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Surfacing Secrets: Mavericks and Visionaries · How To Protect The Ocean

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  We shall not cease from exploration and
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  the end of all our exploring will be to
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  arrive where we started and know the
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  place for the first time.
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  Arrive through the unknown remembered
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  gate where the last of earth left to
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  discover as that which was the beginning.
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  At the source of the longest river, the
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  voice of a hidden waterfall, not known
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  because not looked for, but heard, half
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  heard, between two waves of the sea.
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  Hey everybody, welcome back to another
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  exciting episode of the How to Protect
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  the Ocean podcast. I'm your host, Andrew
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  Lewin. This is the podcast where you find
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  out what's happening with the ocean, how
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  you can speak up for the ocean and what
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  you can do to live for a
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  better ocean by taking action.
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  Look, the ocean is a difficult thing to
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  understand. It is so big, it is so vast.
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  70% of our planet's surface is the ocean,
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  yet 5% of it has been explored.
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  We need to know the ocean because it
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  affects nearly everything on this planet.
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  The ocean regulates the global climate
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  system, the weather and even the amount
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  of oxygen we have to breathe. Half of the
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  world's oxygen production comes from the
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  ocean. Most earthquakes occur in the
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  ocean. So monitoring for seismic activity
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  and tsunamis helps us
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  prepare for these natural hazards.
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  Understanding how the ocean is changing
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  also helps us prepare for climate change
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  impacts to ocean biodiversity and our own
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  food security. However, it's really
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  difficult to gather all that data if you
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  don't have the infrastructure in place.
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  In comes Ocean Networks Canada or ONC for
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  short. Canada's National Ocean
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  Observatory. Today, ONC operates high
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  tech cable observatories on the Pacific,
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  Atlantic and Arctic coast of Canada and
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  even in the Southern Ocean that provide live, continuous, and
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  data about how the ocean is changing. But
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  it wasn't always that way. In fact, up
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  until 1990s, ocean science was done very
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  differently. I'd like to share with you a
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  clip from the World Ocean Council Ocean
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  Titans film series called Beyond the
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  Abyss Ocean Intelligence for a
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  Sustainable Planet. In this film about
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  the Ocean Networks Canada, it's president
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  and CEO, Kate Moran explains how maverick
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  scientists turn the idea of continuous
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  real time ocean
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  monitoring into a reality.
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  Ocean Networks Canada was founded by
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  three mavericks in oceanography who
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  decided that we needed to put sensors in
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  the ocean so we could understand it in
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  real time. Prior to Ocean Networks
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  Canada, data was collected on ships here
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  and there, one point at one time, and
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  then the next day the ocean changes. So
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  we couldn't get an understanding of the
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  full picture of the ocean.
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  University of Victoria professors, Emory
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  is Verena to Nickliff and Chris Barnes
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  were two of those founding visionaries of
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  ONC 19 years ago. They were the directors
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  of ONC's two major cable observatories
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  off the west coast of British Columbia,
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  Venus and Neptune. They were soon joined
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  by other mavericks all driven by a spirit
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  of adventure and discovery.
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  It's a bit of a dream of mine, not only
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  to be joined by folks from Oceans
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  Networks Canada on the podcast, but also
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  to be able to kick off this new series,
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  Surfacing Secrets, Explore the Ocean,
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  Know the Planet. One episode a month for
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  the next 12 months talking about the
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  innovative work that's being done at
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  Ocean Networks Canada and its partners.
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  Today I am absolutely delighted to
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  welcome three ocean science Mavericks to
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  the podcast. Kate Moran, ONC's president
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  CEO, Benoit Piran, ONC's corporate
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  innovation and technology officer and a
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  key architect behind the digital and
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  physical infrastructure that makes ONC
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  sensor, video and sound data accessible
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  to anyone anywhere in the world.
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  And John Delaney, a professor emeritus
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  from the University of Washington in the
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  United States, one of the original
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  Mavericks, an oceanographer whose early
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  ideas about a cable network of deep ocean
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  sensors helped revolutionize science
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  today. Here is the interview with Kate
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  Moran, Benoit Piran and John Delaney.
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  Enjoy the interview and
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  I will talk to you after.
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  Hey Kate, hey Benoit, hey John, welcome
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  to the How to Protect the Ocean podcast.
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  Are you ready to talk
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  about Ocean Networks Canada?
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  We are. Absolutely. Wonderful. I am very,
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  very excited about this. This has been on
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  a bucket list of mine for quite some time
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  to have not all, not only all three of
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  you on the podcast, but to have a series
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  where we can really dive deep into Ocean
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  Networks Canada and find out more about
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  how it came to be, what it's all about
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  and what you have planned in the future and all the projects that we've done.
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  And I feel like one episode is not
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  enough. So this is a kickoff of a series
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  that we're going to do for this for this
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  podcast, which I'm very, very excited to
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  do and to meet all three of you to talk
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  about the origins today of Ocean Networks
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  Canada. I've seen a lot of videos. I've
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  seen your careers as you've gone through
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  and seeing it on on on not only the website, but on social media and so forth.
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  And I've been very happy to be able to
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  watch that. And now I get to talk to you.
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  So this is a very huge. This is a huge
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  pleasure for me. And we're going to get
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  into all of how and see got together and
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  became own see as it is today. But before
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  we do, why don't we find out a little bit
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  about yourself? So why don't you just let
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  us know who you are and what you do. So Kate, we'll start off with you.
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  Well, sure. My name is Kate Moran. I'm
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  president and CEO of Ocean Networks
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  Canada. And I'm an ocean engineer
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  oceanographer and I've been working in
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  the ocean for my entire career. Happy to
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  be here. Thanks for inviting us. You bet. And Benoit.
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  Yeah. So my name is been appearing a
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  corporate innovation and technology
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  officer at Ocean Network Canada. Now I've
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  been with Ocean Networks Canada and
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  helping build the Neptune Observatory
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  System in its data management since 2004.
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  since 2004. I was born in Belgium. I
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  lived in Germany
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  supporting data management
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  for astronomers for almost as long as
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  I've been here at Ocean Works Canada.
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  And John. Yeah I'm a retired professor
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  from the University of Washington
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  School of Oceanography and I kind of
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  started my career as a geologist
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  mapping limestones in the Shenandoah
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  Valley and then got a PhD at the
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  University of Arizona and my first job
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  and only job I ever had was working at
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  the University of Washington and took the
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  job in oceanography before I'd ever
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  been to sea so it was a great eye-opener
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  when I first went to sea in
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  in 2020 or sorry 1980 had my first Alvin
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  dive so since then I've been studying
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  underwater volcanoes
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  offshore here and around the world and I
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  was involved in developing
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  the fiber optic cable that
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  goes out of Oregon across the Wanda Fuka
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  tectonic plate as a
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  complement to what ONZ has done in the
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  Neptune program. You know you all have
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  had such amazing careers even before you
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  started with ONZ so I'd love to hear a
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  little bit about how you just
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  briefly how you all got started in your
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  careers. Okay let's start with you you
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  know you grew up in in Pittsburgh and you
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  know being an ocean
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  engineer was that always
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  something on you on your mind is that
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  always a dream of yours to do that or was
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  that something that changed throughout
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  your academic career.
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  Yeah well I actually grew up in eastern
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  Pennsylvania but went went and took an
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  engineering degree at the University of
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  Pittsburgh and I I did that because of
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  the fact that it was the beginning of
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  Earth Day and when I was in high school
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  and I was applying for University and my
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  physics teacher whose name was I will
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  always remember was Mr.
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  Missle. He he said I should go into
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  engineering and I didn't know what that
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  was so I it was in the days when you
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  wrote that wrote and got your catalogs
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  and the University of Pittsburgh actually
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  had environmental engineering as part of
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  their curriculum so I applied there and
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  was accepted so I was really interested
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  in and the Earth at that time in terms of
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  you know a clean Earth
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  and all that kind of thing.
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  And then when I graduated I took a job
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  working in environmental cleanup for a
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  big company that made toilet
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  paper and it made me crazy.
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  I quit and I took advice from another
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  professor of Pittsburgh to go to graduate
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  school in ocean engineering in Rhode
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  Island and I went to see for the first
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  time in January of the first year I was
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  there in the North Atlantic and got
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  terribly seasick but
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  fell in love with it.
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  So that's how I guess. Do you do you
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  still get seasick to this day?
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  Well it's just you suggested the first
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  day. Yeah. I you know I've developed a
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  technique. You know, all teens don't lie
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  down. Go out on deck a lot. Gotcha. Get
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  the fresh air. Mm hmm. Yeah. Nice. Nice.
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  Okay. Ben, well, how about yourself? What
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  really got you started to learning more
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  and working more within the ocean coming
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  from Belgium and moving and
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  living in Germany for a bit?
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  Well, my degree was in computer science.
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  Okay. And so but but I had always had a
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  very strong interest in the sciences and
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  decided that I wanted to continue to
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  support science and I was lucky enough to
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  find a job with a large international
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  organization in Europe that was meant to
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  deliver telescopes to the astromechal
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  community in the world.
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  And so after a co-op term there, they
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  decided to hire me, which was great.
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  And I started eventually long story short
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  build the data management system for on
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  the one hand the Hubble Space Telescope
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  copy in Europe and then continuing on to
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  building the local data archive for the
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  European Southern
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  Observatory, which was my employer.
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  After a number of years, the family
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  needed to change. I had essentially
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  applied to positions here, a place that I
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  already knew through my
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  connections in astronomy.
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  And I guess fate had it that I had two
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  job offers here in Victoria in 2004, one
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  of which was to either join the local
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  observatory, which was good.
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  And the other one was to join the
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  University of Victoria to start building
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  the data management for this new nascent
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  observatory that was
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  going to be called Neptune.
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  And you know, you still like to join
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  things you knew and start from scratch.
