This week on the SHIPSHAPE Podcast, we have a special guest, Dr. Adrienne Copeland, a physical scientist at NOAA. She shares her insights on the vast unexplored areas of the ocean and the exciting discoveries yet to come. Join us as she highlights NOAA’s groundbreaking role in advancing ocean exploration using state-of-the-art technology and innovative approaches. From remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) to autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), NOAA’s Office of Ocean Exploration and Research is exploring the deep sea and uncovering new species, habitats and geological features.

Listen in as Dr. Copeland delves into the unique multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approach used by NOAA, where scientists from various fields such as geologists, biologists and oceanographers come together to gain a comprehensive understanding of the ocean and its processes. Discover how NOAA is making ocean exploration more accessible to the public through live video feeds and social media, educating and engaging the public on ocean conservation efforts. Tune in to the SHIPSHAPE Podcast to hear more from Dr. Copeland on the groundbreaking work of NOAA in ocean exploration.

NOAA Ocean Exploration

Brought to you by SHIPSHAPE

Transcript—–

Farah [00:00:07] Hello and welcome to the Shipshape Podcast, a series of podcasts where we meet amazing people and talk about their experiences, personal, technical and all related to the maritime world. Come and dive in. Dive in, Dive in.

 

Merrill [00:00:42] Today on the Shipshape podcast, we have Dr. Adrianne Copeland. She’s a physical scientist at NOAA or the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Your co-host today are Meryl Charette. I’m a live aboard on a tasking, Tashiba, 36, in Boston, Massachusetts. And Fara.

 

Farah [00:01:00] Hi. Welcome to the show, Adrianne.

 

Adrianne [00:01:03] Thanks for having.

 

Merrill [00:01:03] Me. So where are you recording this from?

 

Adrianne [00:01:06] I’m in Silver Spring, Maryland.

 

Merrill [00:01:07] How’s the weather out there these days?

 

Adrianne [00:01:09] It’s a little chilly today. We’re in the forties.

 

Merrill [00:01:11] At least it’s not as bad as Boston right now. So what exactly is a physical scientist?

 

Adrianne [00:01:20] Yeah, that’s a great question. So I work with, like you said, Noah Ocean exploration. And as a scientist, my job is to go out and explore the ocean. I specifically look at the biology that’s within the water column, and that’s the animals that are in the water from the surface to the seafloor. But I also am the program manager for a competitive grants program. So we work with external community to help fund projects that are focused on ocean exploration or technology innovation when it comes to exploring the ocean.

 

Farah [00:01:49] Sounds amazing.

 

Adrianne [00:01:50] It must be really fun.

 

Farah [00:01:51] Wow. I can imagine. It must be something new every single day.

 

Adrianne [00:01:54] There is. And that is why I love my job. There’s something new and exciting every day. I think most of the world knows now that we know more about the surface of the moon than we do about our deep oceans. So every time we go out with our exploratory vessel, we find something new, whether it’s a new species, a new behavior of an animal, or whether it’s a range expansions or an expansion of other species. And that’s why I like my job, because I feel like I’m constantly learning.

 

Merrill [00:02:20] So how long have you been part of Noah and where were you coming in from before?

 

Adrianne [00:02:26] Yeah, so I have been with Noah Ocean Exploration specifically since 2017, but prior to that I actually worked for Noah in Hawaii. So I worked at the Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center through the University of Hawaii starting in 2013. But I actually have been doing maritime or marine research since 2009 in Hawaii, where I got my Ph.D. from the University of Hawaii. Exploring the animals in the ocean, using acoustics.

 

Farah [00:02:52] Using acoustics to say about that, that sounds fascinating.

 

Adrianne [00:02:57] Yeah. So I use both active and passive acoustics to explore animal behavior. So active acoustics is where we use. It’s basically a scientific fish finder and it has a very specific center frequency. And so we sound into the water column and then we look at the echoes that come back to see where the organisms are in the water. And so we’re able to study things like fish and other animals in the ocean using a very similar technology that you would see on fishing vessels. And then we also used passive acoustics. So many organisms in the ocean actually well sound. And so we can use the sound that they make to understand where they are and and their behavior. So many, for example, marine mammals, we use echolocation where they make clicks to search for food. And based on that, the type of clicks they’re making, we can actually identify what animal is making those sounds. So we we do both the passive and active acoustics to understand both where the organisms are and their behavior.

