-: All right, aloha kakou and happy St. Patrick's Day.
Welcome to our Third Thursday by the Bay webinar,
we have a really exciting feature for you today
with Dr. Beth Orcutt called,
"Living Between a Rock and Hard Place,
Microbial Life in the Deep Sea
and Potential Impacts of Deep-sea Mining."
So, my name's Andy and just a quick overview
of some of the issues you might be having.
If you're having any issues with your sound,
there is a control panel, go to webinar control panel
and it should be in the upper right hand portion
of your screen.
There's a section on there called, "Audio,"
just make sure your audio settings are correct,
that your input,
your microphone and your speakers are correct,
usually that's where people have problems
but if you do have any further issues,
we may be able to help you.
Please type it into the question box or the chat
and we will see what we can do to help you
if you're having any audios issues.
And if you have any questions
or other things during the webinar,
please type in the question box.
Hopefully, we'll be able to get some of your questions
at the end or any comments into the chat box.
So again, thank you for joining us today.
We have over 370 participants
from nearly every continent around the planet,
including I saw somebody joining us from Myanmar today,
that's a beautiful country.
I had the the opportunity to go there not too long ago.
So, thank you for joining us.
And in Hawai'i, we start our webinars
and many other things through doing a protocol.
It's a proper way to open things in Hawai'i.
So, I am going to invite our wonderful Malia Evans
to come on and do protocol for us.
So, mahalo Malia.
-: Aloha mai kākou.
So, yes, we'll begin with Hawaiian cultural protocol,
which actually is gonna be setting the space for the giving
and receiving the of information and knowledge
during today's presentation.
I'm gonna turn off my camera
so you all can enjoy the stunning imagery
of Papahānaumokuākea
and begin to realize why it's such a sacred place
and worthy of protection.
(chant in Hawaiian language)
(webinar member applauds)
-: Mahalo Malia, a wonderful opening.
Okay, well today we are here
as a part of the National Marine Sanctuary System.
So, Papahānaumokuākea is co-managed
by several different management entities
and National Marine Sanctuaries under NOAA is one of them
but we also manage several sites around the United States
and into the Pacific.
On the east coast,
we have sites such as Stellwagen Bank, Monitor,
Florida keys.
We have a couple of sites in the Great Lakes now,
Thunder Bay, which is mostly a shipwreck site.
Wisconsin Shipwreck Coast is a new site
and also a new site under designation Lake Ontario.
So, the system is expanding
and it's very exciting time to be working in this field.
Also Flower Garden Banks,
down in the Gulf of Mexico recently expanded
to protect more area.
And on the west coast,
we have several sites such as Monterey Bay,
Greater Farallones, Olympic Coast
and when you come out into the Pacific,
we have two sites in Hawai'i.
Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary
and also Papahānaumokuākea Marine National monument.
And we are currently undergoing a sanctuary designation
within the boundaries
of Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument.
South of us,
we have National Marine Sanctuary of American Samoa
and also a few other marine national monuments,
such as Rose Atoll Marine National Monument.
So, this is our National Marine Sanctuary System,
your network of underwater parks around the country.
And we are celebrating 50 years
of National Marine Sanctuaries and their protection.
So, we have a campaign going this year called,
"Save Spectacular."
We hope you can participate online
or at your local sanctuary
but it's quite an achievement to half a century
of protecting our underwater parks around the country.
Papahānaumokuākea,
so we're the largest fully protected area in the world.
582,578 square miles of ocean protected area.
And we extend past the main Hawaiian Islands.
The first island is Nihoa about 150 miles past Kauaʻi
and it extends all the way out to Hōlanikū
or Kure Atoll at the end
and out to the Exclusive Economic Zone of the United States.
It's a vast area.
You can see it overlain over the United States
in the lower left hand corner.
And we protect it for the corals, the sea birds,
the amazing deep-sea reefs.
It's an incredible area and national heritage,
we're also a World Heritage Site.
Today, you met Malia earlier.
We are your webinar hosts.
Malia Evans, who is our
Education and Native Hawaiian Outreach Coordinator
under the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation.
Myself, Andy Collins,
I'm Education Coordinator and Justin Umholtz,
our Education Specialist.
And he's gonna be on the backend,
managing a lot of your questions
and posting really interesting links
for related links into the chat.
And we all work at the Mokupapapa Discovery Center in Hilo
and we've been closed for two years
but we're at actually getting ready to reopen,
hopefully in May of this year,
as long as some turn doesn't happen with the pandemic
to set us back but that's the plan right now.
So, we hope if you do make it over to Hilo,
that you see our wonderful facility with panels in English
and the 'Ōlelo Hawai'i, the Hawaiian language,
our 3,500 gallon saltwater aquarium
and many the exhibits that feature
and talk about the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands
and why this area is so special.
But across the program,
we protect these underwater parks
and National Marine Sanctuary System for their biodiversity,
for the shelter and refuge they provide
for many marine animals,
also for their incredible cultural heritage.
We have some incredible sites in Papahānaumokuākea.
This is a picture from Mokumanamana,
which has the highest concentration of cultural sites
anywhere in Hawaiian Archipelago.
Also for their maritime heritage in Papahānaumokuākea,
we have quite a few whaling-era wrecks
from the 1800's and also other historic wrecks
and we protect these.
We conduct a lot of research on the status of the critters
that live in our sanctuaries, as well as the habitats.
