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00:00:41
(Karen) Margaret, thank you for welcoming us on this fantastic research vessel, the Melville. My pleasure. I want to ask you about something I heard about. You recently were in Paris last year and took a team of students and researchers from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. How was the conference and what were you trying to accomplish?
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I wasn't in Paris for shopping. I was there for the Conference of the Parties, COP 21. This is the place where the climate negotiations take place. We have been the head of the UC delegation for as long as we've been parties to the conference, and we are involved with this
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because of our long-term research on climate. So Scripps Institution of Oceanography has been one of the premier institutions in detecting climate change and being able to attribute climate change to the various causes, how much are we responsible for, how much is happening as a result of natural change,
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and also we've been very involved in modeling climate to be able tell what will happen as a result of increasing greenhouse gases. It's only natural that we would go. We really had three focuses of attention for this meeting. The first was that although the oceans are 70% of the globe,
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the oceans were not even included in the climate negotiations. Yes. I hope everyone can see your eyes. Startling. Yes. And that was really because the primary focus had been on what was happening on land and what the impacts were on land. But over the 21 years that we've been negotiating,
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we've found profound impacts on the ocean. The ocean is becoming warmer. We have five decades of data that shows how much warmer the ocean is. It's actually taking up 90% of the heat. The second is that many people have heard of ocean acidification, the ocean becoming slightly more acidic.
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That's also a result of the CO2. CO2 is dissolving in the oceans. And then the third thing is that, as a result of both warming and the ocean acidification and other changes, the oxygen content in the mid-waters of the ocean is decreasing. So as we say, the ocean is becoming hot,
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more sour, and breathless. We wanted to call attention to this, the fact that oceans have to be included. I'm pleased to say that they are. We were successful with others who were focused on this. We also were focused on other parts of the climate system. For example, although we talk a lot about CO2, there are lots of other gases that contribute to warming.
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Some of them are methane, even all the particulate soot that comes from burning forests and coal and so forth contributes to that. So we also wanted to remind everybody to be conscious of those factors as well as CO2. Is Scripps and the United States really pushing then this awareness
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and the need to educate people about the environmental health of our oceans? Absolutely, and this is a big focus of the U.S. role in the negotiations and, of course, of Scripps Oceanography's role. It must have been an amazing experience for students that went to this conference in Paris. Yes, and all of the graduate students
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had a chance to speak in one of the side sessions. We also had an informational booth to tell people about what was happening and to provide more information. The students helped us man the booth. So I want to know about how people find their passions in life. Clearly, you have a passion for ocean science and environmental health.
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I know you went to the University of Illinois and did undergraduate work in geology. That's right. So tell me, from geology, when did you get interested about the oceans? It really was through geology. I never lived near the ocean, and I'd only seen the ocean once when I graduated from college.
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But many of the rocks that I studied formed in the oceans, and as long as they were talking about rocks that formed on beaches or rivers or close to land, that they had really great models of what was happening and when they said things that made sense. When they started talking about rocks from the deep ocean,
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there was a lot of hand waving, and it seemed that what I should do is study oceanography, then I'd bring all that knowledge back to geology. But although I'm a geological oceanographer and study geologic processes in the ocean, I never went back to land geology. I heard the name paleo-- paleontology and oceanography blended.
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Paleoceanography, the study of the oceans in the past and how they evolved, what was happening in them. And that also led me to paleoclimate, what was happening in the climate and how that affected the ocean. That's how I got interested in climate change. And your PHD was done in Rhode Island, correct? Did you spend time on a ship like this for your research?
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Absolutely. What was that like? I have to ask. How many other women were in the field with you studying oceanography or marine science in graduate school, and how many other women were on a research vessel taking measurements of the ocean? I was very fortunate. I started my graduate work at Oregon State University,
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and my first cruise was two months after I arrived. There were three women on the cruise. We were all graduate students. There weren't any female faculty in geological oceanography. So I really had companions, female companions on the ships. And my second cruise was the next summer,
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and that was in the Atlantic Ocean. There were other female graduate students, most notably Kathy Sullivan, who is now the administrator of NOAA. That was her first oceanographic cruise, my second. And we still are very close friends. It often happens, the people you are graduate students with become your friends and colleagues for life.
