A Sea of Minions and the Carbon Cycle
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the theme of this ted series is decoding
the language of climate
i study the ocean and to me the language
of the ocean
is through the data that we collect 100
years ago
we needed to collect a single sample of
water in order to be
able to get a word of that language 50
years later
we could construct sentences of this
language through the development of
sensors that could provide strings of
numbers
that would allow continuous monitoring
now we’re in an environment
where we can collect paragraphs of
information
huge data sets particularly through the
development of technology surrounding
acoustic measurements
and imaging tools i study a part of the
carbon cycle called the biological
carbon pump but you might be more
familiar
with what we call the inorganic pump the
process by which co2 in the atmosphere
is dissolved at the sea surface and then
through mixing
processes and subduction it’s folded
into the deep ocean this balance this
this exchange of carbon through a
biological form
and then remineralization back into an
inorganic form in the deep ocean
is very similar to the cycle that occurs
in our forests every year so in the fall
trees drop their leaves those leaves
accumulate on the floor and then
are re-mineralized by bacteria and
broken down
back into an inorganic form that can
eventually be used
by the tree the following spring during
the next bloom
our oceans are very similar to this in
that they have phytoplankton that are
fixing that carbon through
photosynthesis some of that material
is packaged and reprocessed into
detrital particles
that then sink out from the surface into
the deep sea
on the way down most of that material is
remineralized
by bacteria and converted back into
an inorganic co2 form a tiny fraction of
it actually does reach the sea floor
and this is actually what eventually
becomes our fossil fuels over millions
of years
what my lab has developed is an imaging
tool
for monitoring what we call the
biological carbon pump
this technology derives from technology
that’s actually been in existence for
over 50 years
an autonomous instrumented package that
can be deployed off of a research vessel
it’s pre-ballasted so that we’ve added
just the right amount of weight
so that it can sink down and hit an
intermediate level in the ocean
somewhere inside
what we call the twilight zone the
region below the sunlit surface
and the abyss these instruments are
deployed
for periods of days to weeks and
eventually maybe
even years they have sensors on board
that allow us to
monitor the temperature the salinity the
oxygen concentration
and changes in oxygen and also take
photographs
of what we call marine snow
the way that they do this is by drifting
in a water following frame that allows
the
snow particles that are falling down
from being produced by phytoplankton
above
and they land on an imaging surface
that’s upward facing
and provide us with a time-lapse view of
the accumulation of these particles
at the end of the mission the minion
will drop its weight
and then flip over and come back up to
the surface
on the other side on its head is the
tools that we use to be able to transmit
the data
through satellites back to the ship or
to shore
the reason why i’m building tools to be
able to monitor
the biological carbon pump is because we
don’t yet understand
how this very complex process that
constitutes a huge
quantity of this carbon exchange
will change under a changing ocean and a
changing climate
a hundred years ago we needed to collect
a single sample of water in order to get
one word of the ocean’s language imagine
with me now a future
where the ocean is filled with thousands
of robots my minions among them
that are collecting vast data sets that
will
allow us to fill books and libraries
with the ocean stories