We also monitor for changes over time due to climate change
and human impacts and other impacts.
And we know how well we're doing
with our management efforts.
In some cases, we actually restore reefs.
We're doing this huge project in the Florida Keys
in partnership with the State of Florida and other entities
to actually restore the reefs around Florida.
We conduct education, such as this webinar
and all also do classroom visits, mostly virtual right now
and build curriculum,
we'll talk a little bit about that more later
and of course,
outreach through one of our many volunteers for the program.
And if you're interested in volunteering,
please shoot us a chat
but you can volunteer at your local sanctuary site.
In some cases,
there are very opportunities for volunteering.
But one of the reasons why we protect this place
is that it's a place to renew your soul.
I think we experienced a lot of that during the pandemic,
the reevaluation of where we're at,
our relationship to work,
our relationship to family members and other things.
And these places are critical
for rebalancing ourselves and for connecting back to nature.
But today we are focusing and Beth,
you can turn your camera on as I introduce you.
We are going to have a talk by Dr. Beth Orcutt,
who's the Senior Research Scientist at Bigelow Laboratory
for Ocean Sciences.
And her talk is titled,
"Living between Rock and Hard Place,
Microbial Life in the Deep Sea
and Potential Impacts of Deep-sea Mining."
So, Dr. Orcutt has been a Senior Research Scientist
at the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences since 2012,
where she leads a team to study the weird microscopic life
that lives at the bottom of the ocean.
For her research, Dr. Orcutt uses robots, submarines,
seafloor scientific drilling and observatories
to explore and monitor life in the deep sea
and below the seafloor.
In addition to leading research teams,
Dr. Orcutt is the Director
of the new Crustal Ocean Biosphere Research Accelerator,
COBRA Network with a mission to accelerate research
on the structure, function, resilience
and ecosystem services of crustal ocean biosphere
to inform decision making.
Dr. Orcutt was awarded the Asahiko Taira Prize
for Scientific Research in 2019
from the American Geophysical Union,
the largest international scientific society
for earth science.
She received her PhD in Marine Sciences
from the University of Georgia, Athens.
And I'm going to turn the presentation over to Dr. Orcutt
and we can begin her talk.
-: Yeah.
Thank you so much, Andy, for that lovely introduction.
And thank you so much to the Marine Sanctuaries team
for supporting my joining you today.
Do I have sharing permission now?
Andy Collins: I have you on here twice,
so I just did the other one.
Maybe let me try to do- -: Okay.
Andy Collins: Do you see the invite there?
Do you see the invite now to the?
-: I do not.
Andy Collins: Okay, let me...
I think you joined twice is the issue.
How about now?
-: Nope, nothing changed on my side. (chuckles)
Sorry, Andy.
Andy Collins: Okay.
That's weird 'cause yeah, usually-
-: There we go, I see it now.
Andy Collins: Okay, okay, great.
-: Okay, so you can see my screen, I think
and I am going to go into presenter mode here.
I might need to do a little screen reshuffling.
Give me one moment, no that looks good.
Andy Collins: Yes, perfect.
-: Just need to drag it over here so I can see it.
Okay, wonderful.
So again, thank you all so much for inviting me
to be here with you today
and for everyone that's joined online,
I hope to entertain you a little bit today
with information about the wonderful deep blue sea.
For anybody that would like to connect with me
after this presentation,
feel free to connect with me on Twitter.
I use the handle @DeepMicrobe
and would love to hear from you.
So, to begin with, oops,
let's see if this is gonna work.
Here we go.
To begin with,
I want to start by telling you where I'm coming from
'cause we're in this virtual space together
joining from all over the world.
So, I'm joining you from my home office in Maine.
And I'd like to acknowledge that where I live and work
is in the ancestral homelands of the people of the Dawn Land
and Wabanaki Confederacy
and both where I am here at my home,
as well as where Bigelow is.
And that's where I work,
the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences.
In case you've never heard of our institution,
we're a nonprofit research organization
with a mission to study
the foundation of global ocean health
and use our discoveries to improve the future
for all life on the planet
and you can find out more about our organization
at bigelow.org.
And again, to start with,
just a lot of gratitude and thanks to the ancestral
and modern caretakers of where I work now
and where I've had the privilege to work
throughout my career.
To all the colleagues
who have shared their knowledge with me
and helped support the research journey
that I'll be talking with you about.
I couldn't do any of this without the crews, the ships
and the various assets that we use to explore the deep sea,
as well as the funders who support our work.
And much of what I will talk to you about today
is supported by the Ocean Exploration Trust,
the NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration
and the National Science Foundation.
And a special thank you to the co-trustees
of the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument
who have permitted some of the research
that I'll be talking with you about today.
So, I'd like to start with this cartoon view
where we think about the perspectives that we have
as humans on land,
who might look out to the blue ocean surrounding land
and think I'm stranded, it's just flat empty space
as far as the eye can see.
Ignoring or blind to all of the life and interesting things
below the sea surface.
Weird animals, shipwrecks,
the things that Andy was talking about at the introduction.
So, we may have this skewed view of our own planet.
And I like to also think about this
in relation to what we know about our planet.
We have better maps of other planets like Mars
than we do of our ocean seafloor.
So, our own planet that we live on,
we have less knowledge about
what it looks like at the surface.
