Surfacing Secrets: Mavericks and Visionaries

1:00:00 We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. Arrive through the unknown remembered gate where the last of earth left to discover as that which was the beginning. At the source of the longest river, the voice of a hidden waterfall, not known because not looked for, but heard, half heard, between two waves of the sea. Hey everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Lewin. This is the podcast where you find out what's happening with the ocean, how you can speak up for the ocean and what you can do to live for a better ocean by taking action.

1:00:40 Look, the ocean is a difficult thing to understand. It is so big, it is so vast. 70% of our planet's surface is the ocean, yet 5% of it has been explored. We need to know the ocean because it affects nearly everything on this planet. The ocean regulates the global climate system, the weather and even the amount of oxygen we have to breathe. Half of the world's oxygen production comes from the ocean. Most earthquakes occur in the ocean. So monitoring for seismic activity and tsunamis helps us prepare for these natural hazards. Understanding how the ocean is changing also helps us prepare for climate change impacts to ocean biodiversity and our own food security. However, it's really difficult to gather all that data if you don't have the infrastructure in place.

1:01:25 In comes Ocean Networks Canada or ONC for short. Canada's National Ocean Observatory. Today, ONC operates high tech cable observatories on the Pacific, Atlantic and Arctic coast of Canada and even in the Southern Ocean that provide live, continuous, and data about how the ocean is changing. But it wasn't always that way. In fact, up until 1990s, ocean science was done very differently. I'd like to share with you a clip from the World Ocean Council Ocean Titans film series called Beyond the Abyss Ocean Intelligence for a Sustainable Planet. In this film about the Ocean Networks Canada, it's president and CEO, Kate Moran explains how maverick scientists turn the idea of continuous real time ocean monitoring into a reality.

1:02:07 Ocean Networks Canada was founded by three mavericks in oceanography who decided that we needed to put sensors in the ocean so we could understand it in real time. Prior to Ocean Networks Canada, data was collected on ships here and there, one point at one time, and then the next day the ocean changes. So we couldn't get an understanding of the full picture of the ocean. University of Victoria professors, Emory is Verena to Nickliff and Chris Barnes were two of those founding visionaries of ONC 19 years ago. They were the directors of ONC's two major cable observatories off the west coast of British Columbia, Venus and Neptune. They were soon joined by other mavericks all driven by a spirit of adventure and discovery.

1:02:49 It's a bit of a dream of mine, not only to be joined by folks from Oceans Networks Canada on the podcast, but also to be able to kick off this new series, Surfacing Secrets, Explore the Ocean, Know the Planet. One episode a month for the next 12 months talking about the innovative work that's being done at Ocean Networks Canada and its partners. Today I am absolutely delighted to welcome three ocean science Mavericks to the podcast. Kate Moran, ONC's president CEO, Benoit Piran, ONC's corporate innovation and technology officer and a key architect behind the digital and physical infrastructure that makes ONC sensor, video and sound data accessible to anyone anywhere in the world.

1:03:31 And John Delaney, a professor emeritus from the University of Washington in the United States, one of the original Mavericks, an oceanographer whose early ideas about a cable network of deep ocean sensors helped revolutionize science today. Here is the interview with Kate Moran, Benoit Piran and John Delaney. Enjoy the interview and I will talk to you after. Hey Kate, hey Benoit, hey John, welcome to the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. Are you ready to talk about Ocean Networks Canada? We are. Absolutely. Wonderful. I am very, very excited about this. This has been on a bucket list of mine for quite some time to have not all, not only all three of you on the podcast, but to have a series where we can really dive deep into Ocean Networks Canada and find out more about how it came to be, what it's all about and what you have planned in the future and all the projects that we've done.

1:04:20 And I feel like one episode is not enough. So this is a kickoff of a series that we're going to do for this for this podcast, which I'm very, very excited to do and to meet all three of you to talk about the origins today of Ocean Networks Canada. I've seen a lot of videos. I've seen your careers as you've gone through and seeing it on on on not only the website, but on social media and so forth. And I've been very happy to be able to watch that. And now I get to talk to you. So this is a very huge. This is a huge pleasure for me. And we're going to get into all of how and see got together and became own see as it is today. But before we do, why don't we find out a little bit about yourself? So why don't you just let us know who you are and what you do. So Kate, we'll start off with you.

1:05:02 Well, sure. My name is Kate Moran. I'm president and CEO of Ocean Networks Canada. And I'm an ocean engineer oceanographer and I've been working in the ocean for my entire career. Happy to be here. Thanks for inviting us. You bet. And Benoit. Yeah. So my name is been appearing a corporate innovation and technology officer at Ocean Network Canada. Now I've been with Ocean Networks Canada and helping build the Neptune Observatory System in its data management since 2004. since 2004. I was born in Belgium. I lived in Germany supporting data management for astronomers for almost as long as I've been here at Ocean Works Canada.

1:05:50 And John. Yeah I'm a retired professor from the University of Washington School of Oceanography and I kind of started my career as a geologist mapping limestones in the Shenandoah Valley and then got a PhD at the University of Arizona and my first job and only job I ever had was working at the University of Washington and took the job in oceanography before I'd ever been to sea so it was a great eye-opener when I first went to sea in in 2020 or sorry 1980 had my first Alvin dive so since then I've been studying underwater volcanoes offshore here and around the world and I was involved in developing the fiber optic cable that goes out of Oregon across the Wanda Fuka tectonic plate as a complement to what ONZ has done in the Neptune program. You know you all have had such amazing careers even before you started with ONZ so I'd love to hear a little bit about how you just briefly how you all got started in your careers. Okay let's start with you you know you grew up in in Pittsburgh and you know being an ocean engineer was that always something on you on your mind is that always a dream of yours to do that or was

1:07:20 that something that changed throughout your academic career. Yeah well I actually grew up in eastern Pennsylvania but went went and took an engineering degree at the University of Pittsburgh and I I did that because of the fact that it was the beginning of Earth Day and when I was in high school and I was applying for University and my physics teacher whose name was I will always remember was Mr. Missle. He he said I should go into engineering and I didn't know what that was so I it was in the days when you wrote that wrote and got your catalogs and the University of Pittsburgh actually had environmental engineering as part of their curriculum so I applied there and was accepted so I was really interested in and the Earth at that time in terms of you know a clean Earth and all that kind of thing.

