The video discusses the mysteries and unexplored vastness of the ocean, emphasizing our limited knowledge about it. The presenter shares his personal experiences along with the global issue of uncharted territories in the ocean, such as the immense darkness due to light absorption and how it serves as both a literal and metaphorical challenge to oceanic exploration. This lack of knowledge has real-world implications, including the discovery of mountains and the unfortunate accidents stemming from unmapped areas.

In exploring solutions to improve our understanding of the ocean, the speaker introduces a concept involving advanced technology with robot submarines that aims to gather data from the ocean floor efficiently and cost-effectively. This initiative stems from a desire to overcome the expensive and labor-intensive traditional ocean data collection methods. By integrating AI and modern technology, the project proposes a scalable and sustainable approach to ocean exploration.

Main takeaways from the video:

Please remember to turn on the CC button to view the subtitles.

Key Vocabularies and Common Phrases:

1. breach [briːʧ] - (verb) - To break or violate a rule, agreement, or law; alternatively, to jump out of the water, as whales do. - Synonyms: (break, violate, jump)

Is it dolphins with a blue background, maybe breaching whales or coral like we show there?

2. ignorance [ˈɪɡnərəns] - (noun) - Lack of knowledge, information, or awareness about something specific. - Synonyms: (unawareness, incomprehension, naivety)

This darkness, finally, is a metaphor. It's a metaphor for our ignorance.

3. obstruction [əbˈstrʌkʃən] - (noun) - Something that blocks or impedes action or progress. - Synonyms: (hindrance, impediment, blockage)

And this darkness in the ocean is then an obstacle as well.

4. behoove [bɪˈhuːv] - (verb) - It is a duty or responsibility for someone to do something for their own or others' benefit. - Synonyms: (be incumbent on, be proper for, be required)

And so when we make decisions about how to manage resources in the ocean, it behooves us to do so responsibly.

5. expedition [ˌekspəˈdɪʃən] - (noun) - A journey or voyage undertaken for a specific purpose, often exploration or research. - Synonyms: (journey, voyage, adventure)

This is actually part of a series of expeditions that was launched by the Schmidt Ocean Institute.

6. sanctuary [ˈsæŋkʧuˌɛri] - (noun) - A place of refuge or safety; often a protected area for wildlife or natural resources. - Synonyms: (refuge, haven, preservation)

And the gray areas, the gray squares that you see, those are essentially marine sanctuaries.

7. scalability [ˌskeɪləˈbɪləti] - (noun) - The capacity to be changed or expanded in size or scale without losing functionality or performance. - Synonyms: (expandability, adjustability, adaptability)

So why is this important? Look, if we can combine the range of a research vessel but at the same time do it with the economy and the scalability and the safety of a robot submarine

8. metaphor [ˈmɛtəˌfɔr] - (noun) - A figure of speech involving an implied comparison between two unlike things, suggesting some similarity. - Synonyms: (analogy, symbol, allegory)

This darkness, finally, is a metaphor.

9. sonar [ˈsoʊnɑr] - (noun) - A system for detecting objects underwater using sound waves. - Synonyms: (echo sounding, acoustic location, marine radar)

We have satellites that can scan the entirety of the ocean surface and can extract various types of information, but just at the surface level.

10. propeller [prəˈpɛlər] - (noun) - A device with blades that rotate and push against water or air, used for propulsion. - Synonyms: (rotor, fan, screw)

Speaking of the submarines, this is Abraham. We built her to be able to travel under the water using a propeller powered by batteries to travel tremendous distances.

Mapping the ocean floor, Earth's final frontier - Andrew Lunstad - TEDxLogan Circle

Let me ask you a question. When I ask you to picture the ocean, what do you imagine? Is it dolphins with a blue background, maybe breaching whales or coral like we show there? It's beautiful, or at least I think so. And that's why, living in Minnesota, I put a reef aquarium in my kitchen because I wanted a little piece of that. And it was fantastic. Until a few years ago, my coral started dying off. This is one of them. I grew it from a little nub, and now it's a skeleton. And that got me interested, of course, in what was happening to my aquarium, but also into what was happening at the ocean.