So, a time for a little bit interaction here,
we're gonna put up a poll and ask you,
how much of the seafloor has been mapped
at high resolution?
Malia, do you have the ability to post that poll?
Malia Evans: I sure do.
Okay, friends.
So, you are going to have a choice here.
So, how much of the seafloor has been mapped
at high resolution and your choices are 10%, 20% or 80%.
So, go ahead and register your vote
and we'll see what an educated audience we have here today.
So, we'll give you, oh, we've got a lot of you voting.
We've got, oh, almost 80%, good job.
Okay, I'm gonna close out the poll in two
and one
and let's get you those results, Beth.
-: All right.
Malia Evans: Okay, so our audience, 82% have said 10%,
-: Uh-hum.
Malia Evans: 17% have said 20%
and 1% of our audience members say 80%.
So, what is the correct answer?
-: Thank you so much, Malia, for running the poll.
The correct answer is closer to 20%.
We only have good maps of about 20% of our seafloor.
I just wanna check
that the presentation is looking okay still.
Malia Evans: Yes.
-: Okay, great.
Yeah, so only 20% of our own seafloor
has been mapped at high resolution.
So, that means that there are features on our seafloor
that we only have rough sketches of what they look like,
which for me, is exciting as a deep sea explorer
because there's so much left to explore.
And in this image,
you're seeing some of the things
that I've been part of observing for the first time,
first time humans have been able to see
parts of the seafloor and this image
comes from Papahānaumokuākea
and I'll come back to it again in a little bit.
So, if we were to strip away the water,
what would we see on the seafloor?
And here's an exaggerated view of what we might see.
So, if you're looking into where the Atlantic Ocean would be
between North America and Africa and Europe,
you see this feature running through the seafloor,
that's an underwater mountain chain, a mid-ocean ridge.
It's a place where ocean plates
are pulling apart or being pulled apart.
And you have new ocean crust being created,
just like with volcanoes on land
but it's happening underwater.
You also have features like that
in the Eastern Pacific Ocean,
you can see a similar feature
that also goes into the Southern Ocean.
And then as you look towards the western part
of the Pacific,
you see that the seafloor gets like much more jagged
and strange looking, lots of underwater mountains,
deep sea trenches.
So, there's lots of habitats on the seafloor
but we don't really have a good idea of what's down there.
I've been extremely fortunate and privileged in my career
that I've had a chance to go to the bottom of the ocean
in a submarine.
This is a picture of the Alvin submarine,
operated by colleagues
at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
And going down to on the bottom ocean
feels like going to another planet.
You're seeing things that no one has ever seen before.
Maybe seeing new species, documenting underwater phenomenon
that maybe hasn't been observed before.
So, what does it look like?
Just showing you a picture, doesn't really do a great job.
So, I wanna show you a little bit of a video.
(inaudible)
So, this is some video put together
by colleagues at Ocean Exploration Trust and Nautilus Live.
And what you're seeing here
are underwater hydrothermal vents, were really hot water,
it's way hotter than what you would experience
in your own kitchen, is coming out of the seafloor.
And it looks black
because there's a bunch of chemicals in that water.
And as those chemicals
and hot water are interacting with cold sea water,
they precipitate out a bunch of metals
and things like that.
But you also find all these cool animals in these places,
animals that have come up with unique strategies
to live in these warm environments with these chemicals
and thrive in these ecosystems.
So, the deep sea is not a barren environment
but it's full of life and full of strange life.
So, this is just one type of habitat that we might see
on the seafloor.
I'm gonna move outta this video and come to this cartoon.
So, this is a one way
that you can maybe think about our seafloor,
if you focus in on the middle part of this cartoon.
On the far left,
you have some of those active have hydrothermal vents
that I was just showing you.
Places again, where the ocean plate is pulling apart.
You have new underwater mountains being formed
and hydrothermal activity.
As those plates move away from the ridge,
those underwater mountains get buried
are surrounded by sediment
and you have what are called seamounts,
underwater sea mountains.
These underwater mountains,
they may not have hydrothermal activity anymore
but there's still places
where rocks are exposed on the seafloor.
And then, as you move further to the right,
you can also be out in places
that are relatively flat seafloor
but they might still have rocks on them.
And those rocks actually formed
from a very different process.
They precipitate out of the water
over really long periods of time.
And in the bottom here,
I'm showing you zoom in images of those habitats
and that you might see different kinds of animals,
as well as microscopic life.
And we'll come back to that in a little bit
and we'll come back to this cartoon too.
So, let's think a little bit more
about some of the interesting life
that we see on the seafloor.
So again, here's another video
put together by colleagues from the Ocean Exploration Trust
and Nautilus Live.
And this is video
that came from Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument
on an expedition that took place in November of last year.
So, you're seeing the view of the underwater robot
from the other, there's two underwater robots.
You were seeing a picture of one from the other
and some of these fantastic deep sea corals
that we observed in this expedition.
Really zooming in close here,
so you can see some of the polyp features on these corals.
These are colonial organisms that live in the deep sea
and they can be quite massive, right?
So, that's probably three or four feet wide,
that coral that you're seeing here.
There's different types of corals down there
attached to these rocks.
You can also have deep sea sponges.
And so, this is the view that you might get
if you were to tune in to Nautilus Live
during some of our expeditions
and see what is being discovered
in the bottom of the ocean in Papahānaumokuākea.
