:31.000 --> 00:06:34.000 and tell us where exactly it is in the ocean. 00:06:34.000 --> 00:06:36.000 And so from that we can produce these tracks. 00:06:36.000 --> 00:06:38.000 For example, the dark blue 00:06:38.000 --> 00:06:40.000 shows you where the elephant seal moved in the north Pacific. 00:06:40.000 --> 00:06:43.000 Now I realize for those of you who are colorblind, this slide is not very helpful, 00:06:43.000 --> 00:06:45.000 but stick with me nonetheless. NOTE Paragraph 00:06:45.000 --> 00:06:47.000 For animals that don't surface, 00:06:47.000 --> 00:06:49.000 we have something called pop-up tags, 00:06:49.000 --> 00:06:52.000 which collect data about light and what time the sun rises and sets. 00:06:52.000 --> 00:06:54.000 And then at some period of time 00:06:54.000 --> 00:06:57.000 it pops up to the surface and, again, relays that data back to shore. 00:06:57.000 --> 00:07:00.000 Because GPS doesn't work under water. That's why we need these tools. 00:07:00.000 --> 00:07:03.000 And so from this we're able to identify these blue highways, 00:07:03.000 --> 00:07:05.000 these hot spots in the ocean, 00:07:05.000 --> 00:07:07.000 that should be real priority areas 00:07:07.000 --> 00:07:09.000 for ocean conservation. NOTE Paragraph 00:07:09.000 --> 00:07:11.000 Now one of the other things that you may think about 00:07:11.000 --> 00:07:14.000 is that, when you go to the supermarket and you buy things, they're scanned. 00:07:14.000 --> 00:07:16.000 And so there's a barcode on that product 00:07:16.000 --> 00:07:19.000 that tells the computer exactly what the product is. 00:07:19.000 --> 00:07:22.000 Geneticists have developed a similar tool called genetic barcoding. 00:07:22.000 --> 00:07:24.000 And what barcoding does 00:07:24.000 --> 00:07:26.000 is use a specific gene called CO1 00:07:26.000 --> 00:07:29.000 that's consistent within a species, but varies among species. 00:07:29.000 --> 00:07:31.000 And so what that means is we can unambiguously identify 00:07:31.000 --> 00:07:33.000 which species are which 00:07:33.000 --> 00:07:35.000 even if they look similar to each other, 00:07:35.000 --> 00:07:37.000 but may be biologically quite different. NOTE Paragraph 00:07:37.000 --> 00:07:39.000 Now one of the nicest examples I like to cite on this 00:07:39.000 --> 00:07:42.000 is the story of two young women, high school students in New York City, 00:07:42.000 --> 00:07:44.000 who worked with the census. 00:07:44.000 --> 00:07:47.000 They went out and collected fish from markets and from restaurants in New York City 00:07:47.000 --> 00:07:49.000 and they barcoded it. 00:07:49.000 --> 00:07:51.000 Well what they found was mislabeled fish. 00:07:51.000 --> 00:07:53.000 So for example, 00:07:53.000 --> 00:07:55.000 they found something which was sold as tuna, which is very valuable, 00:07:55.000 --> 00:07:58.000 was in fact tilapia, which is a much less valuable fish. 00:07:58.000 --> 00:08:00.000 They also found an endangered species 00:08:00.000 --> 00:08:02.000 sold as a common one. 00:08:02.000 --> 00:08:04.000 So barcoding allows us to know what we're working with 00:08:04.000 --> 00:08:07.000 and also what we're eating. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:07.000 --> 00:08:09.000 The Ocean Biogeographic Information System 00:08:09.000 --> 00:08:11.000 is the database for all the census data. 00:08:11.000 --> 00:08:14.000 It's open access; you can all go in and download data as you wish. 00:08:14.000 --> 00:08:17.000 And it contains all the data from the census 00:08:17.000 --> 00:08:19.000 plus other data sets that people were willing to contribute. 00:08:19.000 --> 00:08:21.000 And so what you can do with that 00:08:21.000 --> 00:08:24.000 is to plot the distribution of species and where they occur in the oceans. 00:08:24.000 --> 00:08:26.000 What I've plotted up here is the data that we have on hand. 00:08:26.000 --> 00:08:29.000 This is where our sampling effort has concentrated. 