And as I researched this, I would learn a couple things. One is that my career was about to take a big shift. We'll get to that later. And the second part was, this picture is actually not at all representative of the ocean. The ocean is, generally speaking, dark. Literally dark. The only part of the ocean that light penetrates is the thin band at the top, up to 200 meters at most. And in this slide, it's shown with that thin blue band. The rest of it is completely black to the human eye because, put simply, seawater absorbs light.

And this darkness in the ocean is then an obstacle as well. Because if light can't penetrate the ocean, it also means that light can't escape it. So we can use telescope, radar, no radio. All of these are unavailable to us. I'll put it to you this way. The reason that we know more about the surface of Mars than we do the ocean is because I can see the surface of Mars from my backyard. As long as I have a telescope, I oftentimes can't see my feet when I'm standing waist deep in the Gulf of Mexico.

This darkness, finally, is a metaphor. It's a metaphor for our ignorance. As you heard, we've only mapped about a quarter of the ocean. And in this slide, that's represented by the thin blue band on the outside. The large dark part in the middle is largely unknown. And in a world where we have Google maps to show us everything that exists on land, it's kind of hard to imagine what that means. But I know it's true. Because of headlines like this, we found four new mountains this year. Yeah. When's the last time you heard about a mountain being discovered above sea level? I mean, I have no idea. I can't think of a time. But this is actually part of a series of expeditions that was launched by the Schmidt Ocean Institute that has found 29 mountains since 2012.

And that's a much better way to discover mountains than the USS San Francisco did in 2005. Yeah, it ran into an as yet unmapped seamount. And doing it caused, well, millions of dollars of damage, but it also cost one sailor his life. And so, in a very real way, our ignorance of the ocean has a body count. But look, it's not just sailors dying in undersea collisions that should make us want to study the ocean. The ocean is, in fact, very critical to life on Earth. It is a huge part of our ecosystem, covering 71% of the planet. And so it regulates our temperature, it absorbs 30% of atmospheric carbon. For you seafood lovers, it provides 15% of the protein we consume.

And so when we make decisions about how to manage resources in the ocean, it behooves us to do so responsibly. And there are a lot of decisions to make. To pick one, this adorable little guy right here lives 4000 meters below the surface of the sea in an area called the Clarion Clipperton zone. And this area has been identified as a prime spot for seafloor mining. What do I mean by seafloor mining? Well, it simply means collecting the manganese nodules that you see in isolation on the right from the environment shown on the left.

These manganese nodules, it turns out, are chock full of rare earth elements. And rare earth elements are, in turn, extremely valuable for building rechargeable batteries. And, of course, rechargeable batteries will help us transition to a renewable energy economy. So that all sounds great, right? We should be harvesting these minerals. Well, maybe, right? But if we were to harvest these minerals from this zone, what ecosystem damage would we do? Well, it depends on how we harvest them, right? So how do we then, as a society, try to balance our desire to harvest these minerals for all the good they can do with the potential ecosystem damage that we would do as a result?

Well, I can tell you what we are doing. The map on the top right of this slide shows you the area that I'm talking about. All the colorful areas in this map have been designated for seafloor mining. And the gray areas, the gray squares that you see, those are essentially marine sanctuaries. And look, I am not here to tell you the merits or the give or take of that plan. It's not my area of expertise. But what I think is really interesting is if you look at the map on the bottom, the only part of this region that we've mapped even well enough to know if we're going to run into an undersea mountain is the colorful lines that criss cross that zone. And if you're thinking to yourself that that doesn't even look like we've mapped a quarter of that area, well, yeah, you're probably right.

So how can this be? How can an area of such economic interest where we're making such important decisions be so poorly mapped? Well, it helps if I explain how we gather ocean data. So we have a number of ways of doing this. We have satellites that can scan the entirety of the ocean surface and can extract various types of information, but just at the surface level. Speaking of the surface, we have surface vessels, whether they're robotic or whether they're crude, as well as buoys that can float on the surface, gathering detailed information there, but also able to gather lower resolution information from below.