And so, I don't wanna show this whole video
but if you would like to watch it on your own,
I think that Justin will put up some of the links
for these YouTube videos/
So, you can watch them on your own
or you can go to the YouTube page
for Ocean Exploration Trust and Nautilus Live
and find some of these
but just really beautiful animals down there
that really sparked the imagination
and make you think about how does life exist on this planet.
And when you think about how much seafloor there is
that could have these corals
and we're still discovering new species of corals,
it really changes
how you might think about how life functions on earth
and what the dominant organisms are.
So, let's think a little bit more about coral
and come to our second poll.
Malia, are you ready for the second poll?
Malia Evans: We sure are.
Alrighty.
So, here we go, your question is how old
are some of the oldest deep sea corals?
And your options are 4 years, 40 years or 4,000 years.
Go ahead and register your vote.
We have about half of you so far,
so we'll give you another five seconds
and we'll see what our audience members think.
Three.
Two
and one and I'm gonna close up that poll
and let's see what our results are.
Okay Beth,
so four years, no one voted on that answer.
40 years, there were 10% of our audience
and 4,000 years was overwhelmingly, 90% of our audience.
So, how did our audience do? -: Wow.
We have a really smart audience
that knows that corals can live
an incredibly long period of time.
There are corals that have been dated to,
actually over 4,000 years from some parts of the seafloor.
So again, in thinking about where life is in the ocean
and how life exists in the ocean
and how susceptible life might be to change, right?
We've got animals in the deep sea
that are older than some of the oldest trees on land.
So, some of the oldest organisms on earth
are probably in our oceans. (chuckles)
And that's really fun to think about for me.
Okay.
So, moving on a little bit
and let's come back to Papahānaumokuākea,
which Andy so wonderfully introduced and Malia,
thank you so much for the opening, really,
that was wonderful.
So, for anybody who joined late
or wants a reminder where in the ocean we're talking about,
the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument
is to the northwest of the Hawaiian Islands.
And this environment was recently visited
by the exploration vessel Nautilus,
which you're seeing a picture of in the top right,
which is operated by the Ocean Exploration Trust.
And Nautilus has been doing a series of expeditions
in this part of the world to understand life in the deep sea
in this place.
As we heard about this place is a marine protected area
but there's actually not a lot known
about it's deep sea environment.
And so, Ocean Exploration Trust
is helping to discover what's down there.
So, let's think a little bit about this place.
And I want to acknowledge
that there's probably people on the call
who live in this place and are much closer connected to this
than I am, as a guest coming from Maine to this place.
And so, one way that I think about this place
on our planet earth,
is centering us and the bottom right here,
the islands of Hawai'i that are very well known
but the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands,
moving out towards the northwest,
which you may know of with names like Nihoa
or the Midway Atoll, these are all other places
that are part of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.
And you see this line that surrounds this environment
and that is delineating the boundary
of the US Exclusive Economic Zone.
So, going about 200 nautical miles away
from the surficial land features in this part of the world.
But you can also see in this map,
some of those under water mountains
that are also in this place
and that are also either following the trajectory
of the Northwest Hawaiian Islands
and maybe formed over the Hawaiian hotspot long ago
or maybe they formed in other ways.
You can see that they cross over
in many different orientations.
So, this is one way to think about this place
but I also wanna acknowledge
that there's other ways to think about this place.
And so, another way to view this part of the earth
is through the lens of native Hawaiian indigenous culture
and thinking about the spirit realm, Pō
and the living realm, Ao, that's separated in space
by what is commonly known as the Topic of Cancer,
where the sun doesn't go any higher than that
in the horizon.
And Pō, this area around the Northwest Hawaiian Islands
is considered a sacred place.
And so, I try to remember of that
and think about that when I'm thinking about the research
that I'm doing in this space.
And then again,
coming back to this way of thinking
of this part of the earth as Andy introduced it to us,
is through the lens of the boundary
of this Marine National Monument, Papahānaumokuākea.
And I like this map too because it's also showing
some of the original traditional names
of some of these features
instead of the names that they're commonly referred to
in the English language.
So again, thinking about these places in multiple ways
and through multiple lenses.
For our other guests to this place,
who maybe have less familiarity with Papahānaumokuākea,
I'd like to give you a little background
in my understanding of this place.
And first, thinking about the name, Papahānaumokuākea
and what it represents
and that this name commemorates and honors the union
of two Hawaiian ancestors, Papahānaumoku
and Wākea, whose union gave rise
to the Hawaiian Archipelago,
the taro plant and the Hawaiian people
as understood in the creation story for Hawai'i.
And as I mentioned,
this place is considered a sacred area
from which some people believe that all life springs
into which spirits to return to after death.
And as a place for modern practitioners
of native Hawaiian culture,
to reconnect with their ancestors and gods.
And so, again,
trying to center that understanding of this place
as a guest in this place
is important to how we're trying to approach our research.
If you'd like to know more about this,
one place to start is the papahanaumokuakea.gov website,
which provides some great resources.
And then finally, another view of this place on the earth,
removed with all the labels of what we see on land
so that we can focus our attention to what is underwater.
And again, these underwater mountains.
And as we talked about at the beginning,
only 20% of our seafloor
has been mapped at high resolution.
So, there's probably a lot of these places
that have never been mapped, let alone explored before.
So, this was really something that sparked my imagination
and got me involved with the work that was done
in Papahānaumokuākea.