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  So this is what I decided
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  to do. The rest is history.
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  Starting something from scratch after
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  having such a great career already was
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  did you find it challenging in terms of
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  coming one to a different country,
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  different continent and then being able
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  to start over not only from a family
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  perspective, but also
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  with this this new project?
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  That was definitely a challenge. But I
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  was I was ready for it, essentially. And
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  yeah, it was it was not easy, perhaps
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  more difficult than I anticipated
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  initially due to a number of factors that
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  I can go into a later
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  stage if that's necessary.
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  But in the end, you know, I'm still very
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  happy and proud of all the
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  accomplishments that I made both in my
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  previous career. And now, of course, I
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  still with ocean networks, Canada.
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  Yeah, I mean, it's a it's a phenomenal
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  career if you if you ask me, just in
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  terms of what you've been able to
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  accomplish in such a short time. So it's that's that's amazing.
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  John, how about yourself? You know, how
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  did you how did you get started in terms
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  of you kind of mentioned it a little bit
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  before, but what really got you to
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  wanting to work in the ocean?
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  Well, I took a job in oceanography.
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  That'll do it. Then it dawned on me that, well, perhaps
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  I should go to sea. I was very fortunate
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  to be invited by a fellow from Woods Hole
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  named Bill Brian to go on a cruise that
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  he and his colleagues had put together in
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  the cane fracture zone somewhere between Bermuda and the Azores.
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  And we went and dredged rocks from the
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  sea floor. It's a it's a not exactly a
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  delicate instrument to
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  dredge the sea floor. You right.
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  It's a brutal act with a with a huge
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  weight on the end of a long wire.
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  But I loved it. I was just like Kate,
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  it's been my first time and I had been
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  working in a laboratory at Johnson Space
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  Center before that. And before that, I
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  had worked in the mining industry. I used
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  to be an economic geologist, which should
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  resonate with some of
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  your Canadian colleagues.
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  Yes.
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  I was looking for copper, lead, zinc,
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  gold, silver, that type of thing. Right.
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  But once I had taken the job at the
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  University of Washington, I just and had
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  gone to see on this one cruise in 1978. I
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  never looked back. I never
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  went back into a laboratory.
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  I was better on the fantail shoveling
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  rocks than I was twirling the dials on a
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  secondary ion mass spectrometer, which is
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  what I was doing. And so it just became I
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  don't know, I just it
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  just blossomed for me.
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  And, and we, of course, in Seattle, you
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  know, just south of Vancouver Island, we
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  were close to the one to Fuka tectonic
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  plate, but not very many people had been
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  out there. So proposals to go out and
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  literally dredge with a basically a
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  gigantic chain bag, we dragged along the
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  seafloor and picked up rocks.
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  And one of the rocks we picked up was in
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  the endeavor segment of the one to Fuka
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  Ridge, but it had two worms in it. It was
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  not it was not lava. It was a chunk of
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  sulfide. It was about something like 85
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  pounds actually came out.
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  And Margaret Tyvee from Woods Hole
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  actually did her master's thesis on those
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  rocks. So that's when I first it's that's
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  as close as I came to where these folks
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  have taken last 35 years
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  or more and have worked.
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  It was in Canadian waters that one of the
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  extensions of their cable goes to exactly
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  that that hydrothermal vent field, which
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  I spent a large
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  fraction of my life studying.
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  I can I dream about it at night.
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  It's true. It's really weird.
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  If you've never had submarine
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  hydrothermal system
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  dreams, you've missed something.
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  You haven't lived until you have those
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  types of dreams. I get it.
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  Now it's interesting to see all three of
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  you come from such a diverse background
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  to be able to work together. Obviously,
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  you have a much larger team as well.
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  But to be able to work and be able to
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  come up with with a concept like this.
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  John, you did a Ted talk in I believe it
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  was in 2010. I think it was at Sylvia
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  Earls Ted X talk if I remember correctly,
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  you did a Ted talk talking about this
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  system of basically a data observatory
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  beneath the sea, but well beneath the sea
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  that a lot of people weren't really
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  thinking about at that time with the
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  technology that was coming around.
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  Where did that thought come from and and
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  and how did it go from just sort of a
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  thought to something
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  of what we see today?
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  Well, the 2010 talk was on a ship in the
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  Galapagos. It was a party as a party that
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  Sylvia decided to have.
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  And she gave her Ted talk in 2009 and
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  somebody walked out of the audience and
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  handed her a million dollar check and
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  said, what do you want to do with it?
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  Wow. And so she's a party on somebody
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  else canceled and I was I was inserted at
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  the last minute. Anyway, I had also lived
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  in the Galapagos for six months back in
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  1972 70 and 72 inside the volcanoes.
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  That's when I first got wet my appetite,
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  so to speak for volcanoes. But in I had
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  started a program within the United
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  States that was called the Ridge program.
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  R I D G E, which is Ridge
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  interdisciplinary global experiments with
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  a call it much of colleagues.
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  And we the goal was to study submarine
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  hydrothermal systems and the active
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  volcanic systems that supported them and
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  and it was funded for a full 20 years by
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  the National Science Foundation.
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  So that was a lot of fun. But toward the
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  I guess somewhere in the vicinity of
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  1991, I was at the American Geophysical
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  Union meeting in San San Francisco and
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  sitting in a bar with a guy named Alan
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  Chave, who was part of this program.
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  And I was complaining about how hard it
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  is to be in the submarine and look out
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  the window, which is three or four inches
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  thick and about as big around as that.
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  Yeah. And not be able to touch the rocks
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  because I've been field geologists. I was
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  used to reaching and you can't you can
• 1:17:59
  see it, but you can't touch.
• 1:18:01
  And I guess, you know, the first time
• 1:18:02
  around your, you know, you and my first
• 1:18:06
  dives were in 4000 feet of 4000 meters.
• 1:18:09
  Wow. Water on on the
• 1:18:11
  Mid Atlantic Ridge and so.
• 1:18:12
  So I was complaining to him and he said,
• 1:18:14
  well, you know, there's something new
• 1:18:15
  going on at Bell Labs and it's called
• 1:18:18
  fiber optic cables and we have recently
• 1:18:22
  laid a cable across the Atlantic, which I
• 1:18:25
  think was called tat eight.
• 1:18:28
  And and he said, and now they're getting
• 1:18:32
  rid of some of the old cables. Maybe we
• 1:18:34
  could pick one up and do something with
• 1:18:36
  it. And that was the beginning of the
• 1:18:38
  idea from my point of view. And so long
• 1:18:41
  story short, it's too late
• 1:18:42
  for a long story to be short.
• 1:18:45
  We finally got funds from the National
• 1:18:48
  Science Foundation and we committed
• 1:18:51
  ourselves to working very closely with
• 1:18:53
  our Canadian colleagues because my target
• 1:18:55
  was the one that took a tectonic plate
• 1:18:57
  and I think let's just turn
• 1:18:59
  the old thing into a laboratory.
• 1:19:01
  And so we spent a lot of time with our
• 1:19:03
  Canadian colleagues and we were about to
• 1:19:07
  launch things together and then 9 11
• 1:19:10
  happened. Our budget collapsed and the
• 1:19:15
  Canadians got their money that same year
• 1:19:16
  with the proviso that they
• 1:19:19
  had to move ahead aggressively.
• 1:19:21
  And sadly, the two programs diverged. We
• 1:19:26
  never got our money until 2009. So it
• 1:19:30
  took a long time. And so that's I'm
• 1:19:32
  hoping that I can capture the interest of
• 1:19:36
  Canadians to play together in a bigger
• 1:19:40
  sandbox than we have been individually.
• 1:19:43
  Yeah, I'm gonna stop there. There's a
• 1:19:44
  lot. You know, you ask an Irishman to
• 1:19:49
  tell a story and you really
• 1:19:51
  have to give him a time limit.
• 1:19:53
  I love it. I think it's great. I love it.
• 1:19:56
  Kate, just kind of continue on with that
• 1:19:58
  as as John was mentioning, you know, he's
• 1:20:01
  trying to build his program. It got
• 1:20:02
  delayed. But then the Canadian program
• 1:20:04
  happened. Was that money that that really
• 1:20:07
  birthed ONC at the time?
• 1:20:08
  Well, I wasn't here at that time. So that
• 1:20:12
  was two I call I called John Delania
• 1:20:14
  Maverick and the two people that were
• 1:20:15
  here Mavericks, Marina, Toni Cliff, and
• 1:20:18
  Chris Barnes and both Chris and Verena
• 1:20:20
  were the recipients of funding, mostly
• 1:20:22
  Chris for the Neptune Canada at that time
• 1:20:25
  was called Neptune Canada.
• 1:20:26
  Right. And it was from a relatively new
• 1:20:30
  funding mechanism in Canada called the
• 1:20:32
  Canada Foundation for Innovation. And
• 1:20:35
  they developed a new program that was
• 1:20:37
  called the International Competition. And
• 1:20:40
  it was quite a rigorous competition. And
• 1:20:42
  Chris, through Chris's leadership, they
• 1:20:45
  won that award to
• 1:20:46
  basically build Neptune.
• 1:20:49
  So that was and they got on with it. They
• 1:20:52
  moved ahead, worked with Alcatel and then
• 1:20:55
  arrived several or three years after in
• 1:20:58
  2004. Is that right? Yeah, I guess it was
• 1:21:01
  part of the very first people to be hired
• 1:21:03
  for the Neptune Observatory
• 1:21:05
  establishment. Right.
• 1:21:08
  Yeah. And so that so that started the
• 1:21:11
  work of designing, engaging the science
• 1:21:14
  community to decide on sites where should
• 1:21:17
  the nodes go? Of course, John's dream
• 1:21:21
  came true when the Endeavor segment of
• 1:21:23
  the Wanda Fooker Ridge was part of the of
• 1:21:26
  this of the build for the
• 1:21:28
  Neptune Canada Observatory.