00:08:29.000 --> 00:08:31.000 Now what you can see 00:08:31.000 --> 00:08:33.000 is we've sampled the area in the North Atlantic, 00:08:33.000 --> 00:08:35.000 in the North Sea in particular, 00:08:35.000 --> 00:08:37.000 and also the east coast of North America fairly well. 00:08:37.000 --> 00:08:40.000 That's the warm colors which show a well-sampled region. 00:08:40.000 --> 00:08:42.000 The cold colors, the blue and the black, 00:08:42.000 --> 00:08:44.000 show areas where we have almost no data. 00:08:44.000 --> 00:08:46.000 So even after a 10-year census, 00:08:46.000 --> 00:08:49.000 there are large areas that still remain unexplored. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:49.000 --> 00:08:52.000 Now there are a group of scientists living in Texas, working in the Gulf of Mexico 00:08:52.000 --> 00:08:54.000 who decided really as a labor of love 00:08:54.000 --> 00:08:56.000 to pull together all the knowledge they could 00:08:56.000 --> 00:08:58.000 about biodiversity in the Gulf of Mexico. 00:08:58.000 --> 00:09:01.000 And so they put this together, a list of all the species, 00:09:01.000 --> 00:09:03.000 where they're known to occur, 00:09:03.000 --> 00:09:06.000 and it really seemed like a very esoteric, scientific type of exercise. 00:09:06.000 --> 00:09:09.000 But then, of course, there was the Deep Horizon oil spill. 00:09:09.000 --> 00:09:11.000 So all of a sudden, this labor of love 00:09:11.000 --> 00:09:14.000 for no obvious economic reason 00:09:14.000 --> 00:09:16.000 has become a critical piece of information 00:09:16.000 --> 00:09:19.000 in terms of how that system is going to recover, how long it will take 00:09:19.000 --> 00:09:21.000 and how the lawsuits 00:09:21.000 --> 00:09:24.000 and the multi-billion-dollar discussions that are going to happen in the coming years 00:09:24.000 --> 00:09:27.000 are likely to be resolved. NOTE Paragraph 00:09:27.000 --> 00:09:29.000 So what did we find? 00:09:29.000 --> 00:09:31.000 Well, I could stand here for hours, but, of course, I'm not allowed to do that. 00:09:31.000 --> 00:09:33.000 But I will tell you some of my favorite discoveries 00:09:33.000 --> 00:09:35.000 from the census. 00:09:35.000 --> 00:09:38.000 So one of the things we discovered is where are the hot spots of diversity? 00:09:38.000 --> 00:09:41.000 Where do we find the most species of ocean life? 00:09:41.000 --> 00:09:43.000 And what we find if we plot up the well-known species 00:09:43.000 --> 00:09:45.000 is this sort of a distribution. 00:09:45.000 --> 00:09:47.000 And what we see is that for coastal tags, 00:09:47.000 --> 00:09:49.000 for those organisms that live near the shoreline, 00:09:49.000 --> 00:09:51.000 they're most diverse in the tropics. 00:09:51.000 --> 00:09:53.000 This is something we've actually known for a while, 00:09:53.000 --> 00:09:55.000 so it's not a real breakthrough. NOTE Paragraph 00:09:55.000 --> 00:09:57.000 What is really exciting though 00:09:57.000 --> 00:09:59.000 is that the oceanic tags, or the ones that live far from the coast, 00:09:59.000 --> 00:10:01.000 are actually more diverse at intermediate latitudes. 00:10:01.000 --> 00:10:04.000 This is the sort of data, again, that managers could use 00:10:04.000 --> 00:10:07.000 if they want to prioritize areas of the ocean that we need to conserve. 00:10:07.000 --> 00:10:10.000 You can do this on a global scale, but you can also do it on a regional scale. 00:10:10.000 --> 00:10:13.000 And that's why biodiversity data can be so valuable. NOTE Paragraph 00:10:13.000 --> 00:10:16.000 Now while a lot of the species we discovered in the census 00:10:16.000 --> 00:10:18.000 are things that are small and hard to see, 00:10:18.000 --> 00:10:20.000 that certainly wasn't always the case. 00:10:20.000 --> 00:10:22.000 For example, while it's hard to believe 00:10:22.000 --> 00:10:24.000 that a three kilogram lobster could elude scientists, 00:10:24.000 --> 00:10:26.000 it did until a few years ago 00:10:26.000 --> 00:10:29.000 when South African fishermen requested an export permit 00:10:29.000 --> 00:10:32.000 and scientists realized that this was something new to science. 