So, recently again, the exploration vessel Nautilus
did some research in this area back in November
on an expedition with the number, Nautilus Expedition 134
but with a name, Luʻuaeaahikiikapapakū
and I'll come back to that in a minute.
In just a few weeks,
we will be going out again to this area
but to a site that's a little bit further north
to visit another string of underwater mountains.
And talk to that about that in just a moment.
So, this expedition we went on in November,
Lu'u aea ahiki i ka papakū.
Again, a name to help us understand
what we're doing as part of this expedition.
And I'd like to thank
the Native Hawaiian Cultural Working Group
of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs,
who worked with Ocean Exploration Trust
to develop a series of names
for the work that's happening in this space
and using the name to represent
the actions that are happening as part of these expeditions
that we're diving and coming up
until we arrive at the seafloor
and that's what's conveyed in this name.
I'd also like to acknowledge,
that as part of our work in this place
with Ocean Exploration Trust,
that we also wanted to honor the observation of protocol
as part of native Hawaiian indigenous culture.
So, asking permission
and also releasing ourself from the work
and trying to center our understanding of what we're doing
in that mindset.
And so, again,
a thank you to the Native Hawaiian Cultural Working Group
and their advisors
for sharing advice with Ocean Exploration Trust
about how to work in this space with honor and respect.
So, on this expedition, what did we do?
The expedition that I was on in November,
we visited a series of seamounts in the southern part
of the Papahānaumokuākea National Monument.
And so, you can see some of those seamounts here
and you can see that some of them
are in higher definition than others.
That's representing the mapping data
that we had before we went out there.
And you can see in the right hand image,
a 3D view of what it might look like
to see the ROV going down to the seafloor
and exploring some of these seamounts.
So, each of these little whites strings that you see
is the track of the robot
that we sent down from the surface,
down to the side of the seamount,
we moved along part of the seamount
and then we came back up.
So, in this image,
you see five different dives that our robot did
and how much of these underwater mountains
we were able to explore on any given dive.
So again, thinking about that 20% has only been mapped
we've seen even far less
because it takes a while to get down there
and to move on the seafloor.
And this is what we saw.
So again, this is an image
that was collected on that November expedition,
where the ROV Hercules is seen here from of the ROV Argus
and you're seeing these white features on the seafloor.
Those are polyopogon sponges.
For context,
that little underwater robot
is about the size of a small SUV. (chuckles)
And so, imagine how big that sponge is
in relation to that robot.
We also saw, so again,
here's another image of some of those deep sea sponges,
as well as a variety of the deep sea corals that we found,
all kinds of fascinating animals.
I am not an animal scientist,
so I'm gonna switch gears a little bit here
and focus on what else is in this image.
Rocks.
I am really interested in what's happening in the rocks
in these images.
So, if we were to pick up a rock,
why is anybody interested in a rock? (chuckles)
What I see when I look at these rocks, is microscopic life.
And so, here's two different pictures.
One was collected on that recent expedition,
in the lower right hand corner
of one of the rocks that we picked up.
I'm also showing you a an older image of a rock
that was picked up from the seamount,
the underwater volcano (chuckles)
that is off the southeast coast of the Island of Hawai'i,
formally known as Lo'ihi Seamount.
And I like to use this image
because you can actually see the features of microbes
that are able to use iron and oxygen to get energy
and they precipitate rust as a byproduct of their reactions
and those form really interesting structures.
So, some of you might have gotten grossed out
when you heard me say microbes and that I study microbes
because we often associate those words, "Microbes,"
with things that make us sick, right?
So, what do I mean when I say microbes?
Well first, let's think of all the beneficial things
that microbes provide to us.
And I'd like to start with food, right?
So, microbes are really important
for making some of the delicious things that we like to eat,
like fermented vegetables,
yogurt, beer, microbes are really important, right?
That they have this ability to ferment,
which creates these lovely things for us to eat.
So, not all microbes are bad.
There's a lot of really great microbes.
And really the word, "Microbe,"
is really an operational definition.
It just means that something is really small
and you need a microscope to see it.
And it can actually represent a large variety of life.
So, bacteria is often used to mean microbes
but there's actually a whole domains of life
that are also microscopic, including microscopic fungi,
viruses, another domain of life called Archaea.
So, all of those are interesting to me
and I like thinking about them in how small they are
but how powerful they are and that's because some microbes
can perform amazing chemistry.
And I know this table is boring
but what I wanna convey here
is that there's a variety of different chemical reactions
that microbes can perform as compared to us, right?
We eat carbon and we breathe oxygen
to that burn that carbon.
Microbes can eat all kinds of carbon
and they can breathe all kinds of things besides oxygen.
Of course, they don't have lungs,
they're not really breathing but hopefully you get my point.
So, I like to think about what are the microbes doing
in the deep sea
and how is the chemistry that they're involved in
providing benefit to the ecosystems.
And so, using a framework
that was developed maybe 20 years ago or so
in thinking about ecosystems
and the services that those ecosystems provide to humans.
You can break services down into three different categories
or more, provisioning services, supporting services,
regulating services.
And some of the specific types of things
that microbes might do,
are listed in those.
So, I'm gonna give you some examples, right?
'Cause that may not make any sense.
And in the picture here,
I'm showing you one of those examples
where microbes can take carbon dioxide
out of the environment and convert it into organic matter.