• 1:21:30
  And then Verena was also in her Maverick
• 1:21:34
  way. I'm testing the technology by
• 1:21:36
  building in 2006 through somewhat
• 1:21:39
  separate funding, a smaller version of
• 1:21:42
  Neptune called Venus in installing the
• 1:21:45
  first cable in sandwich inlet in 2006 and
• 1:21:48
  basically demonstrating the concept that
• 1:21:51
  John thought of quite a
• 1:21:54
  number of years earlier.
• 1:21:55
  And then Venus expanded in 2008 into the
• 1:21:59
  Southern Sailor Sea. Some people call it
• 1:22:01
  the Strait of Georgia. And then at the
• 1:22:03
  end of 2009 when John's team finally got
• 1:22:07
  their money, Neptune was turned on.
• 1:22:09
  And so I arrived here in 2011 in
• 1:22:15
  September and I came here first and we
• 1:22:19
  took over Chris's position. Chris decided
• 1:22:21
  to retire as Neptune Canada director and
• 1:22:24
  I became first director of Neptune
• 1:22:27
  Canada. And then the following year I
• 1:22:29
  became president of
• 1:22:30
  Ocean Networks Canada.
• 1:22:31
  Now to have this type of technology, not
• 1:22:35
  only between the US and Canada, but just
• 1:22:38
  for Canada to get that that funding as a
• 1:22:42
  Canadian scientist, we don't have a lot
• 1:22:45
  of funding in Canada to do ocean work.
• 1:22:48
  How important was this for not only the
• 1:22:51
  University of Victoria, but just for
• 1:22:53
  Canada in general to get this funding and
• 1:22:55
  to be able to lay these cables to be able
• 1:22:57
  to put this this
• 1:22:58
  technology in the water at a time.
• 1:23:00
  You know, where technology was really
• 1:23:03
  ramping up in terms of, you know, cell
• 1:23:06
  phones and computers and the
• 1:23:08
  miniaturization of computers and the
• 1:23:10
  power that we can hold. How important was
• 1:23:13
  that for for Canada?
• 1:23:14
  Well, it was incredibly significant and I
• 1:23:20
  think the leadership of the University of
• 1:23:23
  Victoria was also part of the alignment
• 1:23:28
  of making this work at the time. The
• 1:23:30
  president of the University, David
• 1:23:33
  Turpin, an oceanographer in his own right
• 1:23:36
  took the chance to actually receive this
• 1:23:39
  money and start this build a risky, risky
• 1:23:41
  thing for a relatively small, great university.
• 1:23:42
  A relatively small university to take on
• 1:23:46
  and especially because in Canada, it's
• 1:23:49
  quite different than what what's in terms
• 1:23:52
  of how how funding supports these big
• 1:23:56
  infrastructure projects because in
• 1:23:59
  Canada, the University of Victoria
• 1:24:01
  essentially owns the infrastructure.
• 1:24:03
  So that means the president and the he
• 1:24:04
  had to convince the board of governors
• 1:24:06
  and university to take on this risk. So
• 1:24:08
  in comparison in the United States, when
• 1:24:10
  the National Science Foundation invest in
• 1:24:12
  infrastructure, they have the backstop of
• 1:24:14
  the federal government in terms of, you
• 1:24:18
  know, replacements and support.
• 1:24:20
  So that was a really important aspect. I
• 1:24:23
  don't think if David had not been here
• 1:24:25
  making that case, you could imagine that
• 1:24:29
  that risk may have been too much to
• 1:24:32
  handle. So kudos to the University of
• 1:24:34
  Victoria for stepping up to the plate.
• 1:24:36
  But of course, when I arrived, there was
• 1:24:41
  a competition to provide operating funds
• 1:24:43
  for this infrastructure that was now
• 1:24:45
  built. So it was tempting was turned on
• 1:24:47
  20 2009. And then Chris and the
• 1:24:51
  university scraped together
• 1:24:52
  to get money to operate it.
• 1:24:55
  But there was a competition that's that
• 1:24:57
  was the proposal was due in September of
• 1:24:59
  2011 when I arrived. And then that was
• 1:25:02
  really for four of Canada's major
• 1:25:05
  research infrastructures that have
• 1:25:07
  different name called
• 1:25:08
  major science initiatives.
• 1:25:10
  And to have an ocean program at the top
• 1:25:13
  of the scientific infrastructure game in
• 1:25:15
  Canada was huge. It meant that Canada was
• 1:25:18
  a player in oceanography in a major way.
• 1:25:22
  And so, you know, I arrived here. I was
• 1:25:25
  surprised I got the job.
• 1:25:26
  But I was happy to contribute at least I
• 1:25:29
  contributed one of the aspects of the
• 1:25:31
  proposal that I think has been very
• 1:25:35
  helpful. And I used to I used to be in
• 1:25:37
  the United States has to be the director
• 1:25:39
  of the ocean drilling program.
• 1:25:40
  So I had a good understanding of big
• 1:25:42
  programs and the contracts, the risks
• 1:25:45
  associated with them. And so I asked to
• 1:25:47
  make sure that we included in that
• 1:25:49
  proposal, the fact that we could have a
• 1:25:51
  self insurance fund with the university.
• 1:25:54
  Because if we didn't have that when we
• 1:25:56
  have things that cause trials that take
• 1:25:58
  out our nodes, etc, we wouldn't have had
• 1:26:01
  money to to reinstall those things. So
• 1:26:03
  that was my big contribution to a
• 1:26:06
  proposal that had mostly been written.
• 1:26:08
  I would like to say that I was thrilled
• 1:26:10
  when they hired her.
• 1:26:12
  Oh, I can imagine she had a reputation of
• 1:26:14
  getting things done. Yeah, that's that's
• 1:26:16
  important. That's definitely important.
• 1:26:19
  But why like, you know, talking about the
• 1:26:22
  technology at the time you coming on and
• 1:26:25
  and being one of the first hires for for
• 1:26:27
  ONC and the Neptune and being able to put
• 1:26:30
  it, you know, in the state that that was
• 1:26:33
  in, you know, putting it online.
• 1:26:36
  What was that like for you coming in on
• 1:26:38
  that and and your team to be able to to
• 1:26:40
  do that work? What were the what were the
• 1:26:42
  challenges that you faced
• 1:26:43
  when you when you first started?
• 1:26:45
  So when I first started, of course, this
• 1:26:47
  kit has explained Venus
• 1:26:49
  was in construction mode.
• 1:26:53
  Neptune just got their funding. And so we
• 1:26:55
  were in design mode and trying to figure
• 1:26:57
  out where where bits and pieces of
• 1:26:59
  equipment would be installed.
• 1:27:02
  And at the time there was little interest
• 1:27:06
  or little focus on the data that would be
• 1:27:09
  coming out of that, despite the fact that
• 1:27:11
  obviously and something
• 1:27:13
  that's apparent to everyone.
• 1:27:15
  But the main product of Ocean Networks
• 1:27:17
  Canada in our observatory is the data.
• 1:27:21
  But to get good data, you need resources
• 1:27:23
  to to to not only talk to the instruments
• 1:27:26
  and through software and make these
• 1:27:29
  software packages, but also importantly
• 1:27:31
  to describe the data that would be coming
• 1:27:35
  from these instruments over many years.
• 1:27:38
  The description of these instruments, the
• 1:27:40
  description of their calibration and so
• 1:27:42
  on is essential to do good science
• 1:27:44
  without without that you are unable to
• 1:27:47
  understand those instruments.
• 1:27:49
  So there was a there was a culture shock
• 1:27:52
  whereby people who were interested in
• 1:27:55
  building these facilities like for an
• 1:27:57
  atomic life and her people and Chris
• 1:27:59
  Barnes and the people he hired at the
• 1:28:02
  time, they were so focused on the
• 1:28:04
  hardware aspects
• 1:28:05
  because that's what's visible.
• 1:28:07
  That's what people are excited about.
• 1:28:09
  That's what's not been done before.
• 1:28:12
  And so convincing people like Verena and
• 1:28:15
  Chris that they these proposals for
• 1:28:18
  funding needed a significant dedication
• 1:28:23
  to the manpower that
• 1:28:25
  would lead the data side.
• 1:28:26
  That was a bit of a challenge.
• 1:28:28
  Eventually, thanks to the good
• 1:28:30
  understanding of Kate of the importance
• 1:28:32
  of that. We got the resources and today.
• 1:28:36
  We'll talk about that later probably. But
• 1:28:38
  today, a third of the staff of Ocean
• 1:28:41
  Networks Canada is dedicated to data. And
• 1:28:43
  so I think this this
• 1:28:45
  shows the importance of it.
• 1:28:47
  But it's also the reward of having done
• 1:28:51
  that is such that we're we're considered
• 1:28:56
  as an example of best practices when it
• 1:28:59
  comes to managing data in science and
• 1:29:03
  particularly in the oceans.
• 1:29:04
  And I would like to add that we had the
• 1:29:07
  same battle at our side. We got plenty of
• 1:29:11
  money for hardware, but we had a struggle
• 1:29:14
  to manage and to strategize and the
• 1:29:19
  architecture for the data flow and the
• 1:29:23
  data use by the community.
• 1:29:24
  So that for some reason at that time, you
• 1:29:28
  know, hardware nuts and bolts was seemed
• 1:29:29
  like it was more important. I just want
• 1:29:31
  to inject one thing. And I, Andrew,
• 1:29:34
  forgive me for anything on my own, but I
• 1:29:37
  remember sitting at my desk.
• 1:29:39
  There's there's an irony to this and it's
• 1:29:41
  for me a terrible irony.
