A close look at the ocean
have you ever looked up
at the night sky and seen the vast
universe in which we’re
existing and felt really really
small this is a great perspective to put
on our everyday life
but i’d like to give you a different
perspective one way we can look
down at the ocean see millions of
microscopic
life forms and particles and feel really
big
there’s loads of small stuff floating
around in the ocean
this is controlling our climate it’s
creating a sustainable ecosystem
and it’s producing about 50 percent of
the oxygen that you are breathing
right now
so what might we find in a typical glass
full of seawater well if we zoom right
in
we’ll see a lot of water molecules
we’ll see a lot of dissolved chemicals
trace elements dissolved gases some of
these are good
and some of these are bad but if we zoom
out of the water itself
we’ll see millions and millions of
bacteria
they’re working really hard to keep
these chemicals in balance
and make that water livable
it might be livable for example for
phytoplankton
they’re the next biggest thing we might
see these are microscopic
algae that float around they might just
be five
millionths of a meter across
they use their sun’s energy to
photosynthesize and grow
sometimes they might be in such high
abundance
that despite being so small they can
actually change the color of the ocean
so much that we can measure them from
space
if we zoom out a little bit further
these phytoplankton are eaten by small
bugs
this is one of them this is about
one millimeter tall it’s actually one of
the most abundant bugs that we might
find in the ocean
we call them zooplankton and this is a
type of zooplankton called a copepod
we can zoom out a bit further and if
we’re really really lucky
in our glass of seawater we might see a
small fish larvae
if we want to see anything bigger than
that we probably need a bigger glass
but you get the idea this is how things
survive in the ocean
big things eat many small things
but these aren’t the only things in the
ocean there’s plenty of other random
stuff
there could be sediments coming from
rivers it could be gas bubbles
could be salmon lice it could be
pollution
like microplastic or oil droplets
it’s my job to try to find ways to
measure all of these different types of
particles
by designing instruments we can take
into the ocean
and map and understand how these move
here is another thing this is about
three millimeters tall
and it’s a particle we call it marine
snow
and that basically means that we don’t
really know what it is
but it’s basically a bunch of everything
else i’ve already talked about
there’s bacteria who’s created mucus
phytoplankton that also excrete weird
things
and then they make this kind of sticky
blob which
might also contain sediment grains and
dead things
these things are actually really
important for our climate because
contained in this is a whole bunch of
carbon
which this particle can draw down from
the surface of the ocean
and sink to the seabed where it’s stored
for thousands of years
so how do we make these kind of
measurements of all of these different
things
well it starts with some clever
colleagues coming up with some very
random ideas
and we have to find a way to pitch this
to somebody who has some funding
and if we’re really lucky then we might
be able to start to screw some of these
ideas together into
some new technology and that might start
in our lab
it might look very messy we need to find
a way to make it waterproof
and withstand the huge pressure that you
get from water when you’re several
hundred meters down
then we might package the equipment up
and send it to some far away place where
these measurements are needed
perhaps we need to transport our
equipment out on
sea ice with snow scooters or maybe we
are on a research ship
in total darkness for several weeks
when we get there we’ll deploy our
equipment on a frame like like this one
here
we’ll lower it off the side of a boat uh
dangling maybe several hundred meters
down from the side of the ship
i’m going to play you that video one
more time but this time
from the perspective of one of the
instruments that’s on that frame
a kind of in-situ microscope so now the
screen here is about three
centimeters tall and this would be what
we see
if we zoom into the ocean
a couple of seconds ago i showed you a
copa pod did anyone see the copy pod
there
it was here it looks a little different
because it’s
in a different orientation but that’s
life so we need
computer algorithms to find these kind
of needles in haystacks
and what we can do with that is
essentially build a
panorama vertically up through the ocean
which might be several hundred meters
tall
but we’ve done that on microscopic
resolution
and then we can map where all of these
particles are and where they go
someone like me might be living in a
cabin on a boat sharing with a couple of
other people
in a small space smaller than this stage
actually
we might step outside onto a deck of ice
and snow
this boat will be moving by the way this
was the last
photo i took on this cruise it was an
expedition organized by university in
tromso
and this was the last photo i took
before the sunlight went away
we didn’t see the sun again until the
end of the trip
typically on this kind of expedition
there’s a lot of other scientists
all wanting to do their thing and
everything needs carefully scheduling
so we can go to the places we want to go
to and fit in everything we want to do
some people might need to work in the
dark because they’re studying organisms
that are sensitive to particular types
of light
so suddenly all of the lights on the
ship go off
and with no sunlight everything is
really dark
or we might be out on sea ice suddenly
find a software problem and end up
debugging software in a storm on
the middle of the ice typically what
happens then
is someone who is in charge of media and
outreach
points a camera at you and then asks you
to explain what’s going on
and as a scientist like me that can be a
bit stressful it’s a bit like what i’m
trying to do
now but we just have to smile and
explain it
and then one day it will end up on the
internet
aside from these kind of technicalities
sometimes we get a chance to look up
and appreciate the environment that
we’re working in
we get the chance to visit places and
cultures that
we would never actually choose to go and
visit
and we get the chance to take technology
that we’ve thought of here in trondheim
to some
totally remote place of the planet and
destroy and
deploy it to several 100 meters below
the ocean you might think that was a
slip of the time
at the same time we get to work with
some great people
really enthusiastic students and
colleagues
but this is really inefficient it takes
a lot of resources
it’s expensive and the amount of
measurements we actually get
for the effort and resources that we put
in is nowhere near what we
need to really understand the ecosystem
and the environment we’re trying to
measure
what’s needed is measurements on mass
over large scales and long time periods
and that’s why we are working more and
more now
with experts on autonomous platforms
which can be deployed under the ocean so
that we can
integrate our new technology for
measuring these particles
and send them out on robots to do the
job
for us now
anthony and synthetic are developing a
new laboratory here
in trondheim it will be a laboratory
inside tron homes field
for exactly this there’ll be new robots
being developed
new sensors on state-of-the-art data
voice
maybe in 10 years time there won’t be a
need for somebody like me to be out
on a expedition in the north of the
arctic ocean
instead we will sit at our computer and
drive some robots out of the fjord here
and just send them to where we want to
go
that makes me wonder how much
can we really learn about this kind of
environment
just through the lens of a computer
screen
perhaps most of you listening to this
talk
now have experienced this kind of
environment
just through your tv or your phone or
your computer
and that’s why i’m really happy that
today i can share with you
my first-hand experience of being in
these environments
so that maybe the next time you glance
at the ocean
you can remember these tiny things i’ve
talked to you about today
maybe you’ll feel really big and maybe
it will renew your appreciation
or responsibility for our natural planet
which is precariously balanced on a
bunch of
microscopic particles in
thank you