 

Farah [00:03:52] Wow. That is actually incredible. So fascinated by that. I’m going to ask you for more information definitely offline about that. That is amazing.

 

Merrill [00:04:00] So obviously, you’ve been doing some research when it comes to the ocean for some time, but what about the ocean really keeps you engaged in it?

 

Adrianne [00:04:09] Yeah, I think it’s really because it’s kind of the final frontier on earth, right? So we know a lot about land, animals and what’s there, but we really don’t know much about the ocean and we’re constantly learning. And I think that gets me really excited because I still learn so much each day, even though I’ve been doing this now for over 15 years. I think what also gets me really excited is there’s a lot of really interesting behaviors that I’ve seen, witnessed or things we stumbled upon. One of the really cool things I saw one time. So in 2017 we were on a ship, Oceana Explorer, which is our ocean exploration vessel, and it’s a 224 foot. That’s all that was actually an old Navy vessel was, I don’t know, Thiago’s vessel that was refitted for Noah in 2028. But we were on that vessel off Samoa, Western Samoa, and we had our remotely operated vehicle down exploring. And all of a sudden we turned the vehicle and we see this shrimp, mid-water shrimp. So it’s pretty small. And it had caught a mid-water fish that was over two times the size of the shrimp. And we didn’t know shrimp eat these fish. We thought the fish eat the shrimp. Right. Because it’s two times the size of the shrimp and it snatched it out of a water column and swimming with it, eating it real time, and then landed with it on the sea floor and started digging fish out of its stomach and eating the fish. Within the flesh. It was crazy. I had never seen this predatory behavior before, and it was really cool too, because the shrimp actually had eggs on its carapace so we could tell that that shrimp was a female. And so the female shrimp was swimming around with this giant fish eating both the fish and the fish within the fish. And the fish was still alive as it was eating. So you could see it like smacking around. And yeah, it was a really crazy behavior and I had no idea. Again, like all the scientists that were watching my feet of this video were shocked because we didn’t realize that these shrimp could eat this large fish.

 

Farah [00:06:05] My gosh. Okay. So, you know, you said you’ve had 15 years of experience. I have to ask, I mean, that’s an amazing amount of behavior that, you know, I didn’t know. I had no idea. I’m sure you had no idea as were as well this why you were so surprised. But I didn’t even know much about shrimp. Can you tell me about one animal that you have discovered that has just blown your mind and you just turned around, said, Oh, my God, this has been all worth it?

 

Adrianne [00:06:27] Yeah. So it’s actually it wasn’t an animal that I discovered. I will say we when we put our remotely operated vehicle down, we have multiple animals that stunt scientists like we have multiple taxonomists. So a scientist that studied kind of the morphology of animals and can tell you what it is. So we’ll usually have multiple taxonomists on a video call watching the live feed of our video and they’ll they’ll be able to identify real time what those organisms are. And we’ve had multiple gelatinous organisms, so jelly like organisms that we haven’t been able to identify and we’re still trying to. But I will take it back to actually an organism that I find really unique, and it’s called a lancet fish, and it’s this organism that sits in the water column. So again, from that surface to sea floor around like 300 meters or so. So it’s considered in what’s called the messed up logic. And so this is where there’s not very much light that transmits into the water column. And so this organism actually hangs out with its head facing the starfish vertically. And it’s a generalist feeder. So it kind of eats everything. And it’s one of the main bycatch species in the longline fishery in Hawaii. So we were kind of studying the the gut analysis or looking at the feeding behavior of this animal since it kind of eats everything. And the coolest thing I found is that the Lancet fish eats very slowly so it doesn’t digest its food very quickly. So you can actually look at the stomach contents and see organisms that are kind of museum quality specimens because they haven’t been fully digested. And it’s really interesting. So you can see things like catch at best, which are these fish with giant heads, or you can see things like amphipods, which are what actually, if you’ve ever seen the movie Aliens and Predators, Amphipods, the way they look is actually how they decided what to make the predator look like. Even though the amphipods probably the size of your fingernail, they turn that into a giant creepy creature. And so I think that’s a fun thing as you look at this scary organism, like the Lancet fish, and then you dissected and you look at that stomach and they have even more organisms inside, and you can get an idea of kind of how things feed on each other and the food web within the ocean. But I found that really interesting. And I think that’s the cool thing about the deep sea is there’s just tons of life down there that we’re still learning about. And they can feed into popular culture like Aliens and Predator or things like Finding Nemo with the England.