So, that's a very similar process to photosynthesis, right?
Where plants are using energy from the sun
to convert carbon dioxide into plant material.
There's microbes that can do that
but they're not using sun energy,
they're using chemical energy.
And that process is called Primary Production.
So, here's another way to think of that,
microbes taking carbon dioxide,
turning it into organic carbon.
Maybe you've heard of this referred to as chemosynthesis.
So, that's one service that microbes might be providing.
They might be making food for other organisms to eat.
They might also be transforming a larger,
more complex organic carbon
into simpler carbon that other organisms can eat.
So, maybe they're breaking down proteins
and turning them into amino acids, for example,
that's another service that they may providing.
Microbes are also incredibly diverse
and have really crazy genomes.
And there is interest by some,
in exploring the genetic novelty
of some of these deep sea microbes
because some of the genes that they have
might lead to the production of novel antibiotics,
novel anti-cancer compounds,
things that we might use in cosmetics, et cetera,
and all those things are considered genetic resources.
So, those are just a couple examples
of types of services that microbes might provide
in the deep sea but what I wanna leave here with
is that for most of these,
we actually have very little data
to quantify the magnitude of these services.
And that's really important
because if we want to value them in some way
and understand what their worth to us
in this ecosystem service framework,
we need that kind of data.
And so, that's some of the work that my team does at Bigelow
and my collaborators, that I'm fortunate to work with.
We go out, we get these samples,
we look for the microbes on 'em
and the questions we're asking are, who are they?
And what's their diversity like?
What do they do?
What can they do?
And how fast are they doing those things?
How much are they doing those things?
How much are they fixing carbon?
Things like that.
And so, as part of these expeditions to Papahānaumokuākea,
we would see all these different seafloor environments
and the different types of rocks that were down there.
Here's one type of rock feature
that you can really see how these environments
are ancient volcanoes.
This is a like lava tube that you might see
if you were looking at a volcano on land.
So, we might collect rocks from an environment like this.
We might see other types of rocks
on the seafloor at these seamounts,
including both the original rocks of the seamount
that are crusty looking.
They've got a coating of alteration minerals on them
but you also see these little nodules on the seafloor.
These are called ferromanganese nodules
and they form precipitation (inaudible) on smaller features.
So, we would take all kinds of samples of these rocks
as part of the expedition.
And my job was to take sub-samples of these rocks
so that I could try to study the microbes.
So, here's a picture of me on the ship
trying to gently break one of these rocks (chuckles)
and then dividing it up for all the different experiments
that I wanna do.
So, bring these back to my lab and again,
the things that I'm trying to measure are things like,
how much food are these microbes making
through primary production?
What is their biodiversity and their genetic resources
and how are they involved in nutrient and metal cycling?
Those are some of the main questions that I'm trying to ask
with the research that I wanna do.
So, time for more audience participation,
here is our third poll question.
Malia, can you please put up the poll?
Malia Evans: I surely will.
Okay, folks.
So, how many microbes are in a teaspoon of deep seawater?
And your choices are 1 million, 1,000 or 100.
So, go ahead and register your answer.
And these are fascinating,
I didn't know much about microbes
but I am learning so much.
-: Great. Malia Evans: All right.
So, about 70...
Okay, we've got about 75% of you have voted.
I'm gonna close out the poll in three,
two
and one
and let's get those results for you, Beth.
All righty.
So, 78% chose 1 million.
21% chose 1,000.
And 2% chose 100.
So, what is the correct answer?
-: This is a little bit of a trick question.
So, it really depends on where in the deep sea you are,
a lot of deep seawater is probably closer to answer B,
of 1,000.
So, between 1 to 10,000,
it's a ballpark number
of how many different microbe cells
would be in deep seawater.
But if you're around a hydrothermal vent system,
where there's more energy,
maybe you're getting closer to a million.
So, there's not one right answer
but I wanted to leave you with the idea
that there's a lot of microbes
in even a small amount of material.
And so, if we, again,
if we wanna understand life in the deep sea,
we need to be thinking about the microbes
and their diversity and what they bring to these systems.
So, I wanna switch gears here a little bit
and talk about what might be happening in the future
of the deep sea.
So, coming back to this cartoon,
one of the things you might have noticed
on the right hand side
are these this little vessel in the top right bubble
and it's connection
to what's called a mining support vessel.
And I wanna talk to you a little bit
about this emerging potential industry of deep sea mining.
And here's a cartoon view of what this might look like.
You might have a vehicle that goes along the seafloor
and tries to collect some of these rock materials
and bring them up to the surface.
And this is very much a stylized view,
you're not seeing a sediment plume that might be generated.
You're not seeing a lot of animals.
This is a a prototype idea
of what a machine would look like.
And when I was a student
and I won't tell you how long ago that was
but it wasn't that long ago,
this idea was like sci-fi, this isn't gonna happen.
There's not really economic interest in doing this
but that situation has changed because these rocks
and you might ask yourself,
why does anybody want to vacuum rocks off the seafloor?
And that's because rocks contain metals.
And metals and other critical minerals
that are in concentrations
that make them potentially economically valuable.
And why is that?
And that's because we, as people on land,
need more and more of these metals and critical minerals
for some of the new technologies that we have embraced.
Solar panels, windmills,
all kinds of things that run on lithium ion batteries.