• 1:29:46
  I was sitting at my desk in the mid 90s
• 1:29:49
  and I started thinking, if we're going to
• 1:29:51
  start a program, we need a name.
• 1:29:54
  And I started thinking Northeast,
• 1:29:56
  Northeast Pacific, Northeast Pacific Time
• 1:30:00
  Series, undersea network experiments.
• 1:30:07
  Jesus, that says new Neptune. And and so
• 1:30:11
  we we we just used it, you know, it just
• 1:30:14
  became what we used in
• 1:30:15
  the late 90s and early.
• 1:30:18
  And then when we started getting our
• 1:30:20
  money, some of the people that Kate had
• 1:30:23
  actually dealt with in Washington, D.C.,
• 1:30:27
  but wisely moved to Canada to some extent
• 1:30:30
  to get away from decided
• 1:30:32
  that this Neptune business.
• 1:30:34
  That sounds too much like John Delaney.
• 1:30:36
  We can't have that. Let's call it the
• 1:30:40
  regional scale nodes.
• 1:30:42
  So the name in the United States is
• 1:30:45
  called the regional scale nodes, which
• 1:30:47
  sounds like something like the bubonic
• 1:30:50
  plague from my point of view.
• 1:30:51
  But I am absolutely thrilled that Neptune
• 1:30:57
  in the hands of Kate actually became as
• 1:31:02
  elegant and as widespread
• 1:31:04
  and heavily used as it has.
• 1:31:06
  Well, I also think, too, when you start
• 1:31:08
  to use the name of planets and we there's
• 1:31:10
  that sort of that idea that's that's
• 1:31:12
  floating around that we know more about
• 1:31:14
  outer space than we do about most of the
• 1:31:16
  ocean, especially the deep ocean that if
• 1:31:18
  you name it after a planet, it's like
• 1:31:19
  you're just you're discovering
• 1:31:20
  a planet down underneath or discovering
• 1:31:22
  something new. That's how I take it
• 1:31:24
  anyway. When I when I hear, you know,
• 1:31:26
  like Neptune in Venus. So I like that.
• 1:31:28
  There's a pithier way
• 1:31:30
  of saying that, Andrew.
• 1:31:33
  How's that? We know more about the moons
• 1:31:36
  behind than we know
• 1:31:37
  about the ocean's bottom.
• 1:31:42
  That's a new one for me.
• 1:31:44
  I like that. I like that a lot. I was
• 1:31:46
  getting clipped for sure.
• 1:31:49
  I'm on the data side. Absolutely.
• 1:31:54
  Because, you know, Ben was being humble.
• 1:31:58
  I mean, he actually I think there was
• 1:32:00
  pressure to actually hire a company to
• 1:32:02
  develop what now we call the digital
• 1:32:05
  infrastructure or oceans three.
• 1:32:06
  And Ben was pushed to make sure that it
• 1:32:10
  was built in house. And now we have moved
• 1:32:13
  to the stage in Canada that we're
• 1:32:16
  demonstrating to the other operators of
• 1:32:19
  major research infrastructure that it's
• 1:32:21
  not just the physical pieces.
• 1:32:23
  It's that's part of the build. But it's
• 1:32:25
  what we call digital infrastructure. And
• 1:32:27
  so we now at Ocean Network Canada have a
• 1:32:30
  director of physical infrastructure and a
• 1:32:32
  director of digital infrastructure. And
• 1:32:34
  they have importance in terms of how we
• 1:32:37
  deliver for a wide range of stakeholders.
• 1:32:41
  Many of us appreciate
• 1:32:41
  what you did. Absolutely.
• 1:32:45
  Thank you. I saw the thread that
• 1:32:48
  represented a contract with a commercial
• 1:32:50
  company as being a
• 1:32:52
  potential open ended money pit.
• 1:32:56
  Oh, no. I had witnessed what had happened
• 1:33:00
  in the US with the
• 1:33:02
  Hubble Space Telescope.
• 1:33:04
  They had hired companies at the time back
• 1:33:06
  in the 80s or the 80s that came to cost
• 1:33:09
  30 million dollars US at the time. They
• 1:33:13
  had to scrap it off completely. Throw it
• 1:33:15
  away and start from scratch hiring their
• 1:33:17
  own people to get done
• 1:33:19
  what they needed done.
• 1:33:21
  And I had similar experience with the
• 1:33:23
  ocean drilling program and had to come in
• 1:33:26
  and basically save the day to get a data
• 1:33:28
  system up and running. So thank you, Ben.
• 1:33:31
  Yes, thank you, Ben.
• 1:33:32
  You're standing there.
• 1:33:35
  Now, you know, once everything is put
• 1:33:38
  together and we have the not only the
• 1:33:40
  hardware infrastructure, but the digital
• 1:33:42
  infrastructure as well and data started
• 1:33:44
  to flow in and we
• 1:33:46
  started to see the data.
• 1:33:48
  I think you mentioned earlier, it was it
• 1:33:49
  was hard for people to take the data and
• 1:33:52
  do something with it. Was it was it
• 1:33:54
  difficult to get like disseminate the
• 1:33:56
  data? Was that the idea was this this,
• 1:33:58
  you know, this system
• 1:33:59
  was going to bring in data.
• 1:34:01
  I know a number of different scales and a
• 1:34:03
  number of different topics and
• 1:34:05
  disseminate it to, you know, the
• 1:34:08
  scientific community. Is it was that the
• 1:34:10
  idea or was it to hold it a little bit
• 1:34:12
  and just have people at University of
• 1:34:13
  Victoria and University of Washington and
• 1:34:15
  other universities that contributed money
• 1:34:17
  to it to be able to do it or was it
• 1:34:18
  available to everybody?
• 1:34:20
  So, I think there was a big decision from
• 1:34:23
  the get go that all the data would be
• 1:34:26
  available right away to anyone who wanted
• 1:34:29
  them. And because we have a cable that
• 1:34:31
  connects the instruments to shore, we
• 1:34:34
  could do that in real time.
• 1:34:36
  Right. So, that was that was a basic
• 1:34:41
  principle. Whereas in astronomy where it
• 1:34:43
  came from, there was always this one year
• 1:34:45
  priority period for
• 1:34:46
  all the data that we did.
• 1:34:47
  We decided it was not going to be the
• 1:34:50
  case, except in extremely unusual
• 1:34:53
  circumstances that we would basically
• 1:34:57
  make the data openly available and it it
• 1:35:00
  revealed to be a modern approach that has
• 1:35:02
  been appreciated by even the funding
• 1:35:06
  agencies for sure, because they could see
• 1:35:08
  the multiplication and
• 1:35:10
  leveraging of the funds.
• 1:35:11
  They've devoted to these programs and
• 1:35:14
  make sure that being used by as many
• 1:35:17
  people as possible to maximize the
• 1:35:18
  return. So that was one of the challenges
• 1:35:21
  that we overcame right away. Another one,
• 1:35:26
  if I made it, I could
• 1:35:27
  mention is the fact.
• 1:35:28
  Where it came from where again in
• 1:35:33
  astronomy, you build these large
• 1:35:35
  telescopes are way too big for any
• 1:35:38
  specific individual or even a university
• 1:35:40
  to own. They belong to the entire
• 1:35:43
  community. And so an individual
• 1:35:46
  astronomers is not allowed to operate it.
• 1:35:49
  You have to introduce what they called
• 1:35:52
  service observing. So you don't touch the
• 1:35:55
  dials, essentially. You define what you
• 1:35:59
  want to see observed. We give you you get
• 1:36:02
  a piece of time on the instrument and the
• 1:36:07
  data are collected and hopefully can go
• 1:36:09
  away and do your science.
• 1:36:10
  So whereas that was already done in the
• 1:36:15
  1980s for astronomy when it came to the
• 1:36:19
  ocean until basically
• 1:36:21
  10 20 years ago now.
• 1:36:25
  The modus operandi for researchers was
• 1:36:28
  that they were going to see that we're
• 1:36:31
  going to take their equipments and the
• 1:36:32
  grad students with them. They were going
• 1:36:34
  to be going only in the summer because
• 1:36:37
  that's the only time that you could do
• 1:36:39
  anything in the northern hemisphere.
• 1:36:42
  And so we collected data, maybe
• 1:36:44
  transferred the data in the computer, put
• 1:36:47
  it in a drawer until you have time to
• 1:36:49
  look at it. And this culture was
• 1:36:55
  prevailing still at the time. And that's
• 1:36:57
  what another that was another challenge
• 1:36:59
  to convince people that no data
• 1:37:01
  management was important to
• 1:37:03
  maximize the science return.
• 1:37:05
  So again, we had to face the culture
• 1:37:07
  shock. So this or the users had to face
• 1:37:11
  the culture shock that we were trying to
• 1:37:12
  try to impose on them because suddenly we
• 1:37:16
  were making it their disposal tool.
• 1:37:20
  And so that was going to be providing
• 1:37:22
  them a lot of new capabilities, but was
• 1:37:25
  also very much different from what they
• 1:37:27
  were used to deal with in the past. So
• 1:37:30
  another one of the challenges to overcome
• 1:37:33
  in my position at the time.
• 1:37:37
  There are a couple of others that are
• 1:37:38
  really important. One is graduate
• 1:37:42
  students who have a master's thesis to
• 1:37:45
  finish in a year or two. If they're using
• 1:37:48
  data that is flowing out the end of a
• 1:37:50
  garden hose to everyone in the world.
• 1:37:52
  And so that was another cultural wrinkle
• 1:38:01
  within oceanography. And the third
• 1:38:03
  cultural wrinkle is that oceanography,
• 1:38:07
  unlike astronomy, most of the data in
• 1:38:11
  astronomy is one form
• 1:38:12
  or another wavelength.
