Edith Widder: How we found the giant squidIn today’s talk, Widder shares how we now have filmed proof of the giant squid’s existence, thanks to a mission conducted by herself, Tsunemi Kubodera and Steve O’Shea and financed by the Japanese Broadcasting Corporation, NHK. While many previous missions failed to capture evidence of the giant squid, Widder and her fellow scientists used novel approaches — a camera platform that moves silently through the ocean, a bioluminescent electronic jellyfish to attract large sea creatures and a submersible able to take high definition footage from afar — to give us a glimpse of this mythical creature. In fact, they filmed it in action multiple times.

“How could something so big live in our ocean and remain unfilmed until now?” asks Widder on the TED2013 stage. “We’ve only explored about 5% of our ocean. There are great discoveries yet to be made down there — fantastic creatures representing millions of years of evolution and possibly bioactive compounds that could benefit us in ways we can’t even imagine. Yet, we’ve spent only a tiny fraction of the money on ocean exploration that we’ve spent on space exploration.“

To see the giant squid for yourself, and to watch footage of the crew as they caught their first glimpses of it, watch this talk — a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the Discovery Channel documentary, Monster Squid: The Giant Is Real. And here, more talks on incredible oceanic creatures:

• Mike deGruy: Hooked by an octopus
• Tierney Thys swims with the giant sunfish
• Edith Widder: The weird, wonderful world of bioluminscence
• David Gallo: Underwater astonishments
• Brian Skerry reveals ocean’s glory — and horror
• Jim Toomey: Learning from Sherman the shark
• Margaret Wertheim: the beautiful math of coral
• Edith Widder: Glowing life in an underwater world
• Asha de Vos: Why are blue whales so enormous?

Edith Widder: How we found the giant squidFascinated by oceanic cephalopods (like octopus and squid), deGruy and his team were the first to film two rarely seen creatures — the nautilus and the vampire squid — in their home oceans. So it’s only fitting that when he met Edith Widder aboard the Mission Blue Voyage in 2010, their talk quickly turned to squids. As Widder details in her new TED Talk, deGruy was the reason she found herself on a Japanese expedition to waters south of Tokyo, where she helped film the giant squid for the first time. She has dedicated this talk to him.

Below, watch Mike deGruy’s TED Talk from Mission Blue, as well as two more TEDx talks from this wonderful storyteller.

Mike deGruy: Hooked by an octopus
In this talk from Mission Blue, deGruy tells the moving story of his love for filming the oceans.

Mike deGruy: Lost in the Crowd: A Simple Biology Problem
In 2010, Mike spoke about his passion for the planet in a great talk from TEDxAmericanRiviera that stemmed from his work in the Gulf after the oil blowout.

Mike deGruy: The Evolution of a Spark
In this six-minute film from TEDxAmericanRiviera, meet 10 passionate young people from Santa Barbara who show us how they live big and go after their dreams. They inspire their peers, and even our adult generation, to take pause, wonder, remain curious and playful, and feel that contagious spark that comes from unbridled youth

Photos: Ryan Lash

Jason Pontin, editor and publisher of MIT Technology Review, wants us to think about why we can’t (or think we can’t) solve big problems anymore — what is our generation’s moon landing? Some people blame the culture of Silicon Valley, or VCs unwilling to invest in big problems, but Pontin doesn’t buy this excuse. The real problems are that humanity’s big challenges are hard, our political systems are unwilling, and too often we don’t really understand the real issue. Landing on the moon, it turns out, was relatively easy. “The solutions of our future will be harder won,” he says. A sobering start to the morning.

In a hilarious talk, David Pogue shares some basic tricks for using our technology — tricks that you might think everyone knows, but they don’t. For example, hit control (or command) and “+” to make the text in a web browser bigger. When writing, double-click a word to highlight just that word. (We’re asking him for the list.)

2006 TED Prize winner Larry Brilliant, the president and CEO of the Skoll Global Threats Fund, is here to tell us the good news about pandemics. Hurray! This is important; as he and his team helped to lay out in the movie Contagion, which they advised on, pandemic viruses are a huge, insidious threat to humanity. But with social media, participatory surveillance, better policy and better regional cooperation, global pandemics might become a thing of the past. “I think we can end pandemics in our lifetimes,” he says.

Ghislaine Maxwell gives a stirring call to care about the oceans — a resource that is held by law to be for the benefit of all, but in reality is being exploited by the few. She proposes six things we can do to help: 1) Enforce the Public Trust Doctrine; 2) Demand more marine public areas; 3) Adopt models that produce more revenue without as much waste; 4) Ban wasteful fishing practices; 5) Fish sustainably; and 6) Come together as a community around the seas. We are all citizens of the oceans, after all.

“Look to the person to your left; look to the person to your right,” instructs Scott Noggle, director of the New York Stem Cell Foundation Laboratory. ”One of you will get Alzheimer’s by the time you are 80.” This is not a cheery thought. “This is a catastrophe,” confirms Noggle. Yup. He’s here to tell us about his work, which involves taking living cells from cadavers of those who died from Alzheimer’s. He and his team have figured out how to re-create stem cell lines, and therefore brain tissue, to try and figure out how the disease starts and develops–with the end goal of creating more effective therapies to treat the disease. Astonishing.