Cars, electric vehicles, right?
A lot of these things
that we need to get ourself off of fossil fuels,
they take a lot of metals.
And so, there's been increasing demand
for critical minerals.
And that's just one reason,
there's all kinds of technologies
and all kinds of material science
that use these rare metals, critical metals.
And so, it's driving an interest
and maybe even trying to get these metals from the seafloor.
This is a map, a stylized map,
of the three different types of metal resources,
if you want to give it that name,
that might be in a high enough concentration
to make them economically interesting.
So, there's three different types of, (inaudible) resources
I showed you some examples of that.
They're in shown blue, darker blue in this map,
the metals that precipitate from hydrothermal vent systems,
those are indicated with the yellow dots
and those string along those mid-ocean ridge features.
And then another type of environment
that is often associated with seamounts,
where the crusts that form on those rocks
over very long periods of time,
can precipitate out lots of metals and critical minerals.
Sometimes they're referred to as cobalt rich crusts.
And so, you can see that these resources
are not evenly distributed around the seafloor
and that some of them are thought
to maybe be in relatively high concentration
around Hawai'i and the Papahānaumokuākea
which would be just to the left of that area
that's circled with the dotted line
called Clarion Clipperton Zone.
And the area that's circled there,
is one of the areas that's received the most attention
in international waters for potential deep sea mining.
And so, this interest
in potentially mining these resources from the seafloor
has spurred quite a lot of research lately
to try to understand what are these ecosystems like?
What are these habitats that might be impacted
by deep sea mining?
And so, I'm showing you here a few images of animals
that been have documented,
associated with some of these deep sea resources,
mineral resources.
And one of the points to emphasize in this study
was that many of these animals were found either exclusively
or predominantly in association
with the hard substrate of those rocks.
They didn't seem to also be in the surrounding sediment.
And so, that's something important to consider,
is that if we were to remove these rocks,
we might remove the places for these animals to live on.
And there have been a few studies to actually try to examine
what happens if you were remove those rocks,
do the ecosystems recover?
And so, this is another study or similar study
where an environment had been experimentally mined
and then revisited 35 years later.
And so, in the top left hand corner,
you can see an image of that part of the seafloor
that hadn't been impacted but still those rocks.
And you can also see that big purple thing,
that's a sea cucumber,
there's other animals in this image, right?
So, that's what undisturbed seafloor looks like with rocks.
In the top right hand corner is undisturbed seafloor.
It doesn't necessarily have a lot of rocks
but you can see that there's evidence of animal behavior
because there's all little trails in the image.
And if you contrast that to the image on the bottom
and the area that had been experimentally dredged
to replicate removal of rocks and disturbance of sediment,
coming back a couple decades later,
there was no evidence of recovery of that environment.
And so, at least in human time scales,
the environments that might be disturbed
may stay that way for quite a long time,
unless there's some kind of intervention
to try to repopulate those areas.
And that is very experimental
and hasn't really been demonstrated yet.
So, this is just an example,
there's a lot we still need to know about the deep sea.
What are the services, how resilient is it to pertubation?
Are there strategies to monitor this?
And part, to do that,
we need more people engaged in this work
and conversing with stakeholders.
And so, as Andy mentioned,
I am the Director of a new research accelerator
that has a mission to try to accelerate research
of the deep sea and understand its resilience.
We've got a lot of different partners,
I'm not gonna go into those right now
or what COBRA really does
but please check out cobra.bigelow.org
if you're interested in learning more.
And I wanna end with, what can you do, right?
You can't necessarily go to the bottom of the ocean.
Maybe you can, depending on who you are
but we can all be part of thinking
about the impacts of deep sea mining.
And so, I'm not trying to say in this talk
that we should stop buying electric vehicles
and all that kind of stuff, that's not what I'm saying.
We do need to get off fossil fuels
to prevent an increase in climate change
but we can be smart as consumers about how we do this.
And so, one way we can do that
is to encourage battery recycling
and other recycling strategies to recapture metals
that we already have in our products,
as well as supporting better development of batteries.
And that's because there's a lot of metals in our landfills
and in our things.
And so, if we were better about how we design and we reuse,
we wouldn't need to go to other places
and get these metals and critical minerals.
If you have electronic components,
please don't throw them away.
There are ways to recycle them.
In Maine, grocery stores,
I've seen bins where you can drop in your old phone,
things like that.
That is really important
for a way to recapture some of these metals.
If you'd like to know more about these expeditions
and follow along, go to nautiluslive.org,
you can follow along with the upcoming expeditions.
We'll be departing on the...
Well, they're out right now.
And you can follow along with what they're doing
and tune in in April for the next expedition
to Papahānaumokuākea.
On this website, there are also lots of other resources.
And the one I wanna point out to you in the middle
is the chance to sign up for Ship-to-Shore engagement.
So, if you're in a classroom,
a teacher or a community group,
you can sign up to have scientists and educators
chat with you live from the ocean as we're exploring.
So, go to nautilusive.org/education to check that out.
I want to acknowledge and uplift that one of the things
that Ocean Exploration Trust is working on
in tandem with partners in the Cultural Working Group
and elsewhere is to really try to promote the engagement
of the deep sea with communities in Hawai'i,
in 'Ōlelo Hawai'i, in the native language.
And so, if that's something of interest you,
there are resources to connect with your classrooms.