• 1:38:16
  And so in oceanography, there's the
• 1:38:18
  physics of what you're studying, which
• 1:38:21
  comes in many forms. There's the
• 1:38:24
  chemistry of what you're studying, which
• 1:38:26
  comes in other forms and
• 1:38:27
  sloppy water type things.
• 1:38:30
  And so the complexity of oceanography
• 1:38:40
  compared to astronomy is I won't say it's
• 1:38:44
  greater or less, but it's very different.
• 1:38:47
  And so you have all those tangible
• 1:38:48
  elements that in fact what Benoit
• 1:38:53
  referred to is many times chief
• 1:38:56
  scientists and their
• 1:38:58
  immediate acolytes would bring in the
• 1:38:59
  data home and not everybody got to look
• 1:39:03
  at it for as much as a decade, half a
• 1:39:05
  decade sometimes. And so the idea of
• 1:39:09
  having a constant somewhat endless flow
• 1:39:13
  of semi-infinite amount of
• 1:39:14
  information was a great shock.
• 1:39:18
  Shock. And I think Benoit was the
• 1:39:21
  pioneer. Yeah. And Kate's absolutely
• 1:39:24
  right. He is. You're way too modest.
• 1:39:30
  Thanks.
• 1:39:31
  What I want to highlight as well, and I
• 1:39:33
  think you touched on another challenge
• 1:39:36
  that I wanted to raise at some point
• 1:39:38
  during this conversation as well, which
• 1:39:40
  is the diversity of types of data that
• 1:39:43
  would be coming from the observatory and
• 1:39:45
  that from a, I mean, leave the cultural
• 1:39:49
  alone now from a
• 1:39:51
  technological aspects from a
• 1:39:54
  techniques and level of effort
• 1:39:58
  perspective. The fact that we had to deal
• 1:40:01
  with so many different types of data, but
• 1:40:03
  also different types of instruments was
• 1:40:06
  in fact one of the big technical
• 1:40:09
  challenges, essentially something that
• 1:40:11
  would cost us because it
• 1:40:12
  takes a lot of labor to address.
• 1:40:15
  Right. And we needed also to design the
• 1:40:18
  observatories and the data management
• 1:40:20
  system, the digital part of the of the
• 1:40:23
  initiative in a way that would allow for
• 1:40:27
  the existence of many, many different
• 1:40:29
  types of instruments
• 1:40:30
  that would change over time.
• 1:40:31
  That would evolve, that we would not make
• 1:40:34
  ourselves. Also we were the mercy of
• 1:40:37
  commercial companies that would build
• 1:40:42
  those and would decide to
• 1:40:43
  change the nature of on you.
• 1:40:48
  So we had to build a system that was
• 1:40:49
  really flexible and was able to evolve
• 1:40:52
  with instruments, change and
• 1:40:54
  support new types of systems.
• 1:40:57
  And that's why today we have from simple
• 1:41:00
  temperature sensors all the way to 4K
• 1:41:03
  cameras streaming video to hydrophone
• 1:41:07
  streaming sounds from the oceans all the
• 1:41:09
  time. And on top of that, those fancy
• 1:41:12
  current measurement devices that produce
• 1:41:15
  matrices of tons of numbers all the time.
• 1:41:19
  So the structure of the data, their
• 1:41:21
  diversity and the constant change of
• 1:41:26
  techniques and technologies in these
• 1:41:27
  instruments is a challenge. And today
• 1:41:31
  we're, you know, we continue to witness
• 1:41:34
  changes in those techniques. So that's
• 1:41:38
  exciting. It keeps us alive.
• 1:41:42
  Sure.
• 1:41:44
  Our job is not boring. That's, that's for
• 1:41:46
  sure. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Always
• 1:41:48
  always adapting right as one does. Let's
• 1:41:52
  talk. I love the talk about the
• 1:41:54
  infrastructure and the data that's coming
• 1:41:56
  in. Let's talk about some of the major
• 1:41:58
  projects that have come out that and
• 1:42:00
  discoveries that have come out from the
• 1:42:02
  data from from ONC. So, okay, you know,
• 1:42:05
  as someone who's obviously the CEO and
• 1:42:07
  president, what what highlights that you
• 1:42:10
  would like the people here on on the
• 1:42:12
  podcast to know about?
• 1:42:13
  In terms of what has come out of of the
• 1:42:17
  data and what projects have been really a
• 1:42:19
  highlight for you personally and for ONC.
• 1:42:23
  Well, I think one of the most important
• 1:42:24
  aspects is now that we have we're a
• 1:42:27
  little bit long in the tooth in terms of
• 1:42:28
  the observatory, we're starting to get
• 1:42:30
  the time that the amount of time to
• 1:42:34
  enable us to understand the climate
• 1:42:37
  impacts on the ocean.
• 1:42:38
  Not that that's something that we want to
• 1:42:42
  herald, but it's really we we have to
• 1:42:45
  understand it to act. And so now we're
• 1:42:48
  actually seeing oxygen changes,
• 1:42:50
  temperature changes. And what's what I'm
• 1:42:53
  happy to say is that because of the fact
• 1:42:56
  that we have real time data, when there
• 1:42:59
  were almost like an
• 1:43:00
  earlier alert system change.
• 1:43:03
  So a couple of summers ago, we saw oxygen
• 1:43:06
  changing at one of our coastal sites that
• 1:43:09
  hadn't happened before that we knew of.
• 1:43:12
  And so that then triggered a whole group
• 1:43:14
  of people to go out and capture more data
• 1:43:17
  to understand that. In fact, the low
• 1:43:18
  auction events that were common at that
• 1:43:21
  time in the offshore, the Pacific
• 1:43:24
  Northwest of the United
• 1:43:25
  States was now reaching Canada.
• 1:43:27
  So understanding these is really
• 1:43:29
  important to talk about climate change in
• 1:43:33
  a way that has impact. We also were able
• 1:43:36
  to monitor the impacts on the coastal
• 1:43:38
  zone during what was called
• 1:43:40
  the big heat or the warm blob.
• 1:43:43
  Yeah. And and that had economic impact in
• 1:43:48
  both the Canada and the United States. So
• 1:43:50
  these changes are not only the fact that
• 1:43:53
  we're seeing life forms moving into new
• 1:43:56
  environments, but in fact, it is an
• 1:43:58
  economic impact on the country.
• 1:44:01
  So I'll just that has now led us to in
• 1:44:05
  our in our new strategic plan to we have
• 1:44:10
  three goals. And the third
• 1:44:11
  one is on on climate action.
• 1:44:14
  And so what we've now been moving towards
• 1:44:15
  I'm really proud of are coming up with
• 1:44:19
  with research areas to work on how we can
• 1:44:23
  remove CO2 from the atmosphere using
• 1:44:25
  ocean solutions. Not that we're
• 1:44:27
  advocating anything as an organization,
• 1:44:29
  but we're developing observations so that
• 1:44:32
  we can test these ideas,
• 1:44:35
  determine their efficacy,
• 1:44:37
  and then provide information that could
• 1:44:40
  value them based on the amount of carbon
• 1:44:43
  that's removed from the atmosphere. So
• 1:44:44
  that will be an important aspect of how
• 1:44:47
  we as a scientific community contribute
• 1:44:49
  to advancing these new technologies.
• 1:44:52
  But I'm going to stop and just say one
• 1:44:54
  thing that everyone here at the
• 1:44:55
  organization is extremely proud of and
• 1:44:57
  that is the fact that we have starting in
• 1:45:00
  2012 and it was I arrived as Neptune
• 1:45:04
  director early September 2011.
• 1:45:08
  I went to Ben when I said, there's this
• 1:45:11
  Canadian high Arctic research station
• 1:45:13
  that was announced by then Prime
• 1:45:15
  Minister, and two years before and
• 1:45:18
  there's nothing up there, we should put
• 1:45:19
  an observatory up there. Okay.
• 1:45:22
  And he said, Okay, so in 2012 we
• 1:45:25
  installed the first cable small cable
• 1:45:28
  observatory in Cambridge by Nunavut. And
• 1:45:31
  we were, we were not very we were being,
• 1:45:35
  you know, colonial in
• 1:45:37
  our ways. Yeah, that way.
• 1:45:39
  And we put a sea ice sickness monitor on
• 1:45:41
  it. There's a company in Vancouver Island
• 1:45:42
  that measures sea ice thickness, because
• 1:45:44
  what they see I said there. And we
• 1:45:47
  learned that the community wanted to have
• 1:45:49
  that sea ice data showcased in the co op
• 1:45:51
  store, because they needed to know how
• 1:45:53
  thick the ice was to take the shortcut
• 1:45:55
  to the airport or go out and hunt on the
• 1:45:57
  ice. And it was like this big aha moment
• 1:45:59
  of we need to do this for other coastal
• 1:46:02
  indigenous communities and that set us on
• 1:46:05
  this path of much more humbly engaging
• 1:46:09
  with now almost 40 different coastal
• 1:46:11
  communities in Canada
• 1:46:13
  and delivering data that's
• 1:46:15
  here best introducably to
• 1:46:45
  Youth Science Ambassador, Mia Ottokiak
• 1:46:48
  from Cambridge Bay,
• 1:46:49
  Nunavut. She was there as a
• 1:46:53
  high school student when it was first
• 1:46:54
  installed. Graduated from high school,
• 1:46:56
  became one of the first
• 1:46:59
  students in her class that actually went
• 1:47:01
  into a science career in
• 1:47:03
  the government of Nunavut.
• 1:47:04
  And then she was invited to the UN Decade
• 1:47:08
  Conference two years
• 1:47:10
  ago and actually made a
• 1:47:11
  speech about the importance of observing
• 1:47:13
  the ocean from her
• 1:47:15
  perspective in Cambridge Bay,
• 1:47:17
  Nunavut. So all of that, we're very proud
• 1:47:19
  of that and really happy that we can
• 1:47:21
  continue to do that.