Dan Miller, Managing Director of the Roda Group, is concerned with the growing food crisis facing the world — and is looking for solutions. He’s found one possibility: hydrogels, chemicals that can hold 100 times their weight in water. These can be put into the soil at the same time as seeds and fertilizer. Because of the way the gels retain water near the plants, this could increase yield while reducing water use. Some convincing tests on broccoli make his point.

Jessica Green is here to talk about the microbes that both define who we are and that exist in their own ecosystems on everything we touch. She’s been working with architects and biologists to take samples from rooms at the University of Oregon to get a deeper understanding of the microbial community within space. “Bathrooms are like a tropical rainforest,” she says. “Offices are like temperate grassland.” The implications for designers of this genre she calls “bio-informed design,” particularly for those thinking about designing air systems or working in health care, are huge.

Tony Tjan studies entrepreneurs, and tries to work out what makes them successful. He has found four attributes that each can contribute: Heart, Smarts, Guts and Luck. He says there is no one way to success, but a key is the self-awareness to understand which part is their own primary driver.

Harper Reed, CTO of Obama for America, is here to talk about how politics is changing, and in particular about what will be important in 2016. On his list: micro-targeting; micro-listening; micro-media buying. We’re going to get a lot more focused, in other words. Other challenges: voter suppression; voter contact; and potential cyberattack, Reed’s biggest fear. Did you know this: The presidential campaigns of both John McCain and Mitt Romney were hacked by a foreign entity. “We were safe, because we invested in security,” he says, but he doesn’t think it’ll be so easy next time around. The solution? Trust the experts. Get the right people in the right place, and let them do their jobs to the best of their ability.

TED Fellow Julie Freeman is an artist who thinks about how to represent data in art. She was asked to curate a set of artworks based on data for the Open Data Institute, and she found some remarkable examples, such as a vending machine that only dispenses snacks when there is news of an economic downturn.

David Peterson creates languages for a living, including the language Dothraki, which he developed for the television series Game of Thrones. He’s here to give us an insight into how he does it, and to take us on a whistlestop tour through the evolution of language. Why go to all the trouble? Fans, of course. Every single detail of a hit show like GoT is analyzed in depth; results are shared instantaneously, and they’ll realize quickly if a fake language is systematic or just gibberish. This respect for viewers might be the difference between a hit and a multimillion-dollar flop. That’s why it matters.

And finally, David Pogue, who turns out to be a former Broadway conductor as well as technology writer for the New York Times, returns to sing his new composition, ”The Twitter Song.” a show tune take on living in the 140-character age.

“It was such an amazing surprise! When I saw the first cut of the video, I was roaring with laughter. I hadn’t known they were going to make a puppet of me. So I had actually been pestering Tom and all the TED staff for the last few days about how I could get my hands on it. Tom was very convincing when he said it was in the middle of nowhere and it would be impossible to get it,” says de Vos. “I realize now in hindsight that they’ve been avoiding me a little bit for the last two days. It was a well-kept secret. I’m looking forward to using it when I talk to kids about the ocean, which I usually do wearing a mask and fins! Now she [the puppet] can do it.”

Read this interview where de Vos talks blue whales with National Geographic. And below, her TED-Ed lesson.

Photo: Karen Eng

Describe what you do and what you’re working on. And where are you on the science/art continuum?

Asha de Vos: My overall aim is to reduce blue whale deaths by ship strike in Sri Lankan waters. At the moment, I’m trying to figure out how the physical environment influences the biology in the area. Why do Sri Lankan blue whales hang around permanently around our shores, around one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world? Is this area really so important that they risk everything to spend so much time there? The questions are endless.

I am very much on the science side of things, because that’s how I’m wired. However, I do think being able to cross over (or being able to identify artists who you can work with) can really make getting the message out there a whole lot easier. Scientists are so driven to publishing and conversing — it’s the way our system works. But if we want to make a difference and save ANYTHING, we need to ensure that as many people as possible know what’s going on. For this, we need to be creative. I’m not a born artist, but having been brought up in a family full of them, I have always believed in the power of art.

Colleen Flanigan: I come from the art side of the coin — but with a very curious nature. As a kid, I’d catch lizards and caterpillars, raise bunnies, mice, rats, hamsters, dogs, and I loved to observe, care for, and yes, pet them. Plus I was raised by the ocean!

I’m tactile by nature, and respond to my strong emotions and thoughts through juxtaposing objects and materials. Through making, I grow and feel the sensation of all-encompassing connection. Looking over my past artwork, I see I was taking steps towards coral restoration and wildlife conservation early on. My intuition and visions translated the subject matter of life/death into labor-intensive mixed-media works. In the installation “Conquest,” I was addressing humanity’s drive to conquer and tap natural resources. My work had real fur and animal parts, narratives about remembrance and the short-sightedness of many of us humans.