 

Farah [00:08:50] Findings.

 

Adrianne [00:08:51] Are always fun. Yeah.

 

Farah [00:08:52] So, so when you fight, for example, you find a new species or you’re identifying them. You said you’ve got a life. So to feed, so species can be identified as you go along, now you come across something that you can’t identify and then you examine it and you sort of given a label. What happens after that? How do you because obviously it’s almost like, you know, you patterned something. So now that animal has a name or that species has a name, do you share that information? How does the information get transferred across?

 

Adrianne [00:09:18] Yeah, that’s a great question. So one of the reasons why I really like the job I do is everything that we collect, all the information is publicly available, so all the data we collect is available within 90 days post expedition and anyone is allowed to access that. But, but yeah, most of the organisms we try to identify real time. So actually all our remotely operated vehicle dives are streamed live back to shore real time. And it’s not just scientists that follow along live to identify the organisms. We actually allow the public to follow along live with us as well. And if.

 

Farah [00:09:52] Oh yeah.

 

Adrianne [00:09:53] Yeah. So if folks ever want to watch some deep sea videos, they can go to our website, Ocean Explorer, dot, dot gov and follow along live with us too. But other than that, so if we can’t so we try real time. We we have a YouTube feed we try real time to identify them over that feed during that expedition. If we’re not able to, though, we do have scientists that will review the footage after the expedition to try to identify that if we still can’t do that, we do take samples of organisms. So for example, we’ve had some times where there’s a sponge that we couldn’t identify and we didn’t know what that species was. We took a little piece of the sponge and brought that back to the surface. And then scientists were able to do genetics or molecular tests on the sponge to try to identify how it’s related to other organisms.

 

Merrill [00:10:38] So when you go out on these expeditions, how often do you run into a species that you’ve never even seen before?

 

Adrianne [00:10:45] Oh, every time. No. Pretty much every. Yeah, pretty much every expedition. So my specialty is in the water column. And the water column? It’s the largest and least explored biome on the planet. So every time we put our remotely operated vehicle down into the water column, we see something new. It might not always be a new species, but it could be like a species. We didn’t expect to be there, or it could be a new behavior, Like I was talking about the predation earlier. So we we constantly are learning something new. It but it really depends on the expedition.

 

Merrill [00:11:17] What exactly is this water column? Can you explain that?

 

Adrianne [00:11:21] Yeah. So the water column is all the water from the surface to the seafloor. So it encompasses everything from the top. So where our vessel sits all the way down to the seafloor, and we’re looking at everything in there. We mostly focus our work on 200 meters and deeper. So over 600 feet. But we look all the way from 200 meters, all the way down to about 6000 meters. Even then, our remotely operated vehicle into the Marianas Trench at 6000 meters before.

 

Farah [00:11:51] So is this something you’ve always wanted to do, Adrian? I mean, for people listening, if they want to get into this, I mean, is this something you know, when you were in university, when you were studying, did you think, this is where I want to be?

 

Adrianne [00:12:01] I will admit I was that little girl that always did want to study the ocean and dolphins. But no, I actually I grew up in Washington state and everyone’s like Washington state on the ocean. So you’re right there. But I actually grew up in the desert of Washington State. So I was from eastern Washington, and we had the Columbia River there. So I did have water, but I was pretty far from the ocean. I was about a six hour drive, but I actually went to university there. So I went to Washington State University for undergrad and we didn’t have a marine biology program. So I got my bachelor’s in biology and I did a lot of research on actually ground squirrels and a single celled parasite that’s related to malaria. So things that were pretty far from marine mammals and marine biology. But I knew I was always really passionate about it. And I realized pretty quickly that tools are transferable. So I got a really strong toolset in biology and mathematics, and I was able to transfer that by getting my Ph.D. at the University of Hawaii and actually finally work in a marine system. So even though it was a different system, it was still kind of the same tools. I had gotten an undergrad and was able to translate it to the ocean.