• 1:47:22
  And I think that's a very, very important
• 1:47:24
  point that we perhaps
• 1:47:26
  can all make and that is
• 1:47:28
  a path forward would be to creatively
• 1:47:32
  merge the philosophies and
• 1:47:36
  attitudes of Indigenous people
• 1:47:39
  with cutting edge technology. Their
• 1:47:42
  philosophy and attitude was reverence for
• 1:47:44
  the environment that
• 1:47:46
  they lived in and supported them instead
• 1:47:50
  of what early on for sure
• 1:47:52
  was when the Europeans came
• 1:47:54
  to the new world. The goal was to get in,
• 1:47:56
  get rich and get out and
• 1:47:58
  care what they left behind.
• 1:48:00
  So I think what Kate has pointed out is
• 1:48:04
  goes back to this cultural
• 1:48:06
  groundbreaking effort. There are many
• 1:48:10
  levels of this cultural point, but I
• 1:48:13
  think it's extremely
• 1:48:13
  important and I think Neptune Canada has
• 1:48:15
  certainly led the way in
• 1:48:17
  that effort and they deserve
• 1:48:20
  tremendous credit there. I don't know
• 1:48:21
  where that kind of credit
• 1:48:22
  comes from. I guess they continue
• 1:48:25
  to get funding. So that's kind of thin
• 1:48:29
  gruel compared to, you
• 1:48:31
  know, there should be a Nobel
• 1:48:32
  Prize for fiber optic cables. I'm
• 1:48:35
  kidding. Well, but I mean,
• 1:48:37
  there's a lot of challenges to
• 1:48:39
  to also put up cables in the Arctic,
• 1:48:40
  right? Like this is not,
• 1:48:42
  we're not talking about
• 1:48:43
  the friendliest environments to work in
• 1:48:45
  these. These have been often very
• 1:48:48
  difficult and challenging
• 1:48:49
  places to work in, obviously with climate
• 1:48:51
  change, helping that out in terms of
• 1:48:54
  making things a little
• 1:48:56
  easier to work there and be able to lay
• 1:48:59
  this type of cable. Was it a difficult
• 1:49:01
  thing to do to lay this
• 1:49:03
  fiber optic cable in the Arctic? Well,
• 1:49:05
  it's in a coastal
• 1:49:06
  environment. So it's a relatively
• 1:49:08
  simple, but certainly that we had to
• 1:49:11
  design it so that the challenge in these
• 1:49:13
  sea ice covered areas is that
• 1:49:15
  the land fast ice can take out the cable.
• 1:49:17
  So we developed a
• 1:49:18
  technique to protect those cables.
• 1:49:20
  And in fact, last January, we we decided
• 1:49:22
  to go even further and
• 1:49:23
  we installed a coastal
• 1:49:24
  observatory in Antarctica. And we have
• 1:49:29
  developed our talk about our physical
• 1:49:30
  infrastructure team.
• 1:49:31
  They are amazing at developing these
• 1:49:33
  coastal observatories that
• 1:49:36
  are relatively easy to install,
• 1:49:38
  protected from sea ice, for example. And
• 1:49:40
  incredibly, they have incredibly
• 1:49:42
  developed innovative ways to
• 1:49:45
  maintain them. And that continues to
• 1:49:48
  improve over time, so much so that we are
• 1:49:51
  planning to install many more
• 1:49:52
  coastal observatories in Canada because
• 1:49:55
  Canada has the longest
• 1:49:56
  coastline in the world.
• 1:49:58
  And most of it's in the Arctic and most
• 1:50:00
  of it's not very well understood. And so
• 1:50:03
  in addition to developing
• 1:50:04
  these coastal observatories, we have
• 1:50:07
  decided to move forward with developing
• 1:50:09
  systems to measure things
• 1:50:11
  like coastal radar, which is measuring
• 1:50:14
  surface currents that are
• 1:50:16
  renewable energy powered,
• 1:50:19
  compact, you can deploy them by
• 1:50:21
  helicopter so that we can begin to
• 1:50:22
  populate these areas of the Arctic
• 1:50:25
  with power systems and coastal radar, but
• 1:50:27
  possibly other other
• 1:50:28
  sensor systems to build up that
• 1:50:31
  presence in the Arctic to understand our
• 1:50:34
  own coastline. So those
• 1:50:36
  are the new things that are
• 1:50:36
  coming. I'll just come back to one other
• 1:50:38
  thing I'm proud of, and it stems back to
• 1:50:41
  somewhat of Benoit's background,
• 1:50:44
  and John's decision to name Neptune, you
• 1:50:50
  know, thinking about planets and space.
• 1:50:54
  We also have a terrific physical
• 1:50:57
  operations team. In 2018, the
• 1:51:00
  high energy particle physics
• 1:51:01
  community knocked on our door out of the
• 1:51:03
  blue and said, we want to install a
• 1:51:05
  neutrino observatory, and we heard that
• 1:51:07
  you know how to put things in the water
• 1:51:08
  and make it work. And I was telling John
• 1:51:11
  about this this morning, and within
• 1:51:13
  eight months, we designed, built and
• 1:51:16
  installed a test neutrino observatory at
• 1:51:19
  our deepest location.
• 1:51:20
  And that has led that community now to
• 1:51:22
  secure funding to build
• 1:51:24
  probably the world's biggest
• 1:51:25
  neutrino observatory going forward. It
• 1:51:29
  will be similar to the neutrino
• 1:51:31
  observatory in Antarctica that that's
• 1:51:33
  owned by the US National
• 1:51:34
  Science Foundation called ice cube. And
• 1:51:36
  that's moving ahead a pace. And we're
• 1:51:38
  really proud of that.
• 1:51:40
  Yeah. Because as we mentioned
• 1:51:44
  the diversity of data, there's every
• 1:51:46
  science in the ocean. So it's like crazy
• 1:51:50
  to call oceanography.
• 1:51:51
  It's every science in the
• 1:51:52
  ocean. Yeah. So that's what we're
• 1:51:54
  measuring for every, every one of those
• 1:51:57
  sciences we deliver data. But this is
• 1:51:59
  like, I mean, this is the technology that
• 1:52:01
  that we we know what we can do is just a
• 1:52:03
  matter of putting it into place and
• 1:52:05
  almost almost being there. And I think,
• 1:52:07
  yeah, a lot of a lot of funding. And I
• 1:52:11
  think that obviously that that's a big a
• 1:52:13
  big part of it. But if we're going to
• 1:52:14
  continue to explore the oceans as crucial
• 1:52:16
  as they are, we're going to need this
• 1:52:19
  type of funding. We're going to need places like ONC to continue to explore the ocean.
• 1:52:20
  We're going to need places like ONC to
• 1:52:22
  continue to bring that data to people on
• 1:52:25
  a regular on a regular basis. But what
• 1:52:28
  just from a from a data infrastructure
• 1:52:30
  standpoint and a digital infrastructure
• 1:52:33
  standpoint, what are some of the things
• 1:52:35
  that you're working on?
• 1:52:38
  And I think that's what we could expect
• 1:52:39
  to come up on the next on the next on the
• 1:52:41
  horizon. What does that said before,
• 1:52:43
  there's always something new coming up.
• 1:52:45
  And it's not coming from us. It's coming
• 1:52:47
  from the community of researchers who
• 1:52:49
  build new types of instruments. It's
• 1:52:50
  coming from industry who invents new
• 1:52:53
  methods to to collect data. And this is
• 1:52:59
  all very exciting. And so to me, what's
• 1:53:02
  going to be coming out for us
• 1:53:04
  in the next year to five years.
• 1:53:07
  Is those new instruments that have a
• 1:53:12
  relationship with what is commonly called
• 1:53:15
  fiber sensing. You take a fiber optic and
• 1:53:21
  you shine a laser light very frequently,
• 1:53:24
  like hundreds of times per second. And in
• 1:53:28
  between the shots of light, you look at
• 1:53:32
  the look at the backscatter, you look at
• 1:53:35
  the reflections of this particular
• 1:53:36
  flash of light at every point along the
• 1:53:40
  fiber because of the impurities on the
• 1:53:44
  glass of the fiber, you are going to have
• 1:53:47
  these reflections. And if if you observe
• 1:53:49
  this, like a lot, a lot of times 100 sums
• 1:53:53
  per second, you can start building a
• 1:53:57
  concept of changes that occur in the
• 1:54:00
  fiber at a very fine resolution, meaning
• 1:54:03
  not only spatial resolution along the fiber length, but also the
• 1:54:05
  changes that occur along the fiber
• 1:54:06
  length, which could be up to 100
• 1:54:09
  kilometers, but also sense very precisely
• 1:54:14
  the changes that occur to the fiber from
• 1:54:16
  when it's subjected to strain stresses,
• 1:54:20
  temperature changes and all that. So
• 1:54:23
  essentially you by continuous observing
• 1:54:25
  that in collecting this humongous amount
• 1:54:27
  of data, you can start mapping out along
• 1:54:30
  the fiber the changes
• 1:54:32
  that occur due to vibration,
• 1:54:35
  be they seismic or acoustic, or you can
• 1:54:43
  get a sense of the temperature
• 1:54:44
  fluctuations over time. And you get this
• 1:54:47
  information multiple times per second, at
• 1:54:53
  every meter along that fiber. So you can
• 1:54:57
  imagine the data volume that will come
• 1:54:59
  out of it. Yeah, it's going to be orders
• 1:55:02
  of magnitude more than
• 1:55:03
  whatever we're dealing with today.
• 1:55:03
  And, and again, back to the culture clash
• 1:55:09
  with the community, they have to learn
• 1:55:11
  quickly now not only to deal with data
• 1:55:14
  365 days a year, which is what
• 1:55:17
  observatories like Neptune and Venus and
• 1:55:20
  others put them in front of, they're going to have to deal with a lot more data now.