Now I am working at the intersection of sculpture and reef ecosystem rehabilitation. I create Living Sea Sculptures — undersea sculptures that aim to regenerate coral habitat using the Biorock mineral accretion technique for growing coral reefs using metal and electricity — as a hands-on method for art, science, and technology to address regions with devastated reefs and endangered corals facing heating waters and crumbling exoskeletons.

I started my Senior TED Fellowship doing a dance, science, sculpture exhibit with a modern dance company.

Lots of great concepts and useable content came out of our retreat, including three aerial steel sculptures, which I now plan to use as the basis for another piece: they’ll serve as frameworks for kinetic “skins” that reveal a correlation between human health and coral health through data sensors in the context of symbiotic artificial respiration and life support. There are many mediums in this installation. It will be my debut into e-textiles and adding multiple layers of footage. In a way, it is data visualization in three dimensions, with the participants being the drivers to activate the simulation.

Montastraea cavernosa (Great star coral). Photo: Kristen Marhaver

Kristen Marhaver: I’m a coral reef biologist by day, and I’ve been an artist throughout my life. In my scientific work, I study how corals survive the earliest hours to months of their lives — from swimming larvae to little, squishy, milimeter-wide polyps settled on the reef that can’t move for the rest of their 50- to 500-year lives. What are coral larvae looking for and smelling when they arrive on a reef? And how can we encourage them to show up and hang out on coral reefs again?

This past year, I’ve been testing bacterial isolates one by one to identify those that change larval behavior in corals. So far I’ve found quite a few that increase the rate of settlement in a particular coral species. Success! The next steps are to test whether we can boost settlement and survivorship with these coral reef “perfumes,” to dig in deeper to find out where these bacteria are found on reefs, and to understand how the corals are actually detecting these bacteria.

The hidden artistic benefit of all of this is that I get to look at gorgeous and funny corals all day long. To me, science is a craft that rewards artistic skill — a carefully honed eye, patience, creative thinking. I love that. Artists and scientists live for the “A-ha” moments. I actually took art courses all through my PhD, even though it made me a slower scientist. The reward was that studying art also made me a better scientist, thanks to skills learned and having alternative ways to sort through ideas. Underwater photography is a great platform for carefully observing and understanding nature, but so are sculpture, painting, mixed media. And science and nature definitely come barreling through my art projects whether I want them to or not!

Colleen: That makes me think about the impulse that motivates both science and art — and I like to refer to the book Art & Physics: Parallel Visions in Space, Time & Light by Leonard Shlain to see some of the historical overlap. In the metal arts, one medium I feel very at home with, there is a lot of chemistry, math, and physics nestled unobtrusively when you are soldering, “patinaiing”, casting, annealing, electroforming, enameling. It really has science embodied in it. And one time while in school I received a small merit scholarship and some flyer quoted me: “I hope to discover a new metal surface treatment.” I totally forgot about that till cleaning out my life one day later, and realized then that my work with Biorock for corals and as a metal surface for experiments in art fit that curiosity. Wolf Hilbertz invented Biorock, but there is so much exploring to do! This year I made the first round of bit-o-Biorock pendants, and I am trying new shapes and making “a-ha” mistakes by putting “wrong” metals in. I have also been working with Biorock in a tank with living corals. This has helped me to get more intimate with the process so that I have a better understanding of how it works in the ocean too.

Bit-o-Biorock pendant. Photo: Clay Connally, Komang Astika

How do you each work with both disciplines for marine biology conservation outreach?

Asha: As far as conservation outreach goes I do public talks to anyone from age 3 upwards. I run a blog, participate in documentaries, and write articles for magazines of all kinds. I’ve also done a TED-ED, which should be out soon, and a TED-ED flip which should come out about the same time. That one was about fisheries and their unsustainability. It’s a really cool way of getting mini-stories with lots of information out there. Being paired with those awesome animators is a dream come true! All of this takes time but I believe its absolutely essential, an obligation even, for scientists to tell people what they are doing and spread the word. All of us is better than one of us, this is not just my quest – its all of ours.

Colleen: I want to “save the corals,” but obviously it’s not a lone task, and as an artist, I need to have creative ways to engage. So how to invite more people into the conversation and allow them an entry point into the action? One way is to offer a tactile experience: I’ve found that the simple experience of re-enacting Biorock restoration (on land) with steel sculptures and crocheted corals, jellies, and needle-felted fish has real impact on people when juxtaposed with video of live ocean projects and actual mineral accretion samples.

I also have a new Living Sea Sculpture blog with which I hope to bring more people into the conversation. I’d like to spend more time making habitats and protecting shores, yet as Asha says, it is crucial to give talks and communicate. The blog is intended to be a place where I talk about not only practical, realistic Living Sea Sculptures in progress, but a place where I can weave a stream of consciousness content around the topic and see if people from various locations, interests and backgrounds will begin to dialogue about corals and environmental concerns, studies, art, philosophy, and so on. I’d REALLY love if it can lead to some real-world coral refuges, since bringing teams together that are able to get those permits and build infrastructure on location is crucial to success of these projects. I imagine it can be a place for the Living Sea Sculpture diaspora to come together. I’ve also been working on a documentary with Mike Gerzevitz, a filmmaker, on a documentary about the Living Sea Sculpture project in Cancun.