 

Farah [00:13:15] This show was sponsored by Shipshape school.

 

Merrill [00:13:22] Ahoy, there we are. Shipshape Doctorow. The National Directory of Marine Repair and REFIT. We hope to be a valuable resource for all your boat or yacht repair needs. Your struggle to find the best marine service ends here with us. We provide you access to the largest database of marine service providers across the US. Whether you are looking for electricians, engine mechanics, welders, detailer, divers, or any other general contractors are easy to navigate. Categories help you save time and effort in finding the best service provider for the job wherever you may be. Look us up at WW w dot shipshape dot pro or send us an email at info at shipshape dot pro. We would love to hear from you.

 

Farah [00:14:14] Welcome back to the SHIPSHAPE podcast.

 

Merrill [00:14:17] Just sober a younger person that’s thinking about coming into, you know, your space. What would be some tips that you would give?

 

Adrianne [00:14:25] Yeah, I think diversify. So definitely don’t be just an expert in biology or engineering or math or physics, I will say so. I remember when I first started in grad school, I actually turned to my peachy advisor and I was like, Why did you actually accept me? I was like, I was 21 at the time. I had a bachelor. But you accepted me straight from a bachelor’s to a Ph.D. Like why? And he and he told me it was because of the fact that I had both a strong background in science and in math, and that both those skills that really were going to help me succeed in my graduate program. And he was right. And so I constantly tell undergrad students that having a biology degree is great, but can we also get some skill sets in mathematics or statistics or whatever, and vice versa? If you’re a great engineer, it’s also good to have some background in biology so you guys can speak the same language to each other. But I also think too is volunteering and internships. I actually ended up at now specifically by volunteering and grad school. I actually volunteered on an expedition in 2013 and that led to me getting a position actually down the road. So. So volunteering is always great if you’re able to do that. And then internships, I no, I actually have quite a bit of internships, not just for undergrads. They also have them for high school students, graduate students and even early careers. So definitely take a look at Noah or other agencies that offer internship opportunities.

 

Farah [00:15:57] And I’m fascinated by the fact that, you know, these expeditions that you’re doing with Noah, tell me. I mean, for the average person, we wouldn’t know exactly what an expedition entails. So how many people roughly go out do you need to be trained when you go out? Because obviously you’re going so far down, you’re going so deep into the sea. A lot of people get claustrophobic. What kind of extensive training do you need and is it that you actually can just sit on the surface and not really get your hands dirty or get involved? You know, could you walk us through an expedition, per se?

 

Adrianne [00:16:27] Yeah. So for our office, our expedition vessel is another ship, Oceanic Explorer, and that’s a 224 foot vessel. And that vessel, Scott, I think it’s four, four stories about. But on that vessel we have about 40 people on board. Of the 40 people are about 20 of them are going to be our officers and crew. So they’re the ones driving the ships. They’re making sure everything is working properly. They’re the ones in the engine room. They’re the ones deploying a lot of the equipment. They’re the ones making sure we follow all the rules and regulations. And then we also have the other 20 or so are going to be the mission personnel. So those are the ones that are actually doing the the mission for that expedition. So they’re the ones focused on the science or engineering side of things. So our our vessel usually goes out anywhere from about two weeks to about 30 or 40 days. It depends on the expedition and depends on where we’re pulling and out of port. But during that time, the mission personnel, which is where I would participate as a scientist, we’re the ones that are coordinating the science activities. So we will be working with the external community to get their guidance on where they think we should go and why. And then from there we have engineers as part of the mission team that are actually driving the remotely operated vehicle. So we all do sit on the sea surface in the vessel. We don’t leave the vessel and we send a robot down to go to the extreme pressures. And we don’t actually obviously dive there, but we are driving it all from the surface and deploying equipment from the surface.

 

Farah [00:17:59] So extensive amount of work and knowledge and technical knowhow goes into one of every expedition is probably do you do you have to pace it. So like we’ll do one every two weeks or they’re quite frequent because there’s a lot of people involved. Yeah.

 

Adrianne [00:18:12] So we typically start our season about May time and our expeditions go until about November, December time, and then we go into a winter drydock period or a repair period, not always a dry dock. So right now we are in port doing our repair period off California coast, and then we’ll resume our expeditions off of California and we’ll be transiting actually all the way up to the Gulf of Alaska this year. And we’ll be. Wow, along the coast. Yep.