1:08:17 And then when I graduated I took a job working in environmental cleanup for a big company that made toilet paper and it made me crazy. I quit and I took advice from another professor of Pittsburgh to go to graduate school in ocean engineering in Rhode Island and I went to see for the first time in January of the first year I was there in the North Atlantic and got terribly seasick but fell in love with it. So that's how I guess. Do you do you still get seasick to this day? Well it's just you suggested the first day. Yeah. I you know I've developed a technique. You know, all teens don't lie down. Go out on deck a lot. Gotcha. Get the fresh air. Mm hmm. Yeah. Nice. Nice.

1:09:07 Okay. Ben, well, how about yourself? What really got you started to learning more and working more within the ocean coming from Belgium and moving and living in Germany for a bit? Well, my degree was in computer science. Okay. And so but but I had always had a very strong interest in the sciences and decided that I wanted to continue to support science and I was lucky enough to find a job with a large international organization in Europe that was meant to deliver telescopes to the astromechal community in the world. And so after a co-op term there, they decided to hire me, which was great.

1:09:53 And I started eventually long story short build the data management system for on the one hand the Hubble Space Telescope copy in Europe and then continuing on to building the local data archive for the European Southern Observatory, which was my employer. After a number of years, the family needed to change. I had essentially applied to positions here, a place that I already knew through my connections in astronomy. And I guess fate had it that I had two job offers here in Victoria in 2004, one of which was to either join the local observatory, which was good.

1:10:34 And the other one was to join the University of Victoria to start building the data management for this new nascent observatory that was going to be called Neptune. And you know, you still like to join things you knew and start from scratch. So this is what I decided to do. The rest is history. Starting something from scratch after having such a great career already was did you find it challenging in terms of coming one to a different country, different continent and then being able to start over not only from a family perspective, but also with this this new project? That was definitely a challenge. But I was I was ready for it, essentially. And yeah, it was it was not easy, perhaps more difficult than I anticipated initially due to a number of factors that I can go into a later stage if that's necessary.

1:11:30 But in the end, you know, I'm still very happy and proud of all the accomplishments that I made both in my previous career. And now, of course, I still with ocean networks, Canada. Yeah, I mean, it's a it's a phenomenal career if you if you ask me, just in terms of what you've been able to accomplish in such a short time. So it's that's that's amazing. John, how about yourself? You know, how did you how did you get started in terms of you kind of mentioned it a little bit before, but what really got you to wanting to work in the ocean? Well, I took a job in oceanography. That'll do it. Then it dawned on me that, well, perhaps I should go to sea. I was very fortunate to be invited by a fellow from Woods Hole named Bill Brian to go on a cruise that he and his colleagues had put together in the cane fracture zone somewhere between Bermuda and the Azores.

1:12:30 And we went and dredged rocks from the sea floor. It's a it's a not exactly a delicate instrument to dredge the sea floor. You right. It's a brutal act with a with a huge weight on the end of a long wire. But I loved it. I was just like Kate, it's been my first time and I had been working in a laboratory at Johnson Space Center before that. And before that, I had worked in the mining industry. I used to be an economic geologist, which should resonate with some of your Canadian colleagues.

1:13:13 Yes. I was looking for copper, lead, zinc, gold, silver, that type of thing. Right. But once I had taken the job at the University of Washington, I just and had gone to see on this one cruise in 1978. I never looked back. I never went back into a laboratory. I was better on the fantail shoveling rocks than I was twirling the dials on a secondary ion mass spectrometer, which is what I was doing. And so it just became I don't know, I just it just blossomed for me. And, and we, of course, in Seattle, you know, just south of Vancouver Island, we were close to the one to Fuka tectonic plate, but not very many people had been out there. So proposals to go out and literally dredge with a basically a gigantic chain bag, we dragged along the seafloor and picked up rocks.

1:14:12 And one of the rocks we picked up was in the endeavor segment of the one to Fuka Ridge, but it had two worms in it. It was not it was not lava. It was a chunk of sulfide. It was about something like 85 pounds actually came out. And Margaret Tyvee from Woods Hole actually did her master's thesis on those rocks. So that's when I first it's that's as close as I came to where these folks have taken last 35 years or more and have worked. It was in Canadian waters that one of the extensions of their cable goes to exactly that that hydrothermal vent field, which I spent a large fraction of my life studying.

1:15:02 I can I dream about it at night. It's true. It's really weird. If you've never had submarine hydrothermal system dreams, you've missed something. You haven't lived until you have those types of dreams. I get it. Now it's interesting to see all three of you come from such a diverse background to be able to work together. Obviously, you have a much larger team as well. But to be able to work and be able to come up with with a concept like this. John, you did a Ted talk in I believe it was in 2010. I think it was at Sylvia Earls Ted X talk if I remember correctly, you did a Ted talk talking about this system of basically a data observatory beneath the sea, but well beneath the sea that a lot of people weren't really thinking about at that time with the technology that was coming around.