00:10:32.000 --> 00:10:34.000 Similarly this Golden V kelp 00:10:34.000 --> 00:10:36.000 collected in Alaska just below the low water mark 00:10:36.000 --> 00:10:38.000 is probably a new species. 00:10:38.000 --> 00:10:40.000 Even though it's three meters long, 00:10:40.000 --> 00:10:42.000 it actually, again, eluded science. 00:10:42.000 --> 00:10:45.000 Now this guy, this bigfin squid, is seven meters in length. 00:10:45.000 --> 00:10:48.000 But to be fair, it lives in the deep waters of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, 00:10:48.000 --> 00:10:50.000 so it was a lot harder to find. 00:10:50.000 --> 00:10:53.000 But there's still potential for discovery of big and exciting things. 00:10:53.000 --> 00:10:56.000 This particular shrimp, we've dubbed it the Jurassic shrimp, 00:10:56.000 --> 00:10:58.000 it's thought to have gone extinct 50 years ago -- 00:10:58.000 --> 00:11:00.000 at least it was, until the census discovered 00:11:00.000 --> 00:11:03.000 it was living and doing just fine off the coast of Australia. 00:11:03.000 --> 00:11:06.000 And it shows that the ocean, because of its vastness, 00:11:06.000 --> 00:11:08.000 can hide secrets for a very long time. 00:11:08.000 --> 00:11:11.000 So, Steven Spielberg, eat your heart out. NOTE Paragraph 00:11:11.000 --> 00:11:14.000 If we look at distributions, in fact distributions change dramatically. 00:11:14.000 --> 00:11:17.000 And so one of the records that we had 00:11:17.000 --> 00:11:20.000 was this sooty shearwater, which undergoes these spectacular migrations 00:11:20.000 --> 00:11:22.000 all the way from New Zealand 00:11:22.000 --> 00:11:24.000 all the way up to Alaska and back again 00:11:24.000 --> 00:11:26.000 in search of endless summer 00:11:26.000 --> 00:11:28.000 as they complete their life cycles. 00:11:28.000 --> 00:11:30.000 We also talked about the White Shark Cafe. 00:11:30.000 --> 00:11:33.000 This is a location in the Pacific where white shark converge. 00:11:33.000 --> 00:11:35.000 We don't know why they converge there, we simply don't know. 00:11:35.000 --> 00:11:37.000 That's a question for the future. NOTE Paragraph 00:11:37.000 --> 00:11:39.000 One of the things that we're taught in high school 00:11:39.000 --> 00:11:42.000 is that all animals require oxygen in order to survive. 00:11:42.000 --> 00:11:45.000 Now this little critter, it's only about half a millimeter in size, 00:11:45.000 --> 00:11:47.000 not terribly charismatic. 00:11:47.000 --> 00:11:49.000 But it was only discovered in the early 1980s. 00:11:49.000 --> 00:11:51.000 But the really interesting thing about it 00:11:51.000 --> 00:11:54.000 is that, a few years ago, census scientists discovered 00:11:54.000 --> 00:11:56.000 that this guy can thrive in oxygen-poor sediments 00:11:56.000 --> 00:11:58.000 in the deep Mediterranean Sea. 00:11:58.000 --> 00:12:00.000 So now they know that, in fact, 00:12:00.000 --> 00:12:02.000 animals can live without oxygen, at least some of them, 00:12:02.000 --> 00:12:05.000 and that they can adapt to even the harshest of conditions. NOTE Paragraph 00:12:05.000 --> 00:12:08.000 If you were to suck all the water out of the ocean, 00:12:08.000 --> 00:12:10.000 this is what you'd be left behind with, 00:12:10.000 --> 00:12:12.000 and that's the biomass of life on the sea floor. 00:12:12.000 --> 00:12:15.000 Now what we see is huge biomass towards the poles 00:12:15.000 --> 00:12:18.000 and not much biomass in between. 00:12:18.000 --> 00:12:20.000 We found life in the extremes. 00:12:20.000 --> 00:12:22.000 And so there were new species that were found 00:12:22.000 --> 00:12:24.000 that live inside ice 00:12:24.000 --> 00:12:26.000 and help to support an ice-based food web. NOTE Paragraph 00:12:26.000 --> 00:12:28.000 And we also found this spectacular yeti crab 00:12:28.000 --> 00:12:31.000 that lives near boiling hot hydrothermal vents at Easter Island. 