Magnificent Vistas of Ignorance | Alejandro Sánchez Alvarado | TEDxKC

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.