1:15:57 Where did that thought come from and and and how did it go from just sort of a thought to something of what we see today? Well, the 2010 talk was on a ship in the Galapagos. It was a party as a party that Sylvia decided to have. And she gave her Ted talk in 2009 and somebody walked out of the audience and handed her a million dollar check and said, what do you want to do with it? Wow. And so she's a party on somebody else canceled and I was I was inserted at the last minute. Anyway, I had also lived in the Galapagos for six months back in 1972 70 and 72 inside the volcanoes.

1:16:44 That's when I first got wet my appetite, so to speak for volcanoes. But in I had started a program within the United States that was called the Ridge program. R I D G E, which is Ridge interdisciplinary global experiments with a call it much of colleagues. And we the goal was to study submarine hydrothermal systems and the active volcanic systems that supported them and and it was funded for a full 20 years by the National Science Foundation. So that was a lot of fun. But toward the I guess somewhere in the vicinity of 1991, I was at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San San Francisco and sitting in a bar with a guy named Alan Chave, who was part of this program.

1:17:41 And I was complaining about how hard it is to be in the submarine and look out the window, which is three or four inches thick and about as big around as that. Yeah. And not be able to touch the rocks because I've been field geologists. I was used to reaching and you can't you can see it, but you can't touch. And I guess, you know, the first time around your, you know, you and my first dives were in 4000 feet of 4000 meters. Wow. Water on on the Mid Atlantic Ridge and so. So I was complaining to him and he said, well, you know, there's something new going on at Bell Labs and it's called fiber optic cables and we have recently laid a cable across the Atlantic, which I think was called tat eight.

1:18:28 And and he said, and now they're getting rid of some of the old cables. Maybe we could pick one up and do something with it. And that was the beginning of the idea from my point of view. And so long story short, it's too late for a long story to be short. We finally got funds from the National Science Foundation and we committed ourselves to working very closely with our Canadian colleagues because my target was the one that took a tectonic plate and I think let's just turn the old thing into a laboratory. And so we spent a lot of time with our Canadian colleagues and we were about to launch things together and then 9 11 happened. Our budget collapsed and the Canadians got their money that same year with the proviso that they had to move ahead aggressively.

1:19:21 And sadly, the two programs diverged. We never got our money until 2009. So it took a long time. And so that's I'm hoping that I can capture the interest of Canadians to play together in a bigger sandbox than we have been individually. Yeah, I'm gonna stop there. There's a lot. You know, you ask an Irishman to tell a story and you really have to give him a time limit. I love it. I think it's great. I love it. Kate, just kind of continue on with that as as John was mentioning, you know, he's trying to build his program. It got delayed. But then the Canadian program happened. Was that money that that really birthed ONC at the time?

1:20:08 Well, I wasn't here at that time. So that was two I call I called John Delania Maverick and the two people that were here Mavericks, Marina, Toni Cliff, and Chris Barnes and both Chris and Verena were the recipients of funding, mostly Chris for the Neptune Canada at that time was called Neptune Canada. Right. And it was from a relatively new funding mechanism in Canada called the Canada Foundation for Innovation. And they developed a new program that was called the International Competition. And it was quite a rigorous competition. And Chris, through Chris's leadership, they won that award to basically build Neptune.

1:20:49 So that was and they got on with it. They moved ahead, worked with Alcatel and then arrived several or three years after in 2004. Is that right? Yeah, I guess it was part of the very first people to be hired for the Neptune Observatory establishment. Right. Yeah. And so that so that started the work of designing, engaging the science community to decide on sites where should the nodes go? Of course, John's dream came true when the Endeavor segment of the Wanda Fooker Ridge was part of the of this of the build for the Neptune Canada Observatory.

1:21:30 And then Verena was also in her Maverick way. I'm testing the technology by building in 2006 through somewhat separate funding, a smaller version of Neptune called Venus in installing the first cable in sandwich inlet in 2006 and basically demonstrating the concept that John thought of quite a number of years earlier. And then Venus expanded in 2008 into the Southern Sailor Sea. Some people call it the Strait of Georgia. And then at the end of 2009 when John's team finally got their money, Neptune was turned on. And so I arrived here in 2011 in September and I came here first and we took over Chris's position. Chris decided to retire as Neptune Canada director and I became first director of Neptune Canada. And then the following year I became president of Ocean Networks Canada.

1:22:31 Now to have this type of technology, not only between the US and Canada, but just for Canada to get that that funding as a Canadian scientist, we don't have a lot of funding in Canada to do ocean work. How important was this for not only the University of Victoria, but just for Canada in general to get this funding and to be able to lay these cables to be able to put this this technology in the water at a time. You know, where technology was really ramping up in terms of, you know, cell phones and computers and the miniaturization of computers and the power that we can hold. How important was that for for Canada?

1:23:14 Well, it was incredibly significant and I think the leadership of the University of Victoria was also part of the alignment of making this work at the time. The president of the University, David Turpin, an oceanographer in his own right took the chance to actually receive this money and start this build a risky, risky thing for a relatively small, great university. A relatively small university to take on and especially because in Canada, it's quite different than what what's in terms of how how funding supports these big infrastructure projects because in Canada, the University of Victoria essentially owns the infrastructure.

1:24:03 So that means the president and the he had to convince the board of governors and university to take on this risk. So in comparison in the United States, when the National Science Foundation invest in infrastructure, they have the backstop of the federal government in terms of, you know, replacements and support. So that was a really important aspect. I don't think if David had not been here making that case, you could imagine that that risk may have been too much to handle. So kudos to the University of Victoria for stepping up to the plate. But of course, when I arrived, there was a competition to provide operating funds for this infrastructure that was now built. So it was tempting was turned on 20 2009. And then Chris and the university scraped together to get money to operate it.