 

Merrill [00:18:40] As you had mentioned, the majority of the ocean is unexplored. So when you’re planning out these expeditions, I like to think there’s probably a little bit more science than just closing your eyes and pointing to somewhere on the map.

 

Adrianne [00:18:52] Yes. While I think that might work, too, now we do work with the community quite a bit to find out from them where they think that we should go. So the cool thing about ocean exploration and what we do is it really spans kind of all scientific disciplines. So while I focus on biology, we also have folks in geology or maritime archeology because we do. Underwater cultural heritage exploration. But we also work with folks that are engineers or other priorities. And so really we talk with all the relevant community members to ask them where they think we should go. And really, it’s from there, it’s kind of a ranking system. So if more people are telling us this area, then that will probably be a higher priority than other areas. Then we also have priorities from know us and specifically where we should go, especially when it comes to things like deep sea coral and sponge habitat.

 

Farah [00:19:44] Tell me one experience. You’ve had one expedition which was just monumental or something that you will never, ever forget in your 15 years.

 

Adrianne [00:19:53] Yeah, I think it was actually at the time I was the chief scientist on a privately owned vessel. So we were on this proposal off the island of Hawaii, and we were collecting information about the behavior of deep diving tooth whales. So we were looking specifically looking at the behavior of short fin pilot whales and sperm whales. And we wanted to understand their feeding behavior. So we wanted to understand where they were going and why. And so we were doing a project collecting information about what’s in the water. So we were using active acoustics to see the distribution of organisms. We had passive acoustics to identify where where the sperm whales and shark and pilot whales were. And then we also we were collecting environmental information about the temperature, the water, the salinity, all that information. And we kind of wanted to put that all together to do kind of a habitat map of where these animals were going. But I think the reason why this was so monumental to me is it was actually the first student run project that this this privately owned group nonprofit had ever had on board the vessel. So at that time, I had completed my master’s and I was a Ph.D. student and I was the chief scientist. And everyone on board that I had recruited that were scientists were all early career, as are current students. We didn’t have anyone that was a permanent, like decades worth of experience, professor on board. And so we really got to work together to come up with a science plan and push it forward. And the crew actually told us afterwards that it was one of their favorite projects that they had ever done. And I think that gave me a lot of a lot of joy to see kind of how we all came together and really pushed the needle forward and that resulted in multiple dissertation. So multiple people got use out of that project and we had some publications also that resulted from it. And I think another cool thing on that project too, is it wasn’t just scientists on board. I actually brought a videographer out on the cruise with us. Oh, wow. Yeah. And also a social scientist. So we weren’t just telling the science story. We were also telling the story about the people and also communicating that in various different mediums. So it wasn’t just us writing about it or just us talking about it. We also did video blogs and other ways to kind of tell the story, which really kind of showed me how important it is to communicate out what you’re doing and do it in a way that people can relate to you.

 

Farah [00:22:17] Absolutely. And that’s so many layers, doesn’t it? It’s absolutely fantastic because you’re able to reach so many people in different ways, in different mediums.

 

Merrill [00:22:24] One of the things that you said was that it was a private yacht, and I have read in online that some super yachts are actually starting to reach out to exploration groups in order to basically learn things. I mean, how often does that happen?

 

Adrianne [00:22:40] Yeah, So sadly, it’s not as much as I would like it to because I think there’s a lot of vessels that go to places that are unexplored that we don’t have information from. And it would be great to have more that are vessels of opportunity. But we have actually worked with industry in the past. We did have a company specifically reach out to us because they had a wealth of data about the depth of the seafloor. So right now we’re working really hard to map the seafloor. So that way we understand the depths of everything and we’re able to get a clear picture of what our ocean looks like, right? And so we did have an industry company reach out to us, and they had a lot of data about a lot of mapping data about the seafloor depths. And so we were actually able to work with them to get that data into the archives. So that way it’s publicly accessible and we have access to that information. And so that way we’re not duplicating effort because that’s really the key is there’s a lot of there’s a big ocean out there, right? And you really want to work together to help explore it.

 

Farah [00:23:37] Have things become more difficult given the fact that the climate change, you know, this global warming, there’s all of this happening and you’ve got pollution, how is it impacted what you see in the water columns?