And here's an example of on our expedition,
Kainalu Stewart connecting with a classroom.
There's also resources on the Nautilus Live website
about trying to build this engagement,
thinking about the terminology in the deep sea
and how we connect that to the Hawaiian language
and its importance for what we're doing.
So, there are resources there,
there's more at deep ocean education.
I realize I'm running short on time,
so I'm going through this quick., I apologize.
Lots of great videos, photos,
classroom activities that you can check out.
And then finally,
I'll end with a little promo
for an event happening here in Maine soon.
A colleague of mine is developing paintings
inspired by the deep sea
and they'll be presenting those coming up very soon.
And I will be giving a presentation about the deep sea
and its connection to art in May,
so please come check that out.
And with that, I will end
and I'd be happy to take any questions.
Thank you so much, mahalo for being here.
-: Yeah, mahalo Beth.
That was a fascinating, fascinating talk.
We do have time for maybe one or two questions
and there are a few that center around the same topic.
So, I'll ask one and then Justin will grab the next one
but how did you get started in this career
and why microbes?
-: Yeah, thank you for that.
When I was in school,
one of the subjects I found interesting was chemistry
and I went to school to study chemistry
and I was so lucky as a freshman to get invited,
to do some work in a marine chemistry lab.
Was my first exposure
to the idea that there's microbes in the environment
and microbes do all this cool chemistry
and I got to go to sea as part of my studies,
I was just like, you can do this as a job?
I am doing this is a job.
And so, it was really luck
that I got some of these research opportunities
and that's why I'm so excited
about trying to make opportunities for other students.
So, it was not something I thought I would do
as a young girl but it's what I'm doing now. (Andy chuckles)
-: Yeah, that's the best part.
Justin, we got one more question.
Justin Umholtz: Sure.
Well, I'll do the follow up to that,
how did you specifically get on board the Nautilus
to conduct research?
-: Yeah, thank you for that question.
Again, a little bit of luck.
I was invited to a meeting
to think about where should we prioritize,
trying to map the seafloor.
And through that, I realized that the Monument
wanted to work with Ocean Exploration Trust
to understand the animals and the ecosystem system
and other scientists
interested in the ages of the seamounts.
And so, I emailed them and said,
"Hey, I am interested in microbes.
Can I maybe partner with you?"
And was so thankful of the welcomingness
to engage and Ocean Exploration Trust is a unique model,
that their mission is to go explore
and they bring in scientists and educators
to help them with that mission
and so I was able to partner with that.
If anybody would like more information,
please go to nautiluslive.org.
And there are tabs at the top for if you're a scientist,
how to get involved.
If you're an educator, how to get involved.
If you're a member of the public, how to get involved.
And so, there's lots of different ways to do that.
-: Great, great.
Thank you.
Well, yeah, we're just about outta time,
I know that there are other questions
but we will be sending these to Beth to answer later.
So, thank you for your interaction
and thank you for a wonderful, wonderful talk.
I have a few closing slides here,
so I'm gonna take back presenter
and you could probably pop off your webcam
but thank you again, for joining us today.
That was really fascinating.
And let's see.
Okay, well, again, mahalo for joining us.
We have a full webinar series
from all the other different sites around the system
and including ours
but you can see some of the archives of these presentations,
got that link there.
This one will be up in a few weeks,
after we finish captioning it
and then we'll have it live on our website.
So, you can watch it again
or share it with whomever you like.
You also get a certificate
for an hour's worth of professional development
from this presentation
and we should have that to you by tomorrow.
So, for your professional development or teacher
or anything like that, it'd be useful to you.
Our next webinar is also focused on the deep sea.
We have Dr. Jeff Drazen
from the University of Hawai'i at Manoa.
And he's gonna be talking about, again,
about deep sea mining
and the connections between deep sea mining,
the Monuments and fisheries.
So, you should see a link to that pretty soon,
advertisement for that,
it's April 21st at 12:00 pm Hawai'i time.
So, third Thursday of April.
So, we hope you can join us for that.
Dr. Drazen's done some amazing work throughout Hawai'i
and the Pacific
and that should be a really fascinating talk.
And again, Dr Orcutt,
really explained about Nautilus Live
but they are live right now.
They're doing some mapping south of us,
south of the Hawaiian Islands
and heading towards the Pacific Remote Islands
Marine National Monument.
So, please check that out and definitely join us in April.
Justin's gonna be on that cruise,
Dr. Orcutt's gonna be on that cruise
and should be really fascinating to explore
the Lili'uokalani Seamounts in Papahānaumokuākea.
And again, if you're a teacher
or if you teach in 'Ōlelo Hawai'i, in Hawaiian,
you can join up for Ship-to-Shore,
free Ship-to-Shore segment with our scientist on board.
And we are conducting those in either English
or 'Ōlelo Hawai'i.
The first time,
well, we offered that in November for the first time
but we're the only ones really doing that.
So, it's really changing the game
for integrating native communities,
ancestral communities into these expeditions
in a way that's really meaningful for them.
So please, after this, fill out our survey,
this is how we know how we're doing
and how we justify these programs
and also lets us know if there's anything in particular
you want to hear about.
So, please do fill that out and again,
mahalo for joining us today, happy St. Patrick's Day,
be safe, be well.
And we look forward to seeing you next month and again,
extreme mahalo to Dr. Beth Orcutt
for a wonderful talk today.
Aloha.