1:24:55 But there was a competition that's that was the proposal was due in September of 2011 when I arrived. And then that was really for four of Canada's major research infrastructures that have different name called major science initiatives. And to have an ocean program at the top of the scientific infrastructure game in Canada was huge. It meant that Canada was a player in oceanography in a major way. And so, you know, I arrived here. I was surprised I got the job. But I was happy to contribute at least I contributed one of the aspects of the proposal that I think has been very helpful. And I used to I used to be in the United States has to be the director of the ocean drilling program.

1:25:40 So I had a good understanding of big programs and the contracts, the risks associated with them. And so I asked to make sure that we included in that proposal, the fact that we could have a self insurance fund with the university. Because if we didn't have that when we have things that cause trials that take out our nodes, etc, we wouldn't have had money to to reinstall those things. So that was my big contribution to a proposal that had mostly been written. I would like to say that I was thrilled when they hired her. Oh, I can imagine she had a reputation of getting things done. Yeah, that's that's important. That's definitely important. But why like, you know, talking about the technology at the time you coming on and and being one of the first hires for for ONC and the Neptune and being able to put it, you know, in the state that that was in, you know, putting it online.

1:26:36 What was that like for you coming in on that and and your team to be able to to do that work? What were the what were the challenges that you faced when you when you first started? So when I first started, of course, this kit has explained Venus was in construction mode. Neptune just got their funding. And so we were in design mode and trying to figure out where where bits and pieces of equipment would be installed. And at the time there was little interest or little focus on the data that would be coming out of that, despite the fact that obviously and something that's apparent to everyone. But the main product of Ocean Networks Canada in our observatory is the data.

1:27:21 But to get good data, you need resources to to to not only talk to the instruments and through software and make these software packages, but also importantly to describe the data that would be coming from these instruments over many years. The description of these instruments, the description of their calibration and so on is essential to do good science without without that you are unable to understand those instruments. So there was a there was a culture shock whereby people who were interested in building these facilities like for an atomic life and her people and Chris Barnes and the people he hired at the time, they were so focused on the hardware aspects because that's what's visible.

1:28:07 That's what people are excited about. That's what's not been done before. And so convincing people like Verena and Chris that they these proposals for funding needed a significant dedication to the manpower that would lead the data side. That was a bit of a challenge. Eventually, thanks to the good understanding of Kate of the importance of that. We got the resources and today. We'll talk about that later probably. But today, a third of the staff of Ocean Networks Canada is dedicated to data. And so I think this this shows the importance of it.

1:28:47 But it's also the reward of having done that is such that we're we're considered as an example of best practices when it comes to managing data in science and particularly in the oceans. And I would like to add that we had the same battle at our side. We got plenty of money for hardware, but we had a struggle to manage and to strategize and the architecture for the data flow and the data use by the community. So that for some reason at that time, you know, hardware nuts and bolts was seemed like it was more important. I just want to inject one thing. And I, Andrew, forgive me for anything on my own, but I remember sitting at my desk.

1:29:39 There's there's an irony to this and it's for me a terrible irony. I was sitting at my desk in the mid 90s and I started thinking, if we're going to start a program, we need a name. And I started thinking Northeast, Northeast Pacific, Northeast Pacific Time Series, undersea network experiments. Jesus, that says new Neptune. And and so we we we just used it, you know, it just became what we used in the late 90s and early. And then when we started getting our money, some of the people that Kate had actually dealt with in Washington, D.C., but wisely moved to Canada to some extent to get away from decided that this Neptune business.

1:30:34 That sounds too much like John Delaney. We can't have that. Let's call it the regional scale nodes. So the name in the United States is called the regional scale nodes, which sounds like something like the bubonic plague from my point of view. But I am absolutely thrilled that Neptune in the hands of Kate actually became as elegant and as widespread and heavily used as it has. Well, I also think, too, when you start to use the name of planets and we there's that sort of that idea that's that's floating around that we know more about outer space than we do about most of the ocean, especially the deep ocean that if you name it after a planet, it's like you're just you're discovering a planet down underneath or discovering something new. That's how I take it anyway. When I when I hear, you know, like Neptune in Venus. So I like that.

1:31:28 There's a pithier way of saying that, Andrew. How's that? We know more about the moons behind than we know about the ocean's bottom. That's a new one for me. I like that. I like that a lot. I was getting clipped for sure. I'm on the data side. Absolutely. Because, you know, Ben was being humble. I mean, he actually I think there was pressure to actually hire a company to develop what now we call the digital infrastructure or oceans three. And Ben was pushed to make sure that it was built in house. And now we have moved to the stage in Canada that we're demonstrating to the other operators of major research infrastructure that it's not just the physical pieces.

1:32:23 It's that's part of the build. But it's what we call digital infrastructure. And so we now at Ocean Network Canada have a director of physical infrastructure and a director of digital infrastructure. And they have importance in terms of how we deliver for a wide range of stakeholders. Many of us appreciate what you did. Absolutely. Thank you. I saw the thread that represented a contract with a commercial company as being a potential open ended money pit. Oh, no. I had witnessed what had happened in the US with the Hubble Space Telescope.

1:33:04 They had hired companies at the time back in the 80s or the 80s that came to cost 30 million dollars US at the time. They had to scrap it off completely. Throw it away and start from scratch hiring their own people to get done what they needed done. And I had similar experience with the ocean drilling program and had to come in and basically save the day to get a data system up and running. So thank you, Ben. Yes, thank you, Ben. You're standing there. Now, you know, once everything is put together and we have the not only the hardware infrastructure, but the digital infrastructure as well and data started to flow in and we started to see the data.

1:33:48 I think you mentioned earlier, it was it was hard for people to take the data and do something with it. Was it was it difficult to get like disseminate the data? Was that the idea was this this, you know, this system was going to bring in data. I know a number of different scales and a number of different topics and disseminate it to, you know, the scientific community. Is it was that the idea or was it to hold it a little bit and just have people at University of Victoria and University of Washington and other universities that contributed money to it to be able to do it or was it available to everybody? So, I think there was a big decision from the get go that all the data would be available right away to anyone who wanted them. And because we have a cable that connects the instruments to shore, we could do that in real time.