 

Adrianne [00:23:50] Yeah. So I think really the key with what we do is getting that baseline understanding, right? If you don’t have that baseline understanding what is there, then you don’t know how things are going to change. And so I think that’s really important. But I will say, you touched on the marine debris and the plastics and stuff, and it’s sad to say, but everywhere we do go, we do a lot of times, at least on one dive or so, we do see some Marine. I think people have seen the viral photo of trash in the Mariana Trench and and stuff like that. So. So unfortunately, we do see pollution even at the deepest stops. But those are things that we definitely should be aware of. And it’s things that we can continue to monitor moving forward.

 

Merrill [00:24:31] What are some of the most pressing challenges that you guys are currently facing with Noah?

 

Adrianne [00:24:36] I think that the ocean is bad now. No, I think it definitely is. And pressing challenges are we are prioritizing where we should go. And once we get there, all collecting all the information we can. So I think that’s the hard part because again, the ocean is vast. And while we mostly focus in waters that are under U.S. jurisdiction, that’s still a very big area. And so we still need to find out what is there.

 

Farah [00:25:01] So do sort of like a case study. So, for example, you go to one location once and then after say, five years, have an impact and try and go back again and see if there’s been any developments or any changes.

 

Adrianne [00:25:11] So we actually rely on our partners to do a lot of that. So we do that kind of initial first look, and then we’ll work with colleagues that will actually go back and do repeated studies, especially in areas that are of particular interest, especially when it comes to things like deep sea coral and sponges like those are our priority because they are critical habitat. And so a lot of times that those areas we’ll work with partners across Noah that will go back to those areas to reassess and see how things are doing.

 

Farah [00:25:38] Okay, that’s amazing. So you can keep an eye on any new developments and you’re able to actually do the knowledge share with you as well. Is there information locally available or to the public like NOAA’s?

 

Adrianne [00:25:50] Yeah. So everything that Noah collects is publicly available and really any government agency in the United States. So any data that the United States government collects is publicly available. But most scientists, especially the ones we work with, are very collaborative and want to share information. And so they do share a lot of that information. And we partner kind of across all sectors, whether it’s academic, industry, nonprofit, etc..

 

Farah [00:26:16] So has this made you? Have you ever been tempted to be a liveaboard because of your love for the ocean? Do you suddenly feel like maybe I should just move live in the ocean, get a boat?

 

Adrianne [00:26:26] Honestly, I was tempted, so. And I lived. So I lived in Hawaii for eight years before moving to the East coast and Hawaii. Rent is very expensive and getting a dock flip was actually not that expensive. So I was very tempted to own a vessel and to be a liveaboard. And actually growing up when I was really young, my parents had a sailing boat that we lived on, so I had done it before. While I don’t really remember as a child, but I had technically done it before, so I thought about it, but then it just didn’t make sense at the time. And I do know how costly repairs of sailing boats are. So but I was telling Mero earlier, I do have a sailing license in the U.S. so I have taken small boats out. But I think at this point I do like my heater and the cold weather on the East Coast and and being indoors, but it’s a little warmer versus maybe on a vessel.

 

Merrill [00:27:18] So in your opinion, what are some of the most important issues that we should be paying attention to in the field of ocean and atmospheric science?

 

Adrianne [00:27:27] Yeah, that’s a great question. I think probably that things are changing and I think if we don’t understand the baseline and what is there, we won’t know how things will change and what is changing. And I think that’s really what I’ve learned in this position is that we still do not know everything about the ocean. We don’t know all the species that are there, all the animals. We don’t know really how things will change. So I think if you don’t understand what’s there and how the animals react to different situations, we won’t understand how they could change moving forward. And so I think that’s really important.

 

Merrill [00:28:02] How does Noa involve stakeholders of, you know, the local communities or industry groups when, you know, doing research?

 

Adrianne [00:28:10] Yeah, that’s a really great question to sell for that. We actually will survey the various stakeholders before we even start planning for a project. So technically the way we do that is will either send out emails where we ask folks to, we give them actually a map and we ask folks to put on the map where areas of interest. But we also go in person too, because email is not always the best way to get in touch with people. So a lot of times you will even go in person to the various communities and let them know that in the future we’re planning this project, whereas areas that are of interest to them and then they participate throughout the process too. So it’s not just us telling them upfront, like this is our plan. We ask them where they think we should go and then we invite them along with us. And so we share all the information and all our links to all the video real time so they can participate with us. And then after the fact, we follow up with the data afterwards too. So it’s kind of a whole process start to finish of involving everyone kind of throughout the whole process.

