Upcoming NEC Keynote Speaker Shares Insight

Posted on  14/06/2012  |  Media Centre

Danial Norji
Thursday, 14 June 2012

Mr David Gallo. – Photos Courtesy of Asia Inc Forum


A diagram by David Gallo and Jack Cook of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

No matter where you live on Earth, the ocean has an influence on our lives, and we, in turn, influence the life of the oceans. The future of the ocean is an issue that will be centred on as Asia Inc Forum prepares to host its upcoming National Environment Conference on June 20.

One of the speakers who will be featuring at the conference is Mr David Gallo, who, as the Director of Special Projects at the Woods Hole Oceonographic Institution, works closely with scientists and engineers at the forefront of global exploration and discovery.

Gallo is passionate about exploration and discovery and dedicated to communicating the importance of science and engineering to the public.

He has lectured extensively both nationally and internationally, to audiences ranging from elementary school children through CEOs, and he has participated in numerous television and radio broadcasts.

He has also participated in numerous expeditions to the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans, and to the Mediterranean Sea, and is one of the first ocean-ographers to use a combination of submarines and robots to map the undersea world.

He also has experience as a participant during an exploration of RMS Titanic and the German battleship Bismarck using the Russian MIR submarines and a participant in a recent expedition to find the lost WWII submarine USS Grunion.

“The planet has been changing since it was first created. The face of the earth changes through plate tectonics and the weather of the earth changes through climate change,” he said, speaking in an interview via Asia Inc Forum.

“The good news is that these changes happen through rhythms and cycles on every scale in space and time – from seconds to hundreds of millions of years. It’s almost like music. There is no doubt in my mind that if we can understand the past we can certainly predict the future.

“All of the clues we need are in the ice caps, in the sediments and rocks of the seafloor, in the corals, in tree rings and in the ocean waters,” said Gallo. “We CAN solve our problems if we decide to do that.”

He said that leadership and will are needed, adding that if that is done, he is certain that this will be a fantastic home planet for many, many generations to come.

“We need to think differently. It’s easy to do that, but not so easy to do it,” he continued. “Then again, anything worth doing is usually not easy!”

Recalling a recent Science Festival in Washington DC, he said he saw thousands of children there from many different countries.

“I could not help but think that we have to accept the responsibility to leave them with a much better world. It’s what drives me to explore and understand the sea,” he said. “I do believe that every life on this planet is precious and as long as I can do things to make life better for humanity, I will!

“I do believe strongly that exploring and understand-ing the oceans will give us the clues to the past and the keys to the future that we desperately need.”

Speaking on the ocean, he said that there are thousands of valleys many times wider, deeper and longer than the Grand Canyon.

“There are underwater rivers, there are underwater lakes, and there are underwater waterfalls. There’s life where we never expected life at all.”

He mentioned “The Vents”, a place in the East Pacific, Southwest of Acapulco which is about two miles deep.

“The water temperature is about 700 degrees Fahrenheit. It’s a place where we thought there should be no life at all, and instead, we found life that rivals the tropical rainforest in terms of density and diversity.”

He said that this wasn’t predicted, and that it was just stumbled on by geologists. “So in one moment of exploration, we revolutionised the way we think about life on Earth.”

He said there is a whole ocean that is yet to be explored, and everything we do, no matter where you live, has an impact on the sea.

“Conversely, wherever you live, the ocean has an impact on you. And yet we have this relationship with a body that we don’t even know. We haven’t even explored it. We’ve explored only a few per cent of it.”

He said that what amazes him is that, on a planet we call the ocean planet, there are people living here that are clinging to the edge of life because of one thing that, mostly, they don’t have which is water – sanitary water.

He said that he wanted to take a look at this and, using a diagram, took all the water off the earth to find out how much there really is. Explaining the diagram, he said, “That’s the earth on the left. All the water on the earth is that ball on the right by volume.

“If the earth is the size of a basketball, take all the water off, it fits into a ping-pong ball, how can that be? Think about the Atlantic Ocean. I said two miles average that would be a couple of inches. But two miles average thickness by 5,000 miles across, that’s a very thin layer of water that exists out there.”

He added that fresh water is even less. “It’s that little pinpoint to the right of the blue ball. That’s all the fresh water. And so for us to live, you’ve got to take that little bit of fresh water, sprinkle it in just the right spots at just the right amounts, in just the right time of year, or we collapse as a society.”

Gallo said that the key to this, the keys to the future and clues to our past, come out of the ocean, especially the deep ocean.

“We don’t know a lot about storage, transport and heat from the deep oceans, what the currents are doing down there in the deep ocean,” he said, adding that we need to get out and explore so we can understand.

“A great philosopher once said, ‘You can observe a lot just by watching’ and that was good old Yogi Berra. And the truth is, that’s the truth and we need more observation from the deep sea.”

He concluded with a quote by Marcel Proust, who said, “The true voyage of exploration is not so much in seeking new landscapes, which we do, but in having new eyes.”

Gallo explained that, to him, it means using these new tools, new platforms and new sensors and going out and exploring the ocean, but for the first time thinking about this planet differently. Gallo will be delivering a key note speech on the “Future of Water” at the National Environment Conference, which is themed “Conserving Our Natural Resources for a Sustainable Future”.

Courtesy of Borneo Bulletin

Source: http://www.brudirect.com/index.php/Columns/upcoming-nec-keynote-speaker-shares-insight.html