00:12:31.000 --> 00:12:33.000 And this particular species 00:12:33.000 --> 00:12:36.000 really captured the public's attention. 00:12:36.000 --> 00:12:39.000 We also found the deepest vents known yet -- 5,000 meters -- 00:12:39.000 --> 00:12:42.000 the hottest vents at 407 degrees Celsius -- 00:12:42.000 --> 00:12:44.000 vents in the South Pacific and also in the Arctic 00:12:44.000 --> 00:12:46.000 where none had been found before. 00:12:46.000 --> 00:12:49.000 So even new environments are still within the domain of the discoverable. NOTE Paragraph 00:12:49.000 --> 00:12:51.000 Now in terms of the unknowns, there are many. 00:12:51.000 --> 00:12:53.000 And I'm just going to summarize just a few of them 00:12:53.000 --> 00:12:55.000 very quickly for you. 00:12:55.000 --> 00:12:58.000 First of all, we might ask, how many fishes in the sea? 00:12:58.000 --> 00:13:00.000 We actually know the fishes better than we do any other group in the ocean 00:13:00.000 --> 00:13:02.000 other than marine mammals. 00:13:02.000 --> 00:13:05.000 And so we can actually extrapolate based on rates of discovery 00:13:05.000 --> 00:13:08.000 how many more species we're likely to discover. 00:13:08.000 --> 00:13:10.000 And from that, we actually calculate 00:13:10.000 --> 00:13:13.000 that we know about 16,500 marine species 00:13:13.000 --> 00:13:15.000 and there are probably another 1,000 to 4,000 left to go. 00:13:15.000 --> 00:13:17.000 So we've done pretty well. 00:13:17.000 --> 00:13:19.000 We've got about 75 percent of the fish, 00:13:19.000 --> 00:13:21.000 maybe as much as 90 percent. 00:13:21.000 --> 00:13:24.000 But the fishes, as I say, are the best known. NOTE Paragraph 00:13:24.000 --> 00:13:27.000 So our level of knowledge is much less for other groups of organisms. 00:13:27.000 --> 00:13:29.000 Now this figure is actually based on a brand new paper 00:13:29.000 --> 00:13:32.000 that's going to come out in the journal PLoS Biology. 00:13:32.000 --> 00:13:34.000 And what is does is predict how many more species there are 00:13:34.000 --> 00:13:36.000 on land and in the ocean. 00:13:36.000 --> 00:13:38.000 And what they found 00:13:38.000 --> 00:13:41.000 is that they think that we know of about nine percent of the species in the ocean. 00:13:41.000 --> 00:13:43.000 That means 91 percent, even after the census, 00:13:43.000 --> 00:13:45.000 still remain to be discovered. 00:13:45.000 --> 00:13:47.000 And so that turns out to be about two million species 00:13:47.000 --> 00:13:49.000 once all is said and done. 00:13:49.000 --> 00:13:51.000 So we still have quite a lot of work to do 00:13:51.000 --> 00:13:53.000 in terms of unknowns. NOTE Paragraph 00:13:53.000 --> 00:13:55.000 Now this bacterium 00:13:55.000 --> 00:13:58.000 is part of mats that are found off the coast of Chile. 00:13:58.000 --> 00:14:00.000 And these mats actually cover an area the size of Greece. 00:14:00.000 --> 00:14:03.000 And so this particular bacterium is actually visible to the naked eye. 00:14:03.000 --> 00:14:06.000 But you can imagine the biomass that represents. 00:14:06.000 --> 00:14:08.000 But the really intriguing thing about the microbes 00:14:08.000 --> 00:14:10.000 is just how diverse they are. 00:14:10.000 --> 00:14:12.000 A single drop of seawater 00:14:12.000 --> 00:14:14.000 could contain 160 different types of microbes. 00:14:14.000 --> 00:14:16.000 And the oceans themselves 00:14:16.000 --> 00:14:19.000 are thought potentially to contain as many as a billion different types. 00:14:19.000 --> 00:14:22.000 So that's really exciting. What are they all doing out there? 00:14:22.000 --> 00:14:24.000 We actually don't know. NOTE Paragraph 00:14:24.000 --> 00:14:26.000 The most exciting thing, I would say, about this census 00:14:26.000 --> 00:14:28.000 is the role of global science. 