 

Merrill [00:29:11] Well, as you have mentioned. Multiple times. The research is, you know, put out to the public. But how do you guys ensure that the information is accurate and easy to understand?

 

Adrianne [00:29:22] Yeah, we have a really great comms team, a communications team that helps with that. So we can’t do it alone. So I am a scientist and arguably scientists aren’t always the best communicators, so I really rely on folks that have the degrees in communications or the social scientists to really help me translate the information in a way that people can understand that taking getting rid of the jargon and getting rid of the acronyms. We in government love acronyms, but that’s not the best for the public, right? So really working with the folks that are experts in this to put it into a way that people can understand. So we have a great communications team. We have web developers, we have graphic designers, we have social scientists that really help us translate the information into a way that everyone can understand it.

 

Farah [00:30:10] Have there been any sort of expeditions that you feel have received a massive amount of response from the public that you’ve, you know, put out there and you’ve received lots of feedback on?

 

Adrianne [00:30:20] I feel like our maritime archeology dives always get the most attention because they’re really exciting. I was actually on an expedition in the Gulf of Mexico, I think it was in 2019, and we were doing it was just a project to what’s called what’s called a shakedown, where we’re working to just update all our systems, make sure they’re all working before we start out on our expedition season. And so we were out there just testing all our technology. I was out there to calibrate some of our scientific equipment to make sure it was running at the rate it needed to tip for the community. But we had our remotely operated vehicle down and we were just doing a test drive with the vehicle and that was it. And we put it down on this location that we had gotten from our our community members that thought they thought it would be a good coral and spongy area. So they asked us to go dive on this location. So we sent the remotely operated vehicle down and we saw a couple of these boulders, but they were very specific looking and they were just round rocks that looked like they kind of work half like that. It was interesting. And so we started following them because we were like, these seem very regular in shape and not like a regular thing that would be normally on the seafloor. And as we were following them, we realized they were ballast rocks from a maritime vessel that had sunk and we would have had no idea. We didn’t know it was there that we we just stumbled upon it and found this underwater wreck just happenstance by diving in that particular location. And and that happens sometimes on our vessel, which is really exciting. And sometimes we do go out specifically to look for a vessel that we have heard that folks think are in this area and they haven’t found it yet, but they think it’s there. But this in this particular instance, we actually stumbled upon it and that did receive some media attention and some public feedback, too, because, yeah, it was it was really exciting, but we had no idea it was there and no one did, and then we stumbled upon it.

 

Merrill [00:32:18] Have you found any treasure?

 

Adrianne [00:32:22] No. No, I have not.

 

Merrill [00:32:24] Well, getting into a stronger question. So you brought up how technology is basically responsible for all the information that we’re gathering. So how does Noah incorporate new technologies and how does it stay up to date?

 

Adrianne [00:32:38] Yeah, so that gets into the other hardware, which is the program manager for a competitive grants program. So with our grants program, we actually solicit proposal ideas for anything from ocean exploration to technology innovation to underwater cultural heritage. And this is the opportunity for anyone within a US based institution. So that could be academic industry, nonprofit. Pretty much anyone can propose ideas. And we’ve seen a lot of various things that have come through our technology innovation lens, and that’s really helped push the needle forward when it comes to developing new tools and technologies. We actually had a project that just wrapped up that was looking at so is using kind of soft grippers. So right now a remotely operated vehicle has this metal arm. It kind of looks like a claw. So if you’ve ever played the claw game where you’re trying to grab a stuffed animal from a coffee machine. So that’s like the arm of a remotely operated vehicle looks like. And as you can imagine from that claw game, it’s really hard to grab at things there. And we have really amazing remotely operated vehicle pilots that can I couldn’t but they can do it. But this new novel technology that we funded actually will take that arm off and put a soft gripper on it where it’s actually this bag that can kind of move and orientate themselves around an organism or around an animal or around something, allowing you to get better, grab of something and allowing it kind of to mold to whatever you’re trying to pick up. So instead of it being this giant claw thing that’s trying to get. That stuffed animal. It’s now actually a bag that can kind of cover that animal and pull it back up and sample it that way. So it makes it a lot easier. And these are things that come out of our our grant funding opportunities. It kind of allows different people to propose novel ideas, and then we provide seed funding for them to develop them.

