How a fleet of wind-powered drones is changing our understanding of the ocean

Our oceans are unexplored and undersampled -- today, we still know more about other planets than our own. How can we get to a better understanding of this vast, important ecosystem? Explorer Sebastien de Halleux shares how a new fleet of wind- and solar-powered drones is collecting data at sea in unprecedented detail, revealing insights into things like global weather and the health of fish stocks. Learn more about what a better grasp of the ocean could mean for us back on land.

We know more about
other planets than our own,

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

designed to help us
better understand our own planet.

It belongs to a category

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

And it uses no fuel.

Instead, it relies
on wind power for propulsion.

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

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

and what it means for you.

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

from San Francisco to Hawaii.

I had just spent the past 10 years
working nonstop,

developing video games
for hundreds of millions of users,

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

and get some much-needed thinking time.

I was the navigator on board,

and one evening, after a long session
analyzing weather data

and plotting our course,

I came up on deck and saw
this beautiful sunset.

And a thought occurred to me:

How much do we really know
about our oceans?

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

and the waves were
rocking our boat forcefully,

a sort of constant reminder
of its untold power.

How much do we really know
about our oceans?

I decided to find out.

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

The first reason is just
how vast oceans are,

covering 70 percent of the planet,

and yet we know they drive
complex planetary systems

like global weather,

which affect all of us on a daily basis,

sometimes dramatically.

And yet, those activities
are mostly invisible to us.

Ocean data is scarce by any standard.

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

billions of them, actually.

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

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

How small a number
was actually a great surprise.

Our National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration,

better known as NOAA,

only has 16 ships,

and there are less than
200 buoys offshore globally.

It is easy to understand why:

the oceans are an unforgiving place,

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

capable of carrying a vast amount of fuel

and large crews,

costing hundreds
of millions of dollars each,

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

and weighted down
by a set of train wheels,

which is both dangerous to deploy
and expensive to maintain.

What about satellites, you might ask?

Well, satellites are fantastic,

and they have taught us
so much about the big picture

over the past few decades.

However, the problem with satellites

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

They have relatively poor
spatial and temporal resolution,

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

and other factors.

So what is going on in the oceans?

And what are we trying to measure?

And how could a robot be of any use?

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

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

because the surface,
if you think about it,

is the nexus of all air-sea interaction.

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

Our sun radiates energy,

which is absorbed by oceans as heat

and then partially released
into the atmosphere.

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

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

Plankton and microorganisms
release oxygen into the atmosphere,

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

Some of that heat generates evaporation,
which creates clouds

and then eventually
leads to precipitation.

And pressure gradients
create surface wind,

which moves the moisture
through the atmosphere.

Some of the heat radiates down
into the deep ocean

and gets stored in different layers,

the ocean acting as some kind
of planetary-scale boiler

to store all that energy,

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

or long-term phenomena like El Niño.

These layers can get mixed up
by vertical upwelling currents

or horizontal currents,
which are key in transporting heat

from the tropics to the poles.

And of course, there is marine life,

occupying the largest ecosystem
in volume on the planet,

from microorganisms to fish
to marine mammals,

like seals, dolphins and whales.

But all of these
are mostly invisible to us.

The challenge in studying
those ocean variables at scale

is one of energy,

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

And of course, many solutions
have been tried --

from wave-actuated devices

to surface drifters

to sun-powered electrical drives --

each with their own compromises.

Our team breakthrough came
from an unlikely source --

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

It took 10 years of research
and development

to come up with a novel wing concept

that only uses three watts
of power to control

and yet can propel a vehicle
all around the globe

with seemingly unlimited autonomy.

By adapting this wing concept
into a marine vehicle,

we had the genesis of an ocean drone.

Now, these are larger than they appear.

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

Think of them as surface satellites.

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

that measure all key variables,

both oceanographic and atmospheric,

and a live satellite link transmits
this high-resolution data

back to shore in real time.

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

conducting missions in some of
the toughest ocean conditions

on the planet,

from the Arctic to the tropical Pacific.

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

We have sailed into Atlantic hurricanes.

We have rounded Cape Horn,

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

This is one tough robot.

Let me share with you
recent work that we did

around the Pribilof Islands.

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

between the US and Russia.

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

which is a whitefish
you might not recognize,

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

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

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

both in terms of value and volume --

about 3.1 billion pounds
of fish caught every year.

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

has been hard at work in the Bering Sea

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

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

and help prevent a collapse
of the fish stock

and protects this fragile ecosystem.

Now, the drones survey
the fishing ground using acoustics,

i.e., a sonar.

This sends a sound wave downwards,

and then the reflection,
the echo from the sound wave

from the seabed or schools of fish,

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

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

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

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

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

Sadly, these days,
the population has rapidly declined.

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

and the population
continues to fall rapidly.

So to understand why,

our science partner at
the National Marine Mammal Laboratory

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

glued to their furs.

And this tag measures location and depth

and also has a really cool little camera

that's triggered by sudden acceleration.

Here is a movie taken
by an artistically inclined seal,

giving us unprecedented insight
into an underwater hunt

deep in the Arctic,

and the shot of this pollock prey

just seconds before it gets devoured.

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

They had to survive a snowstorm in August

and interferences from bystanders --

that little spotted seal enjoying a ride.

(Laughter)

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

and upon a closer look,

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

We are on our way to decode
what is really happening

over that foraging ground,

and it's quite beautiful.

Once you superimpose the acoustic data
collected by the drones,

a picture starts to emerge.

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

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

which the drone identifies
is populated by small young pollock

with low calorific content.

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

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

which are more nutritious as fish.

Unfortunately, the calories expended
by the mother seals

to swim this extra distance

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

leading to the population decline.

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

has significantly warmed.

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

and to spread in search of colder regions.

So the data analysis is ongoing,

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

from the fur seal mystery

are coming into focus.

But if you look back at the big picture,

we are mammals, too.

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

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

from the fur seal story?

And beyond fish, the oceans
affect all of us daily

as they drive global weather systems,

which affect things like
global agricultural output

or can lead to devastating destruction
of lives and property

through hurricanes,
extreme heat and floods.

Our oceans are pretty much
unexplored and undersampled,

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

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

each about 400 miles long,

you'd get about 1,000 such squares.

So little by little,
working with our partners,

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

the hope being that
achieving planetary coverage

will give us better insights
into those planetary systems

that affect humanity.

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

for a while now.

Now it is time to quantify our own planet,

because we cannot fix
what we cannot measure,

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

Thank you.

(Applause)