I’m finding that people in both the sciences and arts want to participate. Many have come to me this year with creative ways to “message” about corals restoration, sea level rise, ocean action tracking. Julie Stein, biologist and executive director of Certified Wildlife Friendly, and her beau, Aaron Raitiere, wrote and produced a song, “Cancun Kiss,” dedicated to the Living Sea Sculpture project in Cancun. Proceeds will go towards the work. And Romain Vakilitabar, who is 20, just completed a Kickstarter campaign for his book about the cultural side of sea level rise, Matteo’s Day Off. It’s great when more people join in the most pressing stories of our contemporary planet; it shows that there’s a shift in awareness and ever-expanding active networks around the conservation issues.

Yesterday an article about coral reefs covered the work of lead scientists from Carnegie studying climatology and the all-critical carbon issue/decrease in pH. It inspired me to think more about how this exhibit might be a portal to work more closely with a university, museum, or scientist. What is the right venue for it? Since sensors and health, epidemics/pandemics, coral biology, respiration, and other scientific factors are motivating this installation work, I’m wondering who in the scientific community might want to partner and see this work completed.

Kristen, as you are studying the larval settlement, I’d love to see what you would discover with Biorock projects — if your coral larvae approach it willingly since it is made of seawater minerals, or how they feel about the low-volt current.

Kristen: I would love to know what my larvae do in proximity to Biorock surface! If Biorock increases coral settlement over ambient conditions, it is because it attracts more larvae? Or because the same number of larvae settle, but fewer die? We know that the faster they can grow early on, the better they compete and hold their ground.

In the world of conservation and outreach, I’ve dabbled in all different forms — public speaking, writing, photography, aquaristry. I love chances to show people marine creatures because — going back to what Asha said about awareness and what Colleen said about aesthetics — I think people really love to be fascinated, stunned by nature itself. No one wants to hear what percentage of the coral reef are dead. They want to learn something mind blowing, eye-opening, something that rattles around in their brain for the rest of the day. Coral larvae are pretty ideal mind-bogglers for show-and-tell purposes — little swimming blobs of fat that can see, smell, hear, and build car-sized structures of limestone if given enough time. Absurd! Sometimes I don’t even believe it. Anyway, doing good science communication, especially about conservation, requires an approach from the world of beauty, storytelling, creativity, wonder. Work like Colleen’s — making art about science and nature — is so important in this because it gives people an “in” to find their “A-ha” moment.

Not to kill the art buzz, but I’ve also been working lately on the data gathering for a big conservation project related to land rezoning. This is a “no-wonderment-allowed” operation. As much as public communication must be about beauty and wonder, boots-on-the-ground conservation is often about law, economics, policy, public health…. My professors at Scripps brilliantly made this central to their conservation teaching, even as they championed creativity and fearlessness in science communication.

But even in this world, aesthetics are helping the cause. Thanks to environmental economics, we now have ways to put dollar values on how much people value the aesthetics of environmental resources, like coral reefs. What economists call “contingent valuation” is one method they use to calculate the “existence value” of a resource — how much do we value the fact that corals reef are out there, looking awesome, staying healthy, being their amazing selves? Economists can survey, say, how much a person would pay to prevent 20% degradation to a coral reef. After adjustments for biases and tallying how many people feel the same way, they come up with a valuation of that reef. The numbers can be astounding. A study in 2011 in Hawaii of the full value of the coral reefs — from fishing, tourism, diving, and things like aesthetic value — concluded that Hawaiians value their reefs at $33 billion per year. Stunning! It may feel cold or contrived to bring money into an argument that should be about cultural and natural heritage, but the truth is there is no other way to factor “loss of the total awesomeness of these coral reefs” on the economic impact analysis for a development plan.

So as nature’s works of art, we can use the aesthetic value of ecosystems — the value we place in experiencing Mother Nature in all her glory, or even just knowing it exists — as a practical and extremely logical argument for conservation. We just have to make sure we don’t forget that such numbers are tools to estimate what is indescribably beautiful, rare, and often irreplaceable. I would hope that no one feels corals are worth protecting if they’re worth $500 a polyp but not $495.50. But if we know that the glittery, squishy, fluorescent dazzle of corals is worth a few bucks, that helps us argue on their behalf.

ABOVE: Asha de Vos at work. Photo: Sopaka Karunasundara

What are some of the challenges you face specific to where you work?

