summ( )n

The lecture by David Gallo, oceanographer from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution was one of the most emotionally charged. He a a media start at the moment, because of his expedition to the Titanic wreck site that he and his team accurately surveyed for the first time in history. But besides this sparkles of fame, David spent 30+ years of his life researching our underwater planet.

Captain Cousteau was a hero of my childhood, and similar to many people my generation I adored the images and later the films from various underwater expeditions, of him and of his multiple followers; I would even consider myself somewhat knowledgeable about the matter. So it of course comes as a great shock when you realizes that we sill know more about the back side of the Moon that about the oceans of our planet. Less than five percent of the ocean bedrock is explored; every underwater expedition equipped with proper tools discovers dozens (!) new species, including previously unthinkable. And yet the funds allocated to the space research is many times more the ones for oceanography. We still understand very little about how oceans ‘work’, but without much hesitation intrude with our technological and economic activities.

The green dots are the lights of the fishing boats densely wrapping up Japan; they put powerful lamps under water, to attract tune, so this greenish hue. On the other side, we can launch the Mars Rover ( 55 million km of deep space) , but can’t efficiently fix the oil spill on the bottom of the Mexican Gulf (2.5 km of water).

And by the way, there is not so much of this liquid matter with us:

So, all in all, we better care. But we don’t.