1:34:36 Right. So, that was that was a basic principle. Whereas in astronomy where it came from, there was always this one year priority period for all the data that we did. We decided it was not going to be the case, except in extremely unusual circumstances that we would basically make the data openly available and it it revealed to be a modern approach that has been appreciated by even the funding agencies for sure, because they could see the multiplication and leveraging of the funds. They've devoted to these programs and make sure that being used by as many people as possible to maximize the return. So that was one of the challenges that we overcame right away. Another one, if I made it, I could mention is the fact.

1:35:28 Where it came from where again in astronomy, you build these large telescopes are way too big for any specific individual or even a university to own. They belong to the entire community. And so an individual astronomers is not allowed to operate it. You have to introduce what they called service observing. So you don't touch the dials, essentially. You define what you want to see observed. We give you you get a piece of time on the instrument and the data are collected and hopefully can go away and do your science.

1:36:10 So whereas that was already done in the 1980s for astronomy when it came to the ocean until basically 10 20 years ago now. The modus operandi for researchers was that they were going to see that we're going to take their equipments and the grad students with them. They were going to be going only in the summer because that's the only time that you could do anything in the northern hemisphere. And so we collected data, maybe transferred the data in the computer, put it in a drawer until you have time to look at it. And this culture was prevailing still at the time. And that's what another that was another challenge to convince people that no data management was important to maximize the science return.

1:37:05 So again, we had to face the culture shock. So this or the users had to face the culture shock that we were trying to try to impose on them because suddenly we were making it their disposal tool. And so that was going to be providing them a lot of new capabilities, but was also very much different from what they were used to deal with in the past. So another one of the challenges to overcome in my position at the time. There are a couple of others that are really important. One is graduate students who have a master's thesis to finish in a year or two. If they're using data that is flowing out the end of a garden hose to everyone in the world.

1:37:52 And so that was another cultural wrinkle within oceanography. And the third cultural wrinkle is that oceanography, unlike astronomy, most of the data in astronomy is one form or another wavelength. And so in oceanography, there's the physics of what you're studying, which comes in many forms. There's the chemistry of what you're studying, which comes in other forms and sloppy water type things. And so the complexity of oceanography compared to astronomy is I won't say it's greater or less, but it's very different.

1:38:47 And so you have all those tangible elements that in fact what Benoit referred to is many times chief scientists and their immediate acolytes would bring in the data home and not everybody got to look at it for as much as a decade, half a decade sometimes. And so the idea of having a constant somewhat endless flow of semi-infinite amount of information was a great shock. Shock. And I think Benoit was the pioneer. Yeah. And Kate's absolutely right. He is. You're way too modest.

1:39:30 Thanks. What I want to highlight as well, and I think you touched on another challenge that I wanted to raise at some point during this conversation as well, which is the diversity of types of data that would be coming from the observatory and that from a, I mean, leave the cultural alone now from a technological aspects from a techniques and level of effort perspective. The fact that we had to deal with so many different types of data, but also different types of instruments was in fact one of the big technical challenges, essentially something that would cost us because it takes a lot of labor to address.

1:40:15 Right. And we needed also to design the observatories and the data management system, the digital part of the of the initiative in a way that would allow for the existence of many, many different types of instruments that would change over time. That would evolve, that we would not make ourselves. Also we were the mercy of commercial companies that would build those and would decide to change the nature of on you. So we had to build a system that was really flexible and was able to evolve with instruments, change and support new types of systems.

1:40:57 And that's why today we have from simple temperature sensors all the way to 4K cameras streaming video to hydrophone streaming sounds from the oceans all the time. And on top of that, those fancy current measurement devices that produce matrices of tons of numbers all the time. So the structure of the data, their diversity and the constant change of techniques and technologies in these instruments is a challenge. And today we're, you know, we continue to witness changes in those techniques. So that's exciting. It keeps us alive.

1:41:42 Sure. Our job is not boring. That's, that's for sure. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Always always adapting right as one does. Let's talk. I love the talk about the infrastructure and the data that's coming in. Let's talk about some of the major projects that have come out that and discoveries that have come out from the data from from ONC. So, okay, you know, as someone who's obviously the CEO and president, what what highlights that you would like the people here on on the podcast to know about? In terms of what has come out of of the data and what projects have been really a highlight for you personally and for ONC.

1:42:23 Well, I think one of the most important aspects is now that we have we're a little bit long in the tooth in terms of the observatory, we're starting to get the time that the amount of time to enable us to understand the climate impacts on the ocean. Not that that's something that we want to herald, but it's really we we have to understand it to act. And so now we're actually seeing oxygen changes, temperature changes. And what's what I'm happy to say is that because of the fact that we have real time data, when there were almost like an earlier alert system change. So a couple of summers ago, we saw oxygen changing at one of our coastal sites that hadn't happened before that we knew of.

1:43:12 And so that then triggered a whole group of people to go out and capture more data to understand that. In fact, the low auction events that were common at that time in the offshore, the Pacific Northwest of the United States was now reaching Canada. So understanding these is really important to talk about climate change in a way that has impact. We also were able to monitor the impacts on the coastal zone during what was called the big heat or the warm blob. Yeah. And and that had economic impact in both the Canada and the United States. So these changes are not only the fact that we're seeing life forms moving into new environments, but in fact, it is an economic impact on the country.