Asha: Conservation has never been very high on the agenda in Sri Lanka. We have very few marine protected areas, and none of them are well managed at all. It is really quite sad to see people walking on coral and chasing turtles. These days, things have gotten worse. Sri Lanka just came out of a three-decade war and now there is a whole lot of uncontrolled development going on. The drive is to bring in tourists (beyond carrying capacity) at any cost so hotels are being built, national parks are being rezoned to allow for development, and little thought is being given to the very resource that we depend on to bring these tourists in. Unfortunately conservation is not what brings in votes, tourism is.

Our education system makes no mention of conservation. Add to that the fact that there is immense jealousy and narrow mindedness in our field. You’d think that people who cared for the whales would want to work together to protect them. Unfortunately, that’s not how it works. Not everyone is keen to work together which means some stuff that happens is fragmented. I feel lucky though, I can hold my head high because I have been taught and am supported by some of the finest marine mammal scientists in the world. Sometimes I think they have more faith in me and my abilities than I do!

Because I’m from a country that is not dominant in my field, I was an outsider for the longest time. That meant I really had to prove myself for people to pay attention and become aware of my work. Another thing that makes life challenging is that I am female. I work in fishery harbours with fishermen. I carry heavy things, I am clearly of marriagable age but haven’t been married off. I break the stereotypes and I have to deal with many questions. But there is progress. Sri Lankans who go whale-watching have grown a conscience after watching documentaries where I discuss the problems, and are vocal about abuses. Awareness has certainly been created!

Kristen: It’s pretty stunning how self-protective the old guard in science can be. Perhaps there is even more ego in research areas with such cachet, like whales and coral reefs. No matter the struggle, I think it’s our obligation to figure out the systems we work in, make new opportunities for ourselves, and then help our junior colleagues — male and female — right along after us. It’s no good to make progress if we slam the door shut behind us!

It’s really interesting to hear about conservation in Sri Lanka — as in so many places it sounds like rampant development is once again the biggest threat to marine life. Just recently, a study came out reporting that development for economic growth has destroyed 80% of China’s coral reefs, pretty much silently. Again there is this awareness gap that has to be tackled before anything else can happen. You’ve made huge progress raising awareness of the whales in your county’s waters, and yet for all of our projects, I think we all feel we have so much distance left to cover. After my Fellows talk at TEDGlobal, quite a few people confessed that they had no idea corals were animals. I thought, okay no shame in that, but where were my scientific elders for the last 50 years? How did we fail to communicate this? I guess while countries were pushing for rapid development and economic growth, and sometimes fighting wars, scientists still thought communication and outreach were taboo, tarnishing to one’s objectivity. Surprise, that didn’t work out so well. Now our generation of scientists is playing a crazy game of communications catch-up.

Where I work on Curaçao, we just watched the pressure for coastal development ramp up FAST this past year, in the island’s most pristine areas! We are talking one of the absolute best reefs left in the Caribbean, the most intact terrestrial and marine ecosystem on Curaçao, and the only known habitat for some species. Given all of that, it qualifies for protection as a wetland of international importance under the Ramsar Convention. And Curaçao is obligated to protect it under certain parts of the Cartagena Convention. So far, the conservation of Oostpunt was mostly historical luck plus the fact that the landower defends the beaches from interlopers with a shotgun. Now Curaçao’s government can’t afford to pay the landowner compensation payments for not developing the land, so in October, the government’s Ministry of Traffic, Transportation, and Urban Planning proposed a rezoning plan that would turn this entire area into 19,000 houses, 2,400 hotel rooms, two or three marinas, three golf courses, 55km of roadways, a wind farm, agricultural areas, and all the required utilities and infrastructure. Just to settle their debt.

Culturally, it would be like paving Yosemite National Park, or turning the Sistine Chapel into a Wal-Mart. You might make the same amount of money from a Wal-Mart in place of the Sistine Chapel, but is that what you want to be known for? I guess this brings us full circle. If a culture is not willing to destroy its famous works of art for economic development, why are we so relaxed about destroying Mother Nature’s famous works of art? I mean, she worked WAY harder than we did on her installation pieces! Who do we think we are?

Colleen: There’s no real protection for famous art either. Think of all the destroyed religious architecture, icons, and art in wars, riots and looting, but in those cases, the world seems to acknowledge that something terrible has happened because art has some recognized innate value, and marine wildlife is still struggling for that. The world may soon lose these irreplaceable Buddhist icons to copper mines and economic “growth.” As Asha and you both illustrate, if war and short-term development gains are at the fore, it takes persistence and ingenuity to get marine conservation into the equation.

The conflict between old and new, protection and progress are such muddy territory. This brings me back to the issue of intimate engagement with the ocean, and the new fusions of artists and scientists in this field. The Elliott Bay Seawall Project in Seattle is currently inviting artists into the design team that will be made up of of biologists, engineers, designers, architects, builders, and government. In the call for public artists, it requested previous experience with marine science and natural history. They want the artists to help restore the marine habitat and salmon migratory route as well as create a waterfront site that attracts people. Those are projects I want to be a part of!

So do you think we are witnessing a turning point where art and science become increasingly interdependent in promoting conservation?