 

Farah [00:34:33] That’s fascinating because I mean, the clock in at times things can just pass through the floor, right? I mean, this way, Yeah, almost sort of wrapping around it, which is fascinating. And it causes no damage then I’m assuming is possible in a way protecting the organism as well.

 

Adrianne [00:34:46] Exactly. Yeah. And with the clothing, normally we’re just snipping off a piece of coral or sponge. Right. And you can do that with that. But this allows you to actually, again, kind of encapsulate that organism.

 

Farah [00:34:57] And keep it safe. Makes sense.

 

Merrill [00:34:58] Well, we couldn’t leave you without bringing it up. The mysterious bloop. Can you talk about that?

 

Adrianne [00:35:05] I’d say so. That did the research of that did come out of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. And the expert actually from that is based at the Pacific, a marine environmental lab. And it was determined that the bloom actually was sea ice cracking. So it was less exciting than everyone thought originally, or maybe really exciting if you really are passionate about sea ice cracking. But yeah, no, it was the ice cracking.

 

Merrill [00:35:34] Hmm. Well, I’m glad that we figure that out. You know, how do you see your work with NOA impacting the broader community, both nationally and globally?

 

Adrianne [00:35:43] Yeah. So I think really, it’s the fact that we keep finding new things, right? I think that’s where it really comes in. So we find new species for science, we find new behaviors. We realize that certain animals can actually survive and in temperatures we didn’t think originally or survive in areas that maybe don’t have enough oxygen for other animals. And so getting that better understanding again, will help us to understand as these things change what will happen to those animals. So I think that is really in the larger context that helps us to better understand our ocean and that the ocean is everywhere. And so if we understand this portion here, hopefully that will translate to somewhere else in the world.

 

Farah [00:36:25] Is there one area on your list that you are really eager to explore with Noah?

 

Adrianne [00:36:30] He adds, Anywhere in the Pacific remote islands. So places like, for example, Johnson Atoll, we think could have a lot of biodiversity, so a lot of different animals in the water, but it’s really been underexplored. And so I would love to go there with the ship and see what’s there.

 

Merrill [00:36:46] Well, it would be a waste to not bring this up if there is any type of person that had a yacht that was interested in trying to, you know, be involved with exploration, how exactly where they go about getting older.

 

Adrianne [00:36:58] You know, if folks want to get in touch with us, they can go to our website, Ocean Explorer in Alaska, or follow us on Facebook. So we’re at Ocean Exploration Research on Facebook. We’re also on Twitter at Ocean Explorer, and we’re also on Instagram at Noah Ocean Exploration.

 

Merrill [00:37:17] So they would just reach out to you through their one of the How brilliant. So what next? Where do you see in the next years? Where do you see yourself being.

 

Adrianne [00:37:27] Yes. So our ship kind of goes all over. We were actually in the Atlantic Ocean from 2018 to 2022, and we just made the trek back to the West Coast. So our ship will be working along the West Coast in 2022 and throughout the next couple of years. So we’ll be starting in California, going up to Alaska, and then coming back down. And then we’ll be moving actually out to Hawaii and the Pacific remote Islands in the coming years. So really I’ll be focusing a lot of my work and the future in the Pacific Ocean.

 

Merrill [00:37:59] Oh, it’s amazing to hear all these exciting stories that you have shed some light on, Noah.

 

Adrianne [00:38:05] Well, thank you.

 

Farah [00:38:06] If you need a hand, Adrian, with an expedition. You know Marilyn and I are available.

 

Adrianne [00:38:11] I’ll be in touch.

 

Merrill [00:38:13] Well, thank you very much for coming on to the show. And.

 

Farah [00:38:17] Yeah, thank you for your time. It’s been fascinating.

 

Adrianne [00:38:20] Well, thank you all so much.

 

Farah [00:38:32] Check back every Tuesday for our latest episode and be sure to like, share and subscribe to ship shaped up for.