• 1:55:27
  We're going to have to, to provide the
• 1:55:32
  community with we're going to have to
• 1:55:33
  help them dealing with the data volume by
• 1:55:36
  providing new tools. And so this is this
• 1:55:39
  continuous struggle as it were that not
• 1:55:44
  only we have to make people understand
• 1:55:47
  that there's data can come in continuously.
• 1:55:48
  It's going to be too much for anyone to
• 1:55:53
  work on. So we need to help them with new
• 1:55:57
  techniques such as data visualization
• 1:56:00
  systems. And more recently, again, these
• 1:56:03
  artificial intelligence machine learning
• 1:56:06
  systems that in principle should be able
• 1:56:09
  to help people detect what's in there and
• 1:56:13
  tell them what it is.
• 1:56:15
  And because of our, our emphasis on
• 1:56:18
  digital infrastructure, we're trying to
• 1:56:19
  position ocean always Canada as a data
• 1:56:22
  provider for these systems, because we
• 1:56:24
  know they're coming. And we know that
• 1:56:27
  they're important, they'll
• 1:56:28
  be important for research.
• 1:56:28
  But of course, as you probably
• 1:56:32
  understand, they're also important for
• 1:56:34
  national security. So we want to be at
• 1:56:39
  the for a Canada wants to be at the
• 1:56:40
  forefront of delivering these kind of
• 1:56:42
  data for the research community. But at
• 1:56:44
  the same time, having those agreement
• 1:56:47
  agreements in place to protect the
• 1:56:49
  information that's needed for other types
• 1:56:52
  of information that the government needs.
• 1:56:54
  Yeah, this is an extremely important
• 1:56:57
  point. It's it's a very important point.
• 1:56:57
  It's it's the absolute cutting edge right
• 1:57:00
  now for both the science and the
• 1:57:03
  technology and it's the idea that machine
• 1:57:07
  learning and artificial intelligence are
• 1:57:09
  actually being trained as part of our
• 1:57:12
  process now to digest this massive meal
• 1:57:18
  of data is very, very important.
• 1:57:20
  My, my small scale view, it would be nice
• 1:57:26
  if we could turn on the Canadian system
• 1:57:28
  and the US system. And then the ocean in
• 1:57:32
  between the two would have we would have
• 1:57:34
  resolution of whatever is going on in
• 1:57:37
  there, at least with regard to whales,
• 1:57:39
  maybe with regard to earthquakes.
• 1:57:39
  Not sure how the two would work together.
• 1:57:44
  But if we could get to that point, that
• 1:57:46
  would be just very, very exciting closure
• 1:57:48
  to what sadly started with 911 when we
• 1:57:54
  parted company and and haven't worked as
• 1:57:58
  smoothly and well together as the
• 1:58:01
  original vision was in both groups
• 1:58:04
  necessarily and understand we had to go
• 1:58:06
  their separate ways.
• 1:58:06
  Right. But with the unity of this, this
• 1:58:10
  idea and the idea that the kids might cut
• 1:58:16
  new ground in terms of managing the data
• 1:58:20
  as well as making it available, making
• 1:58:21
  the products available.
• 1:58:23
  That's really exciting.
• 1:58:24
  Yeah, it is kind of kick this back to the
• 1:58:29
  global network of fiber optic cables is
• 1:58:35
  something like 100 1.5
• 1:58:37
  million kilometers on the sea floor.
• 1:58:41
  If all of that could be used with this
• 1:58:43
  kind of resolution and frequency and
• 1:58:45
  presence, the awareness of what goes on
• 1:58:48
  on the planet at the global scale would
• 1:58:50
  be phenomenal. And I don't know, you have
• 1:58:53
  to address whether or not that's even
• 1:58:55
  feasible because a lot of people who own
• 1:58:57
  these cables don't want
• 1:58:58
  anybody else messing with them.
• 1:59:00
  They want to own it entirely. Right.
• 1:59:03
  Yes. And it's a good segue. One of my
• 1:59:06
  projects right now is to be part of this
• 1:59:10
  so called smart cable initiative that try
• 1:59:13
  to promote the use of of new but also
• 1:59:17
  existing cables for ocean sensing taking
• 1:59:20
  advantage and leveraging these 1.4
• 1:59:23
  million kilometers, as you say, of cable
• 1:59:26
  that that already exists.
• 1:59:26
  And those doubling of that that will
• 1:59:31
  probably exist in the next 10 years.
• 1:59:34
  And so, yes, it's a challenge. But but I
• 1:59:38
  think because these techniques that I was
• 1:59:41
  describing the use of the use of fiber
• 1:59:46
  sensing can be also seen as a cable
• 1:59:50
  protection system because you then
• 1:59:52
  understand what's happening in your cable
• 1:59:54
  like, like, for example, there's a new cable.
• 1:59:56
  For example, there's there's an anchor
• 1:59:58
  drag that's approaching the cable and
• 2:00:01
  could be cut like any minute now.
• 2:00:04
  Then you kind of pre-warned. It doesn't
• 2:00:07
  mean you can stop anything from
• 2:00:08
  happening, but at least you can trace
• 2:00:10
  back not only where it happens when it
• 2:00:12
  happened and who might be to culprit is
• 2:00:15
  something you can derive
• 2:00:16
  from the data you're collecting.
• 2:00:18
  But but more importantly, as John was
• 2:00:21
  saying, even observatories that go off
• 2:00:24
  three, four, 500 kilometers offshore,
• 2:00:26
  like the regional scale nodes in the US
• 2:00:29
  and Neptune Neptune Neptune Observatory
• 2:00:32
  at ocean works, Canada, you can now you
• 2:00:34
  can call that Neptune US now.
• 2:00:37
  I'm okay with you would be
• 2:00:39
  dead soon. They can't get me.
• 2:00:43
  Yeah, that's right. Yes. So so they only
• 2:00:46
  covering the coastal zone, as you could
• 2:00:48
  call it, right? They're going on the so
• 2:00:51
  far offshore and the Pacific Ocean is so
• 2:00:53
  large, I always think of that picture
• 2:00:55
  that Kate uses in her presentations about
• 2:00:58
  ocean works, Canada and
• 2:00:59
  why we're doing what we do.
• 2:01:01
  It's because you can actually project the
• 2:01:05
  earth and have a view of the earth that
• 2:01:08
  is almost entirely blue with just some
• 2:01:11
  edges of it covered in that's the Pacific
• 2:01:14
  Ocean view. Right, right.
• 2:01:15
  And, and you look at it and you see where
• 2:01:18
  we are. And even the Neptune observatory
• 2:01:20
  observatories cover very tiny fractions,
• 2:01:24
  just a few pixel screen. And so, because
• 2:01:28
  those telecommunication cables, the
• 2:01:30
  submarine communication cables go from
• 2:01:32
  continent to continent, they represent a
• 2:01:36
  huge opportunity to
• 2:01:37
  understand a lot more about the ocean.
• 2:01:54
  And of course, of interest in the seismic
• 2:01:57
  aspects to, you know, I
• 2:02:00
  was just seeing recently the
• 2:02:05
  the now and the future view of an
• 2:02:08
  understanding of the Earth crust with
• 2:02:11
  smart cables and today. And that's huge.
• 2:02:16
  We would we would learn so much more
• 2:02:18
  about how the Earth tectonic system
• 2:02:20
  works. If we had these smart cables with
• 2:02:23
  a number of sensors on them.
• 2:02:25
  You mean when?
• 2:02:26
  I mean, again, that's just a reminder. We
• 2:02:29
  want to position ourselves as a data
• 2:02:31
  delivery in that. Yeah, particularly
• 2:02:33
  because Ben was also part of a group
• 2:02:36
  that's advising on a telecommunication
• 2:02:39
  cable across the Arctic Ocean because of
• 2:02:41
  the concerns of our European friends of
• 2:02:46
  from a security perspective of relying on
• 2:02:49
  on telecom cables that are
• 2:02:51
  in areas of, you know, of war.
• 2:02:55
  Let's put it that way. And it's important
• 2:02:59
  for the audience to be reminded again
• 2:03:02
  that most almost all of our internet
• 2:03:04
  traffic is on telecommunication cables.
• 2:03:07
  Elon Musk is not saving us saving the
• 2:03:09
  world with the Starlink. It's the telecom
• 2:03:12
  communications. And so by piggybacking on
• 2:03:16
  these with sensors, we then begin to
• 2:03:19
  actually sense the whole planet.
• 2:03:21
  And Kate, can you also develop the idea
• 2:03:24
  that we're a little worried about a
• 2:03:26
  magnitude nine earthquake? Oh, yes, of
• 2:03:28
  course. I forgot it. Yeah. So so we've I
• 2:03:35
  wish in Canada and with with provincial
• 2:03:38
  funding installed an earthquake early
• 2:03:40
  warning system for the southwestern part
• 2:03:42
  of British Columbia, which is
• 2:03:44
  at risk of a magnitude nine.
• 2:03:44
  The last one was the anniversary was just
• 2:03:48
  a few days ago on January 26, 1700, where
• 2:03:52
  there was a magnitude nine that's
• 2:03:53
  estimated earthquake caused a giant
• 2:03:56
  tsunami that crossed the Pacific Ocean.
• 2:03:59
  And the reason we know about this, this
• 2:04:03
  this earthquake was because of the fact
• 2:04:06
  of tax records in Japan.
• 2:04:07
  All of a sudden, on one specific day,
• 2:04:11
  there were no more taxes collected in
• 2:04:12
  most of the coastal villages in Japan.
• 2:04:16
  But then because scientists knew that
• 2:04:17
  that happened, then they went back and
• 2:04:19
  started talking with indigenous
• 2:04:21
  communities here on this coast who had
• 2:04:23
  the stories in their in
• 2:04:25
  their their their storytelling.