Colleen: We are clearly moving into the era where art consciously can move environmental health along. Art has ALWAYS subconsciously and unconsciously been a leader in forward progress and human development, yet I think the chapter of climate change and sea-level rise is going to bring more and more artists actively into the fold.

Kristen: Slowly an appreciation of the arts does seem to be sneaking into science — the “Dance Your PhD contest” sponsored by AAAS is an example. And there is a campaign now to include art training in the STEM fields (Science Technology Engineering and Math), in other words, “Teach STEAM not STEM“. They have a great headline on their website right now: “Half a mind is a terrible thing to waste!” I hope in the future we see more people approach the artist-scientist continuum as professional artists in pursuit of serious projects in biology — like Colleen. I think she has applied for more underwater permits and raised more kilograms of coral than I have!

Asha: We have the responsibility of taking people to the ocean through every means available to us. You would not believe how many Sri Lankans have written to me confessing to not knowing that we had whales in our waters. There is no shame in that at all, but playing catch-up is hard. Unfortunately, we as humans value things in weird ways. The tangible is always easier to sell than the intangible. An ancient site gets trashed, people make a fuss because it’s tangible. But the marine environment has been so far from people’s consciences for so long that the connection with it is lacking. THIS is what we have to create through our work — a connection with the marine environment so that people feel the sadness of destruction, making what we are losing real. It’s not a choice, but an obligation and responsibility.

“An extended illness had changed the way I could access the world … I’d seen my life slip away and become restricted,” explains Austin in today’s talk, which was given at TEDxWomen in December. “When I started using the wheelchair 16 years ago, it was a tremendous new freedom … I could whiz around and feel the wind in my face again. Just being out on the street was exhilarating.”

And yet, Austin noticed that people started treating her very differently.

“It was as if they couldn’t see me anymore, as if an invisibility cloak had descended,” says Austin. “They seemed to see me in terms of their assumptions of what it must be like to be in a wheelchair. When I asked people their associations with the wheelchair, they used words like ‘limitation,’ ‘fear,’ ‘pity’ and ‘restriction.’ … I knew that I needed to make my own stories about this experience.”

In today’s jaw-dropping talk, Austin explores how the divide between the way she sees herself and the way others see her inspires her art, which challenges the traditional notion of disability and shares the joy she feels experiencing the world from her chair.

One of Austin’s first series in this vein was called “Traces from a Wheelchair,” created in 2009. For the work, Austin used paint on the wheels of her chair to create glorious loops — both on enormous sheets of paper and on the grass outside the gallery showing the exhibit.

“The wheelchair became an object to paint and play with,” explains Austin. “It was exciting to see the interested and surprised responses from people. It seemed to open up new perspectives.”

Austin went on to found Freewheeling, an initiative to expand the bounds of Disability Arts with fellow creators Jack Morris and Shirley Phillips. The group soon staged the three-part installation “Freewheeling: An Absent Presence or a Present Absence,” also in 2009, bringing the same concept to the streets of the town of Plymouth.

While many loved the installation, though, some locals saw the exhibit as graffiti — leading the BBC to cover the exhibit. “Some people may see it as vandalism,” Austin says defending her work. “But it’s the thought and concept that makes it artwork.”

Next, Austin had a crazy idea: to use her wheelchair to explore underwater. In 2010, with a grant from the Arts Council England’s Impact program, she began building an underwater wheelchair for a work she called “Testing the Water.”

“I realized that scuba gear extends your range of activity in just the same way that a wheelchair does,” explains Austin in today’s talk. “But the associations attached to scuba gear are ones of excitement and adventure — completely different to people’s responses to the wheelchair. So I thought, ‘I wonder what will happen if I put the two together?’”

“When we started talking to people about it, engineers were saying it wouldn’t work, the wheelchair would go into a spin, it was not designed to go through water — but I was sure it would,” Austin told the BBC of the chair. “If you just put a thruster under the chair all the thrust is below the center of gravity so you rotate. It was certainly much more acrobatic than I anticipated.”

Austin had hugely ambitious plans for her underwater wheelchair. She applied to be part of the Cultural Olympiad, the art extravaganza surrounding the 2012 London Olympic and Paralympic Games. The plan: to take the underwater wheelchair to the ocean.

The incredible work above, which Austin called “Creating the Spectacle,” not only required months of intense physical training — it also necessitated a creative and technical team. Trish Wheatley, co-producer, shares in a blog post that the crew headed to Egypt to film Austin exploring the Red Sea in her wheelchair. The location gave the tropical backdrop and marine life that make this video so magical. And, because the water was warmer, Austin could dress in everyday clothing. The video took six days of filming, Austin going under for multiple 20-minute dives.

“Creating the Spectacle” was performed on August 29. For it, a swimming pool was transformed into an unconventional stage, with 23 scuba-equipped spectators (several of them disabled) going underwater to watch Austin dive in live. The performance was synthesized with the footage of Austin in the Red Sea and with the video above, called “Finding the Flame,” which shows Austin discovering the Paralympic torch in a cave

We can’t wait to see where Austin’s wheelchair will take her next. We place bets on: the sky.