1:44:01 So I'll just that has now led us to in our in our new strategic plan to we have three goals. And the third one is on on climate action. And so what we've now been moving towards I'm really proud of are coming up with with research areas to work on how we can remove CO2 from the atmosphere using ocean solutions. Not that we're advocating anything as an organization, but we're developing observations so that we can test these ideas, determine their efficacy, and then provide information that could value them based on the amount of carbon that's removed from the atmosphere. So that will be an important aspect of how we as a scientific community contribute to advancing these new technologies.

1:44:52 But I'm going to stop and just say one thing that everyone here at the organization is extremely proud of and that is the fact that we have starting in 2012 and it was I arrived as Neptune director early September 2011. I went to Ben when I said, there's this Canadian high Arctic research station that was announced by then Prime Minister, and two years before and there's nothing up there, we should put an observatory up there. Okay. And he said, Okay, so in 2012 we installed the first cable small cable observatory in Cambridge by Nunavut. And we were, we were not very we were being, you know, colonial in our ways. Yeah, that way.

1:45:39 And we put a sea ice sickness monitor on it. There's a company in Vancouver Island that measures sea ice thickness, because what they see I said there. And we learned that the community wanted to have that sea ice data showcased in the co op store, because they needed to know how thick the ice was to take the shortcut to the airport or go out and hunt on the ice. And it was like this big aha moment of we need to do this for other coastal indigenous communities and that set us on this path of much more humbly engaging with now almost 40 different coastal communities in Canada and delivering data that's here best introducably to Youth Science Ambassador, Mia Ottokiak from Cambridge Bay, Nunavut. She was there as a high school student when it was first installed. Graduated from high school, became one of the first students in her class that actually went into a science career in the government of Nunavut.

1:47:04 And then she was invited to the UN Decade Conference two years ago and actually made a speech about the importance of observing the ocean from her perspective in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut. So all of that, we're very proud of that and really happy that we can continue to do that. And I think that's a very, very important point that we perhaps can all make and that is a path forward would be to creatively merge the philosophies and attitudes of Indigenous people with cutting edge technology. Their philosophy and attitude was reverence for the environment that they lived in and supported them instead of what early on for sure was when the Europeans came to the new world. The goal was to get in, get rich and get out and care what they left behind.

1:48:00 So I think what Kate has pointed out is goes back to this cultural groundbreaking effort. There are many levels of this cultural point, but I think it's extremely important and I think Neptune Canada has certainly led the way in that effort and they deserve tremendous credit there. I don't know where that kind of credit comes from. I guess they continue to get funding. So that's kind of thin gruel compared to, you know, there should be a Nobel Prize for fiber optic cables. I'm kidding. Well, but I mean, there's a lot of challenges to to also put up cables in the Arctic, right? Like this is not, we're not talking about the friendliest environments to work in these. These have been often very difficult and challenging places to work in, obviously with climate change, helping that out in terms of making things a little easier to work there and be able to lay this type of cable. Was it a difficult thing to do to lay this fiber optic cable in the Arctic? Well, it's in a coastal environment. So it's a relatively simple, but certainly that we had to design it so that the challenge in these sea ice covered areas is that the land fast ice can take out the cable.

1:49:17 So we developed a technique to protect those cables. And in fact, last January, we we decided to go even further and we installed a coastal observatory in Antarctica. And we have developed our talk about our physical infrastructure team. They are amazing at developing these coastal observatories that are relatively easy to install, protected from sea ice, for example. And incredibly, they have incredibly developed innovative ways to maintain them. And that continues to improve over time, so much so that we are planning to install many more coastal observatories in Canada because Canada has the longest coastline in the world.

1:49:58 And most of it's in the Arctic and most of it's not very well understood. And so in addition to developing these coastal observatories, we have decided to move forward with developing systems to measure things like coastal radar, which is measuring surface currents that are renewable energy powered, compact, you can deploy them by helicopter so that we can begin to populate these areas of the Arctic with power systems and coastal radar, but possibly other other sensor systems to build up that presence in the Arctic to understand our own coastline. So those are the new things that are coming. I'll just come back to one other thing I'm proud of, and it stems back to somewhat of Benoit's background, and John's decision to name Neptune, you know, thinking about planets and space.

1:50:54 We also have a terrific physical operations team. In 2018, the high energy particle physics community knocked on our door out of the blue and said, we want to install a neutrino observatory, and we heard that you know how to put things in the water and make it work. And I was telling John about this this morning, and within eight months, we designed, built and installed a test neutrino observatory at our deepest location. And that has led that community now to secure funding to build probably the world's biggest neutrino observatory going forward. It will be similar to the neutrino observatory in Antarctica that that's owned by the US National Science Foundation called ice cube. And that's moving ahead a pace. And we're really proud of that.

1:51:40 Yeah. Because as we mentioned the diversity of data, there's every science in the ocean. So it's like crazy to call oceanography. It's every science in the ocean. Yeah. So that's what we're measuring for every, every one of those sciences we deliver data. But this is like, I mean, this is the technology that that we we know what we can do is just a matter of putting it into place and almost almost being there. And I think, yeah, a lot of a lot of funding. And I think that obviously that that's a big a big part of it. But if we're going to continue to explore the oceans as crucial as they are, we're going to need this 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 continue to bring that data to people on a regular on a regular basis. But what just from a from a data infrastructure standpoint and a digital infrastructure standpoint, what are some of the things that you're working on? And I think that's what we could expect to come up on the next on the next on the horizon. What does that said before, there's always something new coming up. And it's not coming from us. It's coming from the community of researchers who build new types of instruments. It's coming from industry who invents new methods to to collect data. And this is all very exciting. And so to me, what's going to be coming out for us in the next year to five years.