• 2:04:26
  And so it was clear that the communities
• 2:04:28
  knew it well. And I need to just talk a
• 2:04:33
  little bit about what we were talking
• 2:04:34
  about earlier with our indigenous
• 2:04:36
  communities. So one of the things that
• 2:04:37
  we're doing at Ocean Networks Canada is
• 2:04:39
  developing data products that are unique
• 2:04:44
  for indigenous communities and Western
• 2:04:47
  Science, if you want to call it that.
• 2:04:48
  So when we we actually do inundation
• 2:04:51
  modeling of a magnitude nine, we've done
• 2:04:54
  most of the coastline of Vancouver
• 2:04:56
  Island, a lot a large part of the
• 2:04:58
  populated area of the
• 2:04:59
  mainland of British Columbia.
• 2:05:00
  We're now working on Douglas Channel. And
• 2:05:03
  when we finished our last inundation work
• 2:05:08
  in the northwestern part of Vancouver
• 2:05:10
  Island, our indigenous team went and
• 2:05:14
  interviewed the leaders and the chiefs of
• 2:05:17
  the First Nations along that coast and
• 2:05:19
  recorded their stories of tsunamis.
• 2:05:22
  And then that team, which is that which
• 2:05:26
  has a wonderful documentarian actually
• 2:05:29
  melded together. There are results of an
• 2:05:33
  inundation study, which
• 2:05:34
  are models of inundation.
• 2:05:36
  You know, how high is the water going to
• 2:05:37
  get in your community, explaining the
• 2:05:39
  science behind that and then melded that
• 2:05:41
  beautifully with the stories
• 2:05:43
  from these indigenous leaders.
• 2:05:44
  And then we went back to each of these
• 2:05:47
  communities and we showcased this
• 2:05:49
  documentary in libraries and schools in
• 2:05:52
  the villages. And the feedback we got was
• 2:05:55
  tremendous. It was that this is the kind
• 2:05:56
  of product we want. We
• 2:05:58
  don't want a five-stage report.
• 2:06:01
  And so that was our first step into
• 2:06:03
  really having truly meaningful two-eyed
• 2:06:07
  ways of seeing things like tsunamis.
• 2:06:11
  It's a very rich storytelling
• 2:06:13
  environment. This event was a battle, a
• 2:06:18
  well-known battle between Thunderbird and
• 2:06:21
  whale. And they fought and fought and
• 2:06:24
  fought. And that's the
• 2:06:25
  way it's accounted for.
• 2:06:26
  But villages that were 100 feet high were
• 2:06:31
  actually wiped out. And some of them talk
• 2:06:35
  about waves that actually crossed much of
• 2:06:38
  the Olympic Peninsula. It's just an
• 2:06:44
  astonishing set of stories.
• 2:06:46
  And sadly, not very much of this goes on
• 2:06:52
  in the United States, but I'm thrilled
• 2:06:54
  that it's happening in Canada. I think I
• 2:06:58
  was thinking maybe there are nine
• 2:07:00
  provinces in Canada. Why not make the
• 2:07:04
  United States the 10th?
• 2:07:07
  You're welcome, Washington. Yeah, but let
• 2:07:10
  me just put a plug in for the
• 2:07:11
  documentary. It's on YouTube. It's called
• 2:07:12
  "Sunami the 11th Relative", which is the
• 2:07:15
  First Nations called the
• 2:07:17
  "Sunami the 11th Relative".
• 2:07:18
  Yeah, we'll definitely link to that in
• 2:07:21
  the show notes for sure. Yeah, listen,
• 2:07:24
  this has been a phenomenal episode
• 2:07:25
  already. And I know we could probably go
• 2:07:29
  on for hours to be able to talk about all
• 2:07:31
  the different things that the ONC has
• 2:07:33
  done and will continue to do and continue
• 2:07:35
  to adapt to new different ways of
• 2:07:38
  understanding the ocean with new
• 2:07:40
  different ways of learning about data and
• 2:07:42
  managing data and so forth.
• 2:07:42
  I want to thank all three of you for
• 2:07:45
  joining me today on this on this episode
• 2:07:47
  because I know my audience is very
• 2:07:50
  hopeful in the types of understanding
• 2:07:51
  that we can have in the future and that
• 2:07:54
  we've already had from the data and to
• 2:07:56
  see how all these these networks of
• 2:07:58
  cables have been able to expand to
• 2:08:00
  different communities, not only in
• 2:08:02
  Canada, but
• 2:08:02
  Antarctica and other countries.
• 2:08:03
  I think it's it's phenomenal to to be
• 2:08:06
  able to see that gives me a lot of hope
• 2:08:07
  for our future and being able to
• 2:08:09
  understand what's happening and have
• 2:08:11
  early detection systems and and so forth.
• 2:08:14
  So I want to thank all of you for not
• 2:08:16
  only your contributions, but for coming
• 2:08:17
  on the episode today and telling our
• 2:08:19
  audience. Thank you so much.
• 2:08:20
  Thank you.
• 2:08:22
  Andrew, if I can give you a gift back.
• 2:08:24
  Yes, please.
• 2:08:25
  You're doing this. It's from it's a note
• 2:08:28
  to you from TS Eliot.
• 2:08:30
  Okay.
• 2:08:31
  It's from four quartets.
• 2:08:33
  We shall not cease from exploration and
• 2:08:36
  the end of all our exploring will be to
• 2:08:38
  arrive where we started and know the
• 2:08:40
  place for the first time.
• 2:08:42
  Arrived through the unknown remembered
• 2:08:44
  gate where the last of Earth left to
• 2:08:46
  discover is that which was the beginning
• 2:08:48
  at the source of the longest river, the
• 2:08:53
  voice of a hidden waterfall, not known
• 2:08:56
  because not look for but heard half heard
• 2:08:59
  between two waves of the sea.
• 2:09:03
  That's a nice. Thank you
• 2:09:06
  so much. That's awesome.
• 2:09:09
  There's there's a lot more to that, but
• 2:09:11
  it's I recently went to a ceremony at
• 2:09:15
  Annapolis where they devoted an entire
• 2:09:19
  ceremony to naming a new ship for one of
• 2:09:22
  our colleagues, Don Walsh, who dove into
• 2:09:25
  the Marianas trough in 1960.
• 2:09:28
  Wow. That was one of
• 2:09:29
  Don's favorite poems.
• 2:09:32
  Well, we appreciate that. Thank you so
• 2:09:34
  much for sharing that with us and sharing
• 2:09:37
  his contribution as well. We appreciate.
• 2:09:38
  Again, thank you to all three of you for
• 2:09:40
  joining us on the episode looking forward
• 2:09:42
  to diving deeper into to the ocean,
• 2:09:45
  Canada networks, ocean, Canada and being
• 2:09:48
  able to find out more about the wonderful
• 2:09:51
  projects that are
• 2:09:51
  happening there and the people.
• 2:09:53
  Thank you so much.
• 2:09:53
  Thanks for your work, Andrew.
• 2:09:54
  Bye. Thank you, Kate Benoit and John for
• 2:09:57
  joining me on today's episode of the how
• 2:09:59
  to protect the ocean podcast and to kick
• 2:10:01
  off the first episode of ocean numbers,
• 2:10:03
  Canada series, surfacing secrets explore
• 2:10:05
  the ocean, know the planet. Wow.
• 2:10:07
  It has been an eye opener to hear how out
• 2:10:10
  of the box idea of deep ocean cable
• 2:10:12
  observatories in the late 1990s have
• 2:10:14
  evolved into the state of the art
• 2:10:16
  observatories we have today. The spirit
• 2:10:18
  of adventure discovery
• 2:10:20
  innovation still persist at O and C.
• 2:10:22
  And I got to tell you, I'm super excited.
• 2:10:24
  This is something that I've been waiting
• 2:10:25
  for for a long time. I'm so excited to
• 2:10:27
  dive in deeper, not just to one episode,
• 2:10:30
  but to do multiple episodes and the next
• 2:10:32
  episode of surfacing secrets, explore the
• 2:10:34
  ocean, know the planet.
• 2:10:34
  We get to meet engineers and a deep sea
• 2:10:37
  robot operator involved in ocean network,
• 2:10:39
  Canada's expeditions to maintain their
• 2:10:41
  deep sea observatories off the coast of
• 2:10:43
  British Columbia. And according to Kate
• 2:10:44
  Moran, it's pretty complicated work.
• 2:10:46
  Here's another clip for the World Ocean
• 2:10:48
  Council's ocean titans film.
• 2:10:50
  Ocean Networks Canada really is an ocean
• 2:10:53
  data and technology powerhouse. We
• 2:10:55
  install high tech sensors. We're now
• 2:10:58
  operating over 12,000 of those sensors
• 2:11:00
  that deliver data in real time and it's
• 2:11:03
  available over the Internet to anyone in the world.
• 2:11:04
  And so we deliver this incredible
• 2:11:07
  technology with this team of engineers,
• 2:11:11
  scientists, technicians, data people, GIS
• 2:11:13
  people who work together to make that
• 2:11:16
  happen. And for those who don't know,
• 2:11:18
  it's harder to put sensors
• 2:11:19
  in the ocean than in space.
• 2:11:34
  So if you want to protect me directly,
• 2:11:35
  you can do so. You can DM me on
• 2:11:37
  Instagram. I'd be more than happy to
• 2:11:39
  answer you at how to protect the ocean.
• 2:11:41
  That's at how to protect the ocean. I
• 2:11:43
  want to thank you so much for joining me
• 2:11:44
  on today's episode of the how to protect
• 2:11:46
  the ocean podcast. I'm your host, Andrew
• 2:11:47
  Lewin. Have a great day. We'll talk to
• 2:11:48
  you next time and happy conservation.