You learn something new every day. This is especially true if you watch TED-Ed lessons, which use animation to bring to life topics as varied as “Insults by Shakespeare” and “Pizza Physics.” As a holiday gift, we’re bringing you a few of the TED-Ed’s team’s favorite talks of the year. Here, a second look at the lesson How does math guide our ships at sea? from George Christoph.

This video is a triple threat! A fascinating lesson (math with a twist), gorgeous animation and music that really taps into your pathos. Combined, the three aspects make for a truly inspiring video. Watch, and you will want to go out on an adventure!

A few more year-end TED-Ed picks:

Poet Jane Hirshfield talks through The Art of the Metaphor >>

Trevor Maber helps us Rethink thinking >>

Bill Nye sends a sundial to Mars >>

Browse all the great video lessons on TED-Ed >>

Seafood is delicious, not to mention extremely healthy. But from where TED Book author Maria Finn sits, there are even more benefits to eating fish and shellfish — because they offer anyone the opportunity to lessen their impact on global systems. An advocate of “whole food” cooking, Finn knows that nearly every part of a fish can be delectable. In The Whole Fish: How Adventurous Eating of Seafood Can Make You Healthier, Sexier, and Help Save the Oceans, Maria Finn shares seafood recipes from top chefs, from fish head soup to skins broiled into “fish bacon.” Even fish bones can be consumed — if they are ground into “salt.”

Below, the TED Blog reached out to Finn with several questions, to hopefully whet your seafood appetite.

What is important about the whole fish/whole food movement?

Most people love the ocean and we are coming to the realization that we have done a lot of damage to it, through overfishing, pollution, plastics, global warming and in many other ways. We are reaching a critical point and really need to turn things around before the destruction is irreversible. Right now people in the United States are really shifting how they approach food. We have seen a rapid rise in farmer’s markets throughout the country. More and more, people want to connect with their farmers and fishermen, support their local communities and have fresh, local food that has been sustainably produced. People are also becoming more aware of how what we eat impacts our overall health. Eating the whole fish addresses all of this: there are ways to eat seafood that don’t hurt the ocean and that support our coastal communities. And we are then also eating in a way that is healthy and economical.

Eating the whole fish is also a way to show respect to the animals we eat. We are becoming a nation of foodies. Food blogs, pop up supper clubs, food carts and many new additions to our culinary landscape make eating in creative ways a fun and social adventure, so I think this concept taps into the foodie movement as well as the sustainability movement.

Why did you write this book now?

I have been reading and reporting on recently published studies in regards to sustainable seafood, particularly salmon and forage fish. As well, I’ve been spotting trends in restaurants with chefs who are making fish collars and sardines delicious. I really enjoy pulling environmental and lifestyle elements together in writing projects. While many people in the United States might not be using fish heads and bones right now, they’ve been to France, or Thailand, where this is normal. Or their grandparents did it and I believe they will be open to it. This book explains why we should change our eating habits when it comes to seafood by taking fewer fish and using more parts of them. The recipes show readers how they can do this at home.

You were a female fisherwoman in Alaska. How did that shape the content and structure of the book?

I originally went to Alaska to earn money so that I could travel around the world. I never earned much money, but had the adventure of a lifetime.

I was immersed in true wilderness—working out on the ocean or in remote field camps was like visiting another place in time. The abundant animals, the awe-inspiring landscape, and the generosity of nature forever changed how I view the world. I narrated some of these first person stories in the book as I hope that they relate to people what a marvel the ocean is and how amazing these fish really are. I also lived in a fishing town and came to know many fishermen and women throughout Alaska during these years. These men and women who go out and catch fish are tough, hard working, and a rare breed. Knowing them motivates me to try and help preserve their ways of life. I hope this book encourages people to support small, family owned fishing operations who are very invested in maintaining sustainable fisheries, but often lose out to large factory trawlers or draggers and industrial salmon farms. These industrial fisheries are often doing great damage to our ocean and putting the small boats out of business.

Many of us like sushi, but you caution that the practices used in getting that food to our plate have created dangers to the fish population. What are they?

Some of the most popular dishes in sushi restaurants are unsustainable choices. These include farmed salmon, farmed shrimp, farmed hamachi tuna, and ranched eel, as well as bluefin tuna, red snapper and king crab. Oftentimes consumers see the term “sushi grade” or “sashimi grade” and assume it means fresh or high quality, but in actuality, there is no official certification for this. It’s just a marketing term and has no real meaning. As well, tuna may start off a deep red color, but as it ages, it will start to brown. To stop this, it is sprayed with carbon monoxide, which gives it that bright red glow, so it can be old and the consumer has no idea. As well, most fish found in sushi restaurants have been flown in from Japan, so it’s really not that fresh, and there’s no transparency as to how and where it was caught. Fortunately, there are some sustainable sushi restaurants in the United States. These are listed in The Whole Fish, and include places like Tataki in San Francisco and Miya’s Sushi in New Haven. They are leading the way for a new paradigm in sushi — they are serving local, fresh fish that is 100% sustainable.