1:53:07 Is those new instruments that have a relationship with what is commonly called fiber sensing. You take a fiber optic and you shine a laser light very frequently, like hundreds of times per second. And in between the shots of light, you look at the look at the backscatter, you look at the reflections of this particular flash of light at every point along the fiber because of the impurities on the glass of the fiber, you are going to have these reflections. And if if you observe this, like a lot, a lot of times 100 sums per second, you can start building a concept of changes that occur in the fiber at a very fine resolution, meaning not only spatial resolution along the fiber length, but also the changes that occur along the fiber length, which could be up to 100 kilometers, but also sense very precisely the changes that occur to the fiber from when it's subjected to strain stresses, temperature changes and all that. So essentially you by continuous observing that in collecting this humongous amount of data, you can start mapping out along the fiber the changes that occur due to vibration, be they seismic or acoustic, or you can

1:54:43 get a sense of the temperature fluctuations over time. And you get this information multiple times per second, at every meter along that fiber. So you can imagine the data volume that will come out of it. Yeah, it's going to be orders of magnitude more than whatever we're dealing with today. And, and again, back to the culture clash with the community, they have to learn quickly now not only to deal with data 365 days a year, which is what observatories like Neptune and Venus and 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 community with we're going to have to help them dealing with the data volume by providing new tools. And so this is this continuous struggle as it were that not only we have to make people understand that there's data can come in continuously. It's going to be too much for anyone to work on. So we need to help them with new techniques such as data visualization systems. And more recently, again, these artificial intelligence machine learning systems that in principle should be able to help people detect what's in there and tell them what it is.

1:56:15 And because of our, our emphasis on digital infrastructure, we're trying to position ocean always Canada as a data provider for these systems, because we know they're coming. And we know that they're important, they'll be important for research. But of course, as you probably understand, they're also important for national security. So we want to be at the for a Canada wants to be at the forefront of delivering these kind of data for the research community. But at the same time, having those agreement agreements in place to protect the information that's needed for other types of information that the government needs. Yeah, this is an extremely important point. It's it's a very important point.

1:56:57 It's it's the absolute cutting edge right now for both the science and the technology and it's the idea that machine learning and artificial intelligence are actually being trained as part of our process now to digest this massive meal of data is very, very important. My, my small scale view, it would be nice if we could turn on the Canadian system and the US system. And then the ocean in between the two would have we would have resolution of whatever is going on in there, at least with regard to whales, maybe with regard to earthquakes.

1:57:39 Not sure how the two would work together. But if we could get to that point, that would be just very, very exciting closure to what sadly started with 911 when we parted company and and haven't worked as smoothly and well together as the original vision was in both groups necessarily and understand we had to go their separate ways. Right. But with the unity of this, this idea and the idea that the kids might cut new ground in terms of managing the data as well as making it available, making the products available.

1:58:23 That's really exciting. Yeah, it is kind of kick this back to the global network of fiber optic cables is something like 100 1.5 million kilometers on the sea floor. If all of that could be used with this kind of resolution and frequency and presence, the awareness of what goes on on the planet at the global scale would be phenomenal. And I don't know, you have to address whether or not that's even feasible because a lot of people who own these cables don't want anybody else messing with them. They want to own it entirely. Right. Yes. And it's a good segue. One of my projects right now is to be part of this so called smart cable initiative that try to promote the use of of new but also existing cables for ocean sensing taking advantage and leveraging these 1.4 million kilometers, as you say, of cable that that already exists.

1:59:26 And those doubling of that that will probably exist in the next 10 years. And so, yes, it's a challenge. But but I think because these techniques that I was describing the use of the use of fiber sensing can be also seen as a cable protection system because you then understand what's happening in your cable like, like, for example, there's a new cable. For example, there's there's an anchor drag that's approaching the cable and could be cut like any minute now. Then you kind of pre-warned. It doesn't mean you can stop anything from happening, but at least you can trace back not only where it happens when it happened and who might be to culprit is something you can derive from the data you're collecting.

2:00:18 But but more importantly, as John was saying, even observatories that go off three, four, 500 kilometers offshore, like the regional scale nodes in the US and Neptune Neptune Neptune Observatory at ocean works, Canada, you can now you can call that Neptune US now. I'm okay with you would be dead soon. They can't get me. Yeah, that's right. Yes. So so they only covering the coastal zone, as you could call it, right? They're going on the so far offshore and the Pacific Ocean is so large, I always think of that picture that Kate uses in her presentations about ocean works, Canada and why we're doing what we do.

2:01:01 It's because you can actually project the earth and have a view of the earth that is almost entirely blue with just some edges of it covered in that's the Pacific Ocean view. Right, right. And, and you look at it and you see where we are. And even the Neptune observatory observatories cover very tiny fractions, just a few pixel screen. And so, because those telecommunication cables, the submarine communication cables go from continent to continent, they represent a huge opportunity to understand a lot more about the ocean.

2:01:54 And of course, of interest in the seismic aspects to, you know, I was just seeing recently the the now and the future view of an understanding of the Earth crust with smart cables and today. And that's huge. We would we would learn so much more about how the Earth tectonic system works. If we had these smart cables with a number of sensors on them. You mean when? I mean, again, that's just a reminder. We want to position ourselves as a data delivery in that. Yeah, particularly because Ben was also part of a group that's advising on a telecommunication cable across the Arctic Ocean because of the concerns of our European friends of from a security perspective of relying on on telecom cables that are in areas of, you know, of war.

2:02:55 Let's put it that way. And it's important for the audience to be reminded again that most almost all of our internet traffic is on telecommunication cables. Elon Musk is not saving us saving the world with the Starlink. It's the telecom communications. And so by piggybacking on these with sensors, we then begin to actually sense the whole planet. And Kate, can you also develop the idea that we're a little worried about a magnitude nine earthquake? Oh, yes, of course. I forgot it. Yeah. So so we've I wish in Canada and with with provincial funding installed an earthquake early warning system for the southwestern part of British Columbia, which is at risk of a magnitude nine.