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Do you know the current data? My background is physics, and it's come a long way since I went to school. Still physics, computer science, and engineering are highly underrepresented with females-- eighteen, nineteen percent females getting bachelor's of science degrees in those subjects. What about marine science and oceanography? It depends on the field of oceanography. So in biological oceanography and marine biology,
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half of our entering class of graduate students have been women for some time. In physical oceanography, the circulation of the oceans and currents and so forth, the percentage is less, as it is in geological oceanography or geophysics. So there are many more women entering the field now
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and entering study of oceanography than there ever have been before. But still, there's some differences amongst the fields. Right. You've also spent your career as a researcher and administrator. Have you noticed a difference in your female colleagues as you've changed from the research environment
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to the administrative environment? I think that I was really in the first wave. Right. And so now, as I said, Kathy Sullivan, who was a graduate student at the same time, is the administrator of NOAA. Another person that was a graduate at the same time,
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Marcia McNutt, is the editor of Science magazine. Some other people that I went to graduate school with are senior administrators in the U.S. Geological Survey. One of them is a dean at University of Texas, Austin. So now there are quite a few women who have not only been doing research
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and have been very successful, but are also administrators. So you were with women that were trailblazers for the women to come, which is very exciting. As director of Scripps Institution of Oceanography, you'll be welcoming a new vessel into the fleet soon. Can you talk about that vessel and how different it is than the Melville and what the plans are for that vessel?
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Our new vessel is the R/V Sally Ride, and it is a 248-foot vessel, 50 feet wide. It will have space for 24 scientists to be on board and 20 crew. And this ship was paid for by the Office of Naval Research and the Navy, Department of Defense.
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The new ship is built by a shipyard in Washington, but under the supervision of both Scripps and Navy. So it's a partnership between Scripps and the Navy. And it is part of a new class of oceanographic ships that are all named after astronauts. And we're so delighted that this one is named Sally Ride
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because, of course, Sally is from this community in San Diego. She was a PhD in physics, and when she finished her very distinguished career as an astronaut, she came back to University of California, San Diego, as a physics professor. So this is really an honor for us to have the Sally Ride,
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and it's so appropriate for this community to share that distinction. Sally was the first female astronaut from our country. Her maiden voyage in space was in 1983. I was a grad student at that time in a field that was very underrepresented with women. I never aspired to be an astronaut, but when that happened, I realized that she's opened--
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paved the way for women to believe they could do anything. Where were you when she first launched into space? I had a similar experience. I was a junior faculty member at University of Rhode Island, and it happened that all of my graduate students and my technicians were women, and we used to celebrate everything.
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We celebrated when we got a scientific paper published. We celebrated when we got funding. We celebrated birthdays. The way that we celebrated was we would drink champagne, and we would take the little metal container for the cork and put the cork in it with a little label. We had acoustic tile ceilings, and we would put the cork up there,
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commemorating what happened. And the day that that launch took place, one of my technicians brought in a portable television, and we all watched it on TV. We drank champagne, and we put a little tag on that champagne cork that said, "Sally Ride was representing us all." Wow.
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They were in that lab for a long time after I left. I like to say she broke the ultimate glass ceiling. Exactly. Naming the research vessel after her, it's one of the most fitting honors. After her death, she was awarded the Presidential Freedom Medal, but I think, if she was alive today,
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knowing that there was an exploration ship going out, and she was a believer of making sure all students were STEM literate-- Yes. I'm sure you have the same beliefs. People should be aware of what's going on in our oceans, in our environment, so it's our duty as educators to provide that knowledge.
