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The Woman Who Saved Sushi (Advanced Program) · Spotlight English: Advanced

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  Welcome to Spotlight Advanced. I'm Bruce Gulland and I'm Megan Noolette. Spotlight uses
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  a special English method of broadcasting. It is easier for people to understand no
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  matter where in the world they live. A small woman stands on the edge
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  of a beach. It is on a coast in the United Kingdom. The
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  air smells of salt and mud, and the beach is full of rocks and
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  small pools of water. The woman wades through these pools. She is looking
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  for a small red plant called lava. It is a kind of seaweed.
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  Seaweed, like lava, grows in many countries. One species is very important
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  in Japan. There people make food out of it. They call it nori.
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  But the seaweed is mysterious. No one knows how it grows. This
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  woman's name is Kathleen Drew Baker. She has made it her goal to understand
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  this kind of seaweed. She is not being paid for studying seaweed. She
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  is doing it because she is interested. Most people would not care about her
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  work, but by studying seaweed, Kathleen Drew Baker will save a whole industry.
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  Today's Spotlight is on Kathleen Drew Baker. Kathleen Drew Baker was a scientist
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  and researcher from the United Kingdom. She was born in nineteen oh one.
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  She became a scientist when she was very young, and she was one of
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  the first women to teach at her university. But Drew Baker's life in science
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  was not easy. Although she was smart, it was hard for her to
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  lead in a science field. Susan hand Chetterly is a science writer. She
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  wrote about Drew Baker in her book The Seaweed Chronicles. She lived in a
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  time when women in science were not taken seriously if they chose to marry.
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  When she married, she was let go from her job. In time,
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  she returned to the university as a research assistant, but in the years between
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  she worked out of her own laboratory. Her husband, also a scientist,
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  built her the laboratory at their home. Drew Baker's university believed that she would
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  only be a mother and a wife, but she continued her studies even after
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  having two children. Drew Baker achieved many things in her life, but most
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  people know her for her work with nori. Nori is a very important crop
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  in Japan. The Japanese people have used it in food for over a thousand
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  years. They use it to flavor dishes. They create a paper from it
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  to make sushi and rice balls. But for a long time, no one
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  knew where nori came from. Nori did not have seeds like some plants.
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  Instead, farmers created nets that they would put in the water. The nori
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  would grow on the nets. In some years, the harvest was good.
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  In others, the harvest was bad. There was no way to control how
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  much nori farmers would get. Then, in the nineteen forties there was a
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  very bad harvest. Any More bad harvests followed several typhoons, A kind of
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  strong storm hit Japan. It killed a lot of the nori. Pollution killed
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  even more. Soon there was almost no norri at all. It had disappeared.
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  Kathleen drew Baker did not know this when she started studying seaweed. She
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  had never been to Japan. She did not even know the word nori.
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  She called the seaweed lever. Drew Baker was very interested in lava. She
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  noticed that it only seemed to grow during winter. It sent out spores in
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  order to grow more, but nothing would grow for a whole year. Where
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  did the spores go? And why could no one grow lava? After drew
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  baker experiment died with the seaweed. She gathered the plants from the shore.
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  Then she planted them in a big tank. She tried to discover what made
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  them grow, but she could never do it. She worked with labor for
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  almost nine years. One day, Drew Baker had an idea. She threw
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  some shells into the tank. The seaweed behaved as it normally did, but
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  soon she saw something grow on the shells. It was a red slime.
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  Drew Baker was disappointed. She believed that this was a different kind of plant
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  growing. She feared that her experiment was ruined. But she soon learned that
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  she was wrong. The red slime was labor. It was just a different
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  part of its life stage. During the summer, the labor grew as the
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  red slime on shells. It needed them to grow. They also protected the
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  plant from heat and rough seas. During the winter, labor would leave the
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  shells. It would grow high up so that it could reach the sun.
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  Drew Baker had finally discovered labor's secrets. This discovery was very important to Drew
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  Baker, but it was even more important than she knew at first. Shokichi
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  Segawa was a Japanese biologist. He studied underwater plant life, and he was
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  worried about nori disappearing. Then he heard about Drew Baker's discovery. He knew
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  that nori was very similar to lava, maybe it would grow in the same
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  way too. He filled a tank with nori and shells. Soon the same
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  red slime began to grow. Then the seaweed followed. Segua finally understood what
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  had happened to the norri. The strong storms had disturbed shells that the norri
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  grew on. Pollution made it hard for them to grow back. Was not
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  just the norri that had disappeared, it was the shellfish too. Soon others
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  began to grow norriy in tanks, and they took better care of shellfish in
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  growing areas. It took a long time, but the norri crop began to
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  recover. Farmers could control how much they grew, so more and more people
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  could eat norri. To day, the norri industry is very large. People
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  eat it all over the world, and the people who grow it still use
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  Kathleen Drew Baker's methods, but Drew Baker did not live to see her work
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  success. She made her discovery in nineteen forty nine and she died in nineteen
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  fifty seven. Her life was not an easy one. People did not accept
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  her. They dismissed her because she was a married woman. But she continued
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  doing what she loved and because of it, Kathleen Drew Baker saved an industry
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  today. Nori Farmer's honor Drew Baker's memory. In nineteen sixty three, they
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  made a statue for her in Uto City, Japan, and every April fourteenth
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  there is a celebration in her name. It is called the Mother of the
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  Sea Festival. Doctor John Rendall is one of Drew Baker's children. He visited
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  Japan and he spoke at the festival honoring his mother. My mother never knew
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  what an important change her work would bring about. She studied seaweed just to
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  know more about it. But without her work, the whole industry would be
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  gone. I do not know what my mother would think about it now.
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  She would be surprised what she did back then turned into a multi billion dollar
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  industry. But I do not think she would like sushi she was not very
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  adventurous when it came to food. Kathleen Drew Baker saw creation as an ordered
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  place for careful study. Confidence in her work allowed her to discover the secret
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  of Laver's growth. Her discovery allowed Japan to recover seaweed farming and benefit the
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  world of sushi. Have you ever eaten sushi? Do you enjoy the flavor
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  of sushi? We want to hear your thoughts. You can leave a comment
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  on our website at www dot Spotlight English dot com. You can also find
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  us on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. The writer of this
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  program was Dan Chrisman. The producer was Megio Ozaki. The voices you heard
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  were from the United Kingdom and the United States. All quotes were adapted for
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  this program and voiced by Spotlight. This program is called The Woman Who Saved
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  Sushi. Visit our website to download our free official app for Android and Apple
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  devices. We hope you can join us again for the next Spotlight program. Goodbye,