2:03:44 The last one was the anniversary was just a few days ago on January 26, 1700, where there was a magnitude nine that's estimated earthquake caused a giant tsunami that crossed the Pacific Ocean. And the reason we know about this, this this earthquake was because of the fact of tax records in Japan. All of a sudden, on one specific day, there were no more taxes collected in most of the coastal villages in Japan. But then because scientists knew that that happened, then they went back and started talking with indigenous communities here on this coast who had the stories in their in their their their storytelling.

2:04:26 And so it was clear that the communities knew it well. And I need to just talk a little bit about what we were talking about earlier with our indigenous communities. So one of the things that we're doing at Ocean Networks Canada is developing data products that are unique for indigenous communities and Western Science, if you want to call it that. So when we we actually do inundation modeling of a magnitude nine, we've done most of the coastline of Vancouver Island, a lot a large part of the populated area of the mainland of British Columbia. We're now working on Douglas Channel. And when we finished our last inundation work in the northwestern part of Vancouver Island, our indigenous team went and interviewed the leaders and the chiefs of the First Nations along that coast and recorded their stories of tsunamis.

2:05:22 And then that team, which is that which has a wonderful documentarian actually melded together. There are results of an inundation study, which are models of inundation. You know, how high is the water going to get in your community, explaining the science behind that and then melded that beautifully with the stories from these indigenous leaders. And then we went back to each of these communities and we showcased this documentary in libraries and schools in the villages. And the feedback we got was tremendous. It was that this is the kind of product we want. We don't want a five-stage report. And so that was our first step into really having truly meaningful two-eyed ways of seeing things like tsunamis.

2:06:11 It's a very rich storytelling environment. This event was a battle, a well-known battle between Thunderbird and whale. And they fought and fought and fought. And that's the way it's accounted for. But villages that were 100 feet high were actually wiped out. And some of them talk about waves that actually crossed much of the Olympic Peninsula. It's just an astonishing set of stories. And sadly, not very much of this goes on in the United States, but I'm thrilled that it's happening in Canada. I think I was thinking maybe there are nine provinces in Canada. Why not make the United States the 10th?

2:07:07 You're welcome, Washington. Yeah, but let me just put a plug in for the documentary. It's on YouTube. It's called "Sunami the 11th Relative", which is the First Nations called the "Sunami the 11th Relative". Yeah, we'll definitely link to that in the show notes for sure. Yeah, listen, this has been a phenomenal episode already. And I know we could probably go on for hours to be able to talk about all the different things that the ONC has done and will continue to do and continue to adapt to new different ways of understanding the ocean with new different ways of learning about data and managing data and so forth. I want to thank all three of you for joining me today on this on this episode because I know my audience is very hopeful in the types of understanding that we can have in the future and that we've already had from the data and to see how all these these networks of cables have been able to expand to different communities, not only in Canada, but Antarctica and other countries.

2:08:03 I think it's it's phenomenal to to be able to see that gives me a lot of hope for our future and being able to understand what's happening and have early detection systems and and so forth. So I want to thank all of you for not only your contributions, but for coming on the episode today and telling our audience. Thank you so much. Thank you. Andrew, if I can give you a gift back. Yes, please. You're doing this. It's from it's a note to you from TS Eliot. Okay. It's from four quartets. We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. Arrived through the unknown remembered gate where the last of Earth left to discover is that which was the beginning at the source of the longest river, the voice of a hidden waterfall, not known because not look for but heard half heard between two waves of the sea.

2:09:03 That's a nice. Thank you so much. That's awesome. There's there's a lot more to that, but it's I recently went to a ceremony at Annapolis where they devoted an entire ceremony to naming a new ship for one of our colleagues, Don Walsh, who dove into the Marianas trough in 1960. Wow. That was one of Don's favorite poems. Well, we appreciate that. Thank you so much for sharing that with us and sharing his contribution as well. We appreciate. Again, thank you to all three of you for joining us on the episode looking forward to diving deeper into to the ocean, Canada networks, ocean, Canada and being able to find out more about the wonderful projects that are happening there and the people.

2:09:53 Thank you so much. Thanks for your work, Andrew. Bye. Thank you, Kate Benoit and John for joining me on today's episode of the how to protect the ocean podcast and to kick off the first episode of ocean numbers, Canada series, surfacing secrets explore the ocean, know the planet. Wow. It has been an eye opener to hear how out of the box idea of deep ocean cable observatories in the late 1990s have evolved into the state of the art observatories we have today. The spirit of adventure discovery innovation still persist at O and C. And I got to tell you, I'm super excited. This is something that I've been waiting for for a long time. I'm so excited to dive in deeper, not just to one episode, but to do multiple episodes and the next episode of surfacing secrets, explore the ocean, know the planet.

2:10:34 We get to meet engineers and a deep sea robot operator involved in ocean network, Canada's expeditions to maintain their deep sea observatories off the coast of British Columbia. And according to Kate Moran, it's pretty complicated work. Here's another clip for the World Ocean Council's ocean titans film. Ocean Networks Canada really is an ocean data and technology powerhouse. We install high tech sensors. We're now operating over 12,000 of those sensors that deliver data in real time and it's available over the Internet to anyone in the world. And so we deliver this incredible technology with this team of engineers, scientists, technicians, data people, GIS people who work together to make that happen. And for those who don't know, it's harder to put sensors in the ocean than in space.

2:11:34 So if you want to protect me directly, you can do so. You can DM me on Instagram. I'd be more than happy to answer you at how to protect the ocean. That's at how to protect the ocean. I want to thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of the how to protect the ocean podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Lewin. Have a great day. We'll talk to you next time and happy conservation.