00:14:28.000 --> 00:14:30.000 And so as we see in this image of light during the night, 00:14:30.000 --> 00:14:32.000 there are lots of areas of the Earth 00:14:32.000 --> 00:14:35.000 where human development is much greater 00:14:35.000 --> 00:14:37.000 and other areas where it's much less, 00:14:37.000 --> 00:14:39.000 but between them we see large dark areas 00:14:39.000 --> 00:14:41.000 of relatively unexplored ocean. 00:14:41.000 --> 00:14:43.000 The other point I'd like to make about this 00:14:43.000 --> 00:14:45.000 is that this ocean's interconnected. 00:14:45.000 --> 00:14:47.000 Marine organisms do not care about international boundaries; 00:14:47.000 --> 00:14:49.000 they move where they will. 00:14:49.000 --> 00:14:52.000 And so the importance then of global collaboration 00:14:52.000 --> 00:14:54.000 becomes all the more important. NOTE Paragraph 00:14:54.000 --> 00:14:56.000 We've lost a lot of paradise. 00:14:56.000 --> 00:14:59.000 For example, these tuna that were once so abundant in the North Sea 00:14:59.000 --> 00:15:01.000 are now effectively gone. 00:15:01.000 --> 00:15:04.000 There were trawls taken in the deep sea in the Mediterranean, 00:15:04.000 --> 00:15:06.000 which collected more garbage than they did animals. 00:15:06.000 --> 00:15:09.000 And that's the deep sea, that's the environment that we consider to be 00:15:09.000 --> 00:15:11.000 among the most pristine left on Earth. 00:15:11.000 --> 00:15:13.000 And there are a lot of other pressures. 00:15:13.000 --> 00:15:16.000 Ocean acidification is a really big issue that people are concerned with, 00:15:16.000 --> 00:15:19.000 as well as ocean warming, and the effects they're going to have on coral reefs. 00:15:19.000 --> 00:15:22.000 On the scale of decades, in our lifetimes, 00:15:22.000 --> 00:15:24.000 we're going to see a lot of damage to coral reefs. NOTE Paragraph 00:15:24.000 --> 00:15:27.000 And I could spend the rest of my time, which is getting very limited, 00:15:27.000 --> 00:15:29.000 going through this litany of concerns about the ocean, 00:15:29.000 --> 00:15:31.000 but I want to end on a more positive note. 00:15:31.000 --> 00:15:33.000 And so the grand challenge then 00:15:33.000 --> 00:15:35.000 is to try and make sure that we preserve what's left, 00:15:35.000 --> 00:15:37.000 because there is still spectacular beauty. 00:15:37.000 --> 00:15:39.000 And the oceans are so productive, 00:15:39.000 --> 00:15:42.000 there's so much going on in there that's of relevance to humans 00:15:42.000 --> 00:15:45.000 that we really need to, even from a selfish perspective, 00:15:45.000 --> 00:15:47.000 try to do better than we have in the past. 00:15:47.000 --> 00:15:49.000 So we need to recognize those hot spots 00:15:49.000 --> 00:15:51.000 and do our best to protect them. NOTE Paragraph 00:15:51.000 --> 00:15:53.000 When we look at pictures like this, they take our breath away, 00:15:53.000 --> 00:15:55.000 in addition to helping to give us breath 00:15:55.000 --> 00:15:57.000 by the oxygen that the oceans provide. 00:15:57.000 --> 00:16:00.000 Census scientists worked in the rain, they worked in the cold, 00:16:00.000 --> 00:16:02.000 they worked under water and they worked above water 00:16:02.000 --> 00:16:04.000 trying to illuminate the wondrous discovery, 00:16:04.000 --> 00:16:06.000 the still vast unknown, 00:16:06.000 --> 00:16:09.000 the spectacular adaptations that we see in ocean life. 00:16:09.000 --> 00:16:12.000 So whether you're a yak herder living in the mountains of Chile, 00:16:12.000 --> 00:16:15.000 whether you're a stockbroker in New York City 00:16:15.000 --> 00:16:17.000 or whether you're a TEDster living in Edinburgh, 00:16:17.000 --> 00:16:19.000 the oceans matter. 00:16:19.000 --> 00:16:21.000 And as the oceans go so shall we. NOTE Paragraph 00:16:21.000 --> 00:16:23.000 Thanks for listening. NOTE Paragraph 00:16:23.000 --> 00:16:25.000 (Applause)