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Right, and we're very dedicated to students participating, so I can't think of a cruise that doesn't have graduate students as part of the scientific crew. They're really responsible, very responsible, for tremendously expensive and complicated equipment that they bring on board and deploy. We even have whole cruises that are just student cruises,
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and we have funding from the state of California that's available to all of the UCs for students to participate and to propose to do research on the ships. We've even had them meet the ship in foreign ports and do research in the Indian Ocean. A group proposed to use the ship
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in the western Pacific Ocean this next year, so it's very much a research experience for our students and for all of the students that participate. You've been director at Scripps for two or three years? Two and a half years. Do you have have plans, say, a five-year plan? Well, it's not my plan. It's Scripps' plan.
00:15:05
About a year and a half ago, all the faculty and researchers went off on a retreat for a day and a half to talk about, not so much every little thing that we do, but the big ideas, the ones that require a whole group of people and that would really require the institution to get behind the idea
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as well as just the individual researchers. We have a whole group of those ideas. Some of the highlights are certainly related to climate, the impact of climate on the oceans, on us, on land, how we can adapt to that. We're also very interested in hazards like tsunamis
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and earthquakes and drought and flood and how our research can help people be more resilient in the face of hazards. We're world experts in the development of new technology, whether it's measurement devices or whole platforms of equipment or even systems of observation.
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And so that will certainly be a continuing area of effort. And then we're also very interested in human health and the oceans. How does the ocean affect our health? Whether it's pollution, whether it's seafood safety, whether it's the sea spray that affects our health.
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Are there drugs from the ocean that we can develop that will help us with any kind of health problem? Those are a few of the exciting areas the faculty identified that we'll be working on. Most of them require the use of the ship. Right, right.
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We talked about Paris and your team educating people not only about the atmosphere with increased carbon emissions, but also the oceans. You said that there has been change in the mindset now, and people understand that ocean health is important. Do you think young people, during your career, that this current generation of young people
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are more aware of the environment and are more concerned with protecting the environment and taking care of our planet for the future? Definitely. When I was growing up, people were interested in the ocean, and people my age, as a young student, were interested, but it was really more curiosity. What's out there? How does it work?
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How can we get to understand it? Now that we do understand more, we see a lot of the ways that humans impact the ocean, in spite of it being so big. I think one of the sort of strange things is when you look at the ocean from land or ship, it looks the same as it always has.
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Beautiful blue water. Beautiful blue water. And one of the things about the ocean is, of course, most of the life of the ocean is underneath, so we don't see it changing. The chemistry of the ocean is not something you see. The currents are not something that you see. The temperature is not something that you see.
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But now I think that we've done a better job of conveying to people what's actually happening. There's a lot of interest in how is this going to influence us and what do we need to do to adapt to the changes, what do we need to do to protect the ocean from greater change,
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and are there other changes that we don't know about that are happening. Is there anything that you feel like you haven't accomplished? You've done so much through your research, through your time at National Science Foundation, now ending up here at Scripps, you been in research vessels, you've been around the world. Is there anything you feel you need to do in your career?
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You always feel like you need to do this. One of the exciting things, especially for this community in San Diego, is what a rich community it is for the maritime economy. That is something that we're looking at at Scripps, and how can we partner more effectively with all of the companies that are developing technologies
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and capability with, for the ocean. A lot of people are interested in biotech and the ocean. How can we partner with them? So there are always new frontiers and new capabilities and new excitement. There is not a single day that I go into the office and say, "Oh, ho-hum. It's another day at the office."
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It's a really exciting time. Thank you, Margaret, for your time, your inspiration, and for being a lifetime leader in ocean science. Thank you. We look forward to welcoming the community to visit the Sally Ride this summer. Thank you.
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Funding to purchase and make this educational production accessible was provided by the U.S. Department of Education: PH: 1-800-USA-LEARN (V) or WEB: www.ed.gov. ♪
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