But it turns out that if we want to gather detailed information from the ocean floor deeper, we need to go under to get it, because, remember, the ocean is dark. And so that means robot submarines pictured underneath. And robot submarines are great for gathering this data, but the problem is, they're very short range. So in order to go to where the data needs to be collected, we have to travel all the way out there by putting them on board a research vessel, sending them down to the bottom of the ocean, bringing them back up, collecting it, and repeating. And this is laborious. And that means that it's no surprise that the parts of the ocean that we haven't mapped, these dark, unknown areas, are largely those areas that are hard to reach.

The reason for that is simple. Big ships are expensive. Yeah. This ship right here, the RV Falkor, is one that was used in that series of expeditions that found all those mountains that we hadn't known existed earlier. And it turns out that in order to send it out, you need to put dozens of people on it, and you need to fill it with hundreds of thousands of gallons of diesel fuel. And that's why it's no real surprise, then, that to put a vessel like this to sea costs up to $100,000 a day. And while we're grateful to Eric and Wendy Schmidt of Google fame for their generous donation that made this exploration possible, it's probably not fair or a good idea that we rely solely on the generosity of billionaires to close this ocean data gap.

So does that mean that it's impossible to solve? That would be pretty depressing if it were true and a horrible way to end the talk. But just as my aquarium was dying and I was researching this, trying to figure out what was going on, I got a call from a friend, and he told me about a company that was trying to scale the way that we collect ocean data. He said that was founded by a couple of Navy SEALs who, when asked about an as yet unsolved data problem, said the ocean. They knew that it was huge, that it was dark, that it was largely unknown. And their concept for solving it was simple, at least in principle.

They said, we have submarines that have long range, we have since World War one, and now we have AI, we have robots, and we've got a worldwide network with satellite connectivity capable of tracking all these things. Can we just mix them all together and have the robot submarines map the ocean? I thought that sounded like a pretty cool idea.

But why, I asked, are you calling me? Well, he went on to say that they were looking for someone to lead the technology effort on this, that had experience all the way from the sensors that were able to gather this data, to building the worldwide applications that are capable of managing and integrating the data from this process. And he didn't know many people like that, especially not people who had reef tanks in their kitchen. And so he asked if I would join. And yeah, I did want to join, because, after all, there was a death to avenge. So I joined.

And the first thing we built was the data platform. This is a screenshot from that and shows the planet Earth that we live on. Notice all the blue ocean. When you look at it from this angle, this platform is capable of integrating data from the submarines we're building, as well as other places, and putting it all into a single model of the earth. It's also capable of planning missions for the submarines, as well as tracking their position.

Speaking of the submarines, this is Abraham. We built her to be able to travel under the water using a propeller powered by batteries to travel tremendous distances. And then when she gets low on batteries, she can come up to the surface and then using the mast in the back, it acts as a snorkel that allows oxygen to come in from the atmosphere and then runs a diesel engine that recharges those batteries. Once they're full, she can dive back down to the ocean floor and gather more data.

And here she is in operation. On the left, you can see an operation in the lake. You can see her hull just under the surface. And on the right you can see her heading through the Gulf of Mexico in about 5ft of sea. And we're building her to travel hundreds, even thousands of nautical miles, collecting data as she goes and returning to port, all in a single tank of gas.

So why is this important? Look, if we can combine the range of a research vessel but at the same time do it with the economy and the scalability and the safety of a robot submarine. While not losing the ability to go deep and gather detailed information from the ocean floor. We can make ocean exploration by my calculations more than 100 times more affordable and in so doing we might finally be turning the corner on solving this ocean data problem we have.

So look I don't know the answer to all of these ocean management questions that we have right now but what I can tell you is that when we make decisions about it I would far rather that we are much better informed and at least with respect to gathering ocean data to mapping the ocean, I think we have a line of sight to get there. So yeah the ocean is big, it is dark and it is largely unknown but I'd like to leave you with this encouraging thought. It doesn't need to stay that way. Thank you.

Ocean Exploration, Technology, Innovation, Science, Inspiration, Environmental Conservation, Tedx Talks