Whenever Fabien Cousteau opened the door of his home during June, he met the neighbors: sharks and grouper. That’s because Cousteau was living underwater for 31 days, in a deep sea lab off the coast of Florida. At TEDGlobal 2014 this morning, Cousteau spoke about Mission 31, during which he and his team conducted experiments that will […]
“Thousands have lived without love; none without water,” said Sylvia Earle as she stood on the TED stage five years ago, accepting the 2009 TED Prize. Wearing a blue blazer and an aura of resolve, Earle quoted this verse from poet W.H. Auden as she laid out a bold wish for the world: that we […]
How colorful is the ocean floor? And what exactly do you do when you run out of air underwater? Yesterday, we invited all of you to talk with oceanographer Sylvia Earle about her adventures as a deep sea diver. Earle is a TED Prize winner and the subject of a new documentary, Mission Blue, which […]
Fisher Stevens produced The Cove, the 2009 Oscar-winning documentary about dubious Japanese dolphin-hunting practices, and his latest film takes him back into familiar waters. Stevens co-directed the newly-released doc Mission Blue, spending the last four years trekking around the world—from the Galapagos Islands to the Chesapeake Bay to the Great Barrier Reef—with unstoppable oceanographer Sylvia […]
Sylvia Earle is a fearless 78-year-old woman. In the new documentary Mission Blue, we watch her dive with sharks in the deep blue sea and fearlessly dodge fishing nets as she swims through the middle of a major fishing operation. The film offers a bold new view of the famed oceanographer whose relentless pursuit of […]
Sylvia Earle is always on a mission. She launched the ocean conservation campaign Mission Blue in 2010 after winning the TED Prize, establishing protected marine “hope spots” around the world. And last weekend, Earle dove 63 feet beneath the ocean’s surface to visit Fabien Cousteau, the grandson of legendary underwater explorer Jacques Cousteau, on his Mission 31. Earle, […]
By Asha de Vos, with photos by Jon Lowenstein Monterey Bay is a marine biologist’s dream. It is arguably one of the most dynamic coastlines in the world and, for someone from the tropics like me, it opens up a whole new world for learning and adventure. In recent months, Monterey Bay — located along […]
Diana Nyad swam 110 miles from Cuba to Florida without a shark cage, a journey that took her just under 53 hours last September. In today’s talk, Nyad gives a vivid account of what it was like to be out in the water, making her fifth attempt at this swim — one she first tried […]
To explore is human. It’s as basic as cooking and bathing, and as essential as song and dance. It’s not something that needs a lengthy explanation — whether you’re 3 or 103, it’s the tingly feeling you get in the bottom of your stomach when you venture into unknown terrain. Across ages and cultures, there […]
This week, over at the TEDx blog, we got really into oceans and all the fascinating creatures that hang out there. (Especially sea turtles. We’re obsessed.) We explored how baby sea turtles survive the great wide world, how dolphins blow bubble rings for underwater play, and how divers feel swimming with some of the world’s […]
Extreme swimmer Diana Nyad has completed her longest swim yet … at the age of 64. Over the weekend, Nyad attempted the swim from Havana, Cuba, to the coast of Florida for the fifth time, and this time finished the ambitious 110-mile swim. The swim took Nyad a total of 53 hours — and made […]
“Imagine yourself standing on a beach, looking out at the ocean — waves crashing against the shore, blue as far as your eyes can see.” This is the opening line of Scott Gass’ TED-Ed lesson, “How big is the ocean?” But the animated video gives you much more to think about than sand between your […]
[ted id=1499] In January of 2013, TED Fellow Cesar Harada, inventor of an open-source sailing robot, set sail on a four-month, 14-country round-the-world journey with Unreasonable at Sea, a global innovation accelerator on board a boat. Here, he tells us about how this extraordinary voyage helped crystallize his vision for how his open source sailing robot […]
Underwater, there’s a world full of the bioluminescent and colorfully firework-like creatures. This is what David Gallo showed us in his classic talk from TED2007, “Underwater astonsihments.” The most interesting part: We have only explored about 3% of the world’s oceans, Gallo explains and, in this talk, he shares some views of that fascinating fraction […]
Imagine a squid so big that, when sprawled out, it is the size of a two-story house. Edith Widder has now seen this enormous ocean creature, once the stuff of nautical legend, six times. In today’s talk, Widder shares how we now have filmed proof of the giant squid’s existence, thanks to a mission conducted […]
On February 4, 2012, ocean filmmaker and educator Mike deGruy was killed in a helicopter crash while on assignment in Australia, along with pilot and filmmaker Andrew Wright. DeGruy (pronounced “degree”) was an Emmy-winning science documentarian and a mainstay of Shark Week; he also worked on James Cameron documentaries about the Titanic and Bismarck and […]