This book has a number of great (and bizarre) recipes that use the whole fish. What were some of your unexpected favorites and why?

I love the salmon salt — it’s so simple and I had never heard of this before. Grind up salmon bones, mix with salt, and sprinkle on your food for added calcium and omega 3 fatty acids. I also really like frying the skin like “salmon bacon.” The recipe in the book directs people to put it over the salmon salad, but I use it for a second meal, with rice or ramen noodles. It’s easy, delicious and adds a whole new use to a part that’s normally throw away.

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The Whole Fish is part of the TED Books series. It is available for the Kindle and Nook, as well as through iTunes. Or download the TED Books app.

The tsunami that struck eastern Japan in 2011 did unthinkable damage, killing more than 15,000 people and leveling more than 129,000 buildings. The damage was so severe that debris from it has been washing up on the West Coast of the United States — more than a thousand miles away — ever since. Japanese officials estimate 1.5 tons of debris is still afloat from the disaster, and that the majority of it will be making landfall this October.

This fascinating article in the New York Times takes a look at the crew of the Sea Dragon, a ship manned by volunteers who are scanning the waters for items set out to sea in the tsunami. Some of their recent finds: a half of a skiff marked with Japanese characters, a Bridgestone tire made in Japan, buckets, crates, fishing buoys, bottles and more. According to the article, the ship is part of a large-scale volunteer effort to collect the debris. While some simply want the flotsam cleaned from the water, others are looking at the pieces of debris as archaeological artifacts, even going as far as to track down the owners of the items.

The latter mission would certainly appeal to photo retoucher Becci Manson, who gave the recent TEDTalk, “(Re)touching lives through photos.” In her talk, Manson recalled setting up a network to retrieve and restore photographs lost in the tsunami. “I realized that these photos were such a huge part of the personal loss these people felt,” Becci explains. “As they had run from the wave and for their lives, absolutely everything had to be left behind.” (See some of the photos Manson’s team restored, and what the revitalized images meant to their owners, in this TED Blog post.)

Meanwhile, Captain Charles Moore would no doubt offer a high five to volunteers seeking to skim debris from the ocean. Moore, the founder of the Algalita Marine Research Institute, which co-sponsored the Sea Dragon expedition, gave a talk on the “seas of plastic” at TED2009. In it, he described one of the biggest problems with living in a throwaway culture — the plastic waste that floats through our waterways and out to sea, where it keeps on accumulating. In his talk, Charles described the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch,” an endless wasteland of floating plastic, which even inspired its own TEDx event, TEDxGreatPacificGarbagePatch.

The Sea Dragon was also co-sponsored by the 5 Gyres Institute. Check out their amazing and well-sourced blog post about the debris being found from the Japanese tsunami, and how it is overwhelmingly plastic.

A Hawaiian monk seal lounges on the beach. Credit: Kanaka Menehune, Flickr

TED Prize winner Sylvia Earle inspired all of us to care deeply about the ocean and to think deeply about how we can protect it. But the ocean is vast and the challenges are numerous. Where do we begin to understand the complex beauty that is the ocean? One great place to start: The new mission-blue.org. It’s a home for ocean news and initiatives, a place to elevate public awareness about critical ocean issues and inspire support for the people, organizations and initiatives making a difference in the field.

Stories range from history to entertainment to research. The stories are written not only to raise concern and alarm but to help concerned citizens understand what’s happening in response.

Just yesterday, Mission Blue posted a solution-oriented story about monk seals, one of the most critically endangered marine mammals in the world. From the story:

In Hawaii, scientists have adopted a hands-on approach. Sharks that have developed behaviors for attacking pups in nearshore waters are targeted for removal. Seals found entangled in debris are freed, while juveniles lost from their mothers are reunited. Overly aggressive males responsible for the deaths of other seals have been removed from the population, with one recently transported to a research facility in California where he will participate in non-invasive research that will enable scientists to study the animal’s metabolism and other basic biological processes …

Perhaps the most novel method proposed, however, is temporary translocation. Though the technique hasn’t been tested yet, NOAA researchers plan on moving newly weaned female pups — the more important sex for population recovery — from the remote Northwestern Hawaiian Islands where they have been doing poorly to the main Hawaiian Islands where young seals seem to have a better survival rate. The seals that are translocated will be closely monitored until they’re about 3 years old. after which they will be returned to the place of their birth. Walters said that the experiment would start modestly, with perhaps 10 or fewer seals initially translocated until it can be determined that this method is viable.

Researchers in the Mediterranean are adopting a more human-focused strategy. The World Wildlife Fund in Greece and other nongovernmental organizations are working to raise awareness in the area about monk seals and other sea issues. They’re also pushing the Greek authorities to make seal protection more of a priority by enforcing a firearms ban, for example.”

The site is updated daily with fresh ocean news. Explore http://mission-blue.org/

– Casson Rosenblatt