>>Mariette DiChristina: So since the theme of this is "Wonder," I'd like to touch base
with that a bit.
You know, we've been just talking about some really important issues but I want to talk
about how we get inspired with the oceans, and first of all, ask both of you how you
got inspired.
Now, Sylvia, you just mentioned that you got inspired as a kid.
How did that happen and when was your first dive?
>>Sylvia Earle: As a kid, I read the book called "Half Mile Down" by William Beebe and
I thought it was just the coolest thing in the world.
It didn't occur to me that as a girl, I shouldn't think about such things.
I just dreamed.
And I read Cousteau's books, and again, inspiration about what it must be like to go there.
And I had parents who didn't discourage me and say, "You can't do that."
It isn't just being a girl, it's being a kid and wishing to be able to fly or to climb
mountains or do whatever.
And now we have the ways and means to explore beyond books, which I truly love.
And also there's that sense of urgency not only that you can do things, but that we must
use our power, whoever we are, whether you're a kid or a CEO; that we have an opportunity
that is unprecedented because for the first time in all of human history, we know things
that no other creature on Earth, including ourselves, could know before right about now.
I mean, there's some smart creatures.
Some fish I know are really smart.
Ha!
Elephants, dolphins, whales, whatever.
But they cannot see how old the Earth is.
They cannot see what we're doing to the Earth.
They can't see why it matters.
They can't anticipate, the way we can, the loss of the big fish, the loss of ice, the
loss of our life support system.
So that should be powerful inspiration to get busy.
I mean most of the world is unexplored.
Most of it is blue.
>>Mariette DiChristina: Yeah.
As Don you were just saying, the 90%.
And so how did you -- how did you decide to go from, you know, being an airman and then
deciding you fell in love with the planet and wanted to be inspired by it?
And how do you keep that -- both of you, how do you keep that going for so long?
>>Don Walsh: Well, stuff happens.
>>Mariette DiChristina: Yeah.
>>Don Walsh: I, of course, joined the Navy.
I always wanted to be a sailor and I did that.
And then submarines seemed to be a good way to do that.
Went underwater.
Then I heard about this "bathy," whatever, the Trieste, and I thought that was grand
and I got into that, and I don't know.
You just back into things.
When -- I was working for the Secretary of the Navy in the Pentagon during -- sort of
near the end of my career when I was given the portfolio for the U.S. Antarctic program,
the Defense Department support of it.
So I thought I'd better go down and see how it fits together.
So I went down to the Antarctic and saw all the elements together and I thought it was
grand and subsequently I've made over 35 expeditions down there and have a mountain named after
me.
I'd much rather have a hole in the ocean but that didn't happen.
And then I first went to the Arctic when I was in the Navy back about 50 years ago.
And it's sort of habit-forming.
I've been up to the North Pole about five times, and the South Pole.
Worked, you know, expeditions, explorations.
So just sort of parallel lives, undersea technology, operations, as well as going to the polar
regions.
It's all hooked together, as she said.
It's all part of one planet.
>>Mariette DiChristina: And take us down a little bit.
You went down to the Mariana Trench.
How -- what was that like?
>>Don Walsh: Well, the Trieste was, you know, a very simple kind of machine.
"bathyscaphe," by the way, means "bathy" -- deep -- "scaphe" -- boat -- deep boat.
Bathysphere was deep sphere.
We had -- the Piccards, August and Jacques Piccard, Bertrand's father, had built this
thing in the early '50s and it was offered to our Office of Naval Research as a scientific
platform, and so when we brought it to the Navy laboratory in San Diego, we were able
to reconfigure it for research work, and we did about nine months of increasingly deeper
test dives at the island of Guam before we went out and did the deepest dive.
So it was -- we sort of knew its moods and variabilities, reliability.
And we, in January 1960, made the deepest dive.
That was nine hours.
And about five hours and some change going down, half hour on the bottom, and then half
hour coming back up.
I'm sorry.
Three hours coming back up.
People say, well, what did you see?
We didn't see much because we landed on the bottom and stirred up the bottom sediment
but just before we landed we saw a fish, very important, that was a higher order marine
vertebrate.
It was a flat fish like a halibut or a sole.
That means it lives there.
If there's one, there's more.
That means there's food and oxygen for it.
So all in a glance that told us that.
And then after we got back up, it was, as I say, 52 years later until Jim did it.
Jim did it in a very advanced manned submersible, and he did his whole dive in a couple of hours,
three hours, something like that.
And I was happy to be part of that expedition.
But, yeah, that was the beginning.
It's 50 years from the time we did in until he did it.
50 years before we made our dive, the first airplane had just barely flown.
So that gives you an idea of the march of technology and know-how.
>>Mariette DiChristina: I'm sure that was a little -- well, I don't know.
Was that discouraging that it took 50 years to go back --
>>Don Walsh: Absolutely.
>>Mariette DiChristina: -- and learn some more?
>>Don Walsh: Absolutely.
I mean, people say, well, this is a record thing.
Not at all.
It was we were test pilots.
We were doing an engineering test of the platform to make sure it was safe for scientists to
use.
And so we were quite disappointed that there wasn't a follow-on.
Now, there were a lot of submersibles developed.
Alvin.
Many of you know about the Alvin.
Very famous.
Probably the most productive manned submersible in the world in terms of science.
But the really deep things just weren't being done anymore.
It was rare that any submersible went deeper than, say, 20,000 feet.
And our little dive of nine hours wasn't particularly long.
When I made a dive on the battleship Bismarck a few years ago, that was a 14-hour dive.
So we had lunch on the Bismarck because halfway through it we landed on the ship and ate our
sandwiches.
Same thing on the Titanic.
It was two miles down.
>>Mariette DiChristina: So obviously I could speak to you both all day but I think we're
almost out of time.
I have one thing I wanted to make sure also.
For the folks in the audience here and those who are listening, can you give one quick
piece of advice, something they can personally do to make the oceans better for all us.
What we can all do together as members of the crew.
Very quick.
>>Sylvia Earle: Imagine 50 years from now where we'll be if we fail to explore the ocean
and to do what we can individually, voting with our fork, why are we eating ocean wildlife,
and supporting protective measures around the world.
In October this year, 50 new hope spots will be announced, places that cause reason for
hope that have been identified by an international group of scientists and others.
If we apply our power, work with our government, work as individuals to do for the ocean what
we've done for the land in terms of parks.
The best idea America ever had, some say, is to have national parks.
Well, we need to do something like that, only more so in the ocean.
The ocean truly keeps us alive.
The ocean truly is in trouble.
That means we're in trouble.
But we do have the power.
I mean, I started three companies to develop technologies to help advance our access to
the sea.
I love working with Google because its technology to disseminate knowledge about what we learn.
That's the key.
Use your power.
>>Mariette DiChristina: Great.
So we'll use our power.
Thank you so much, Don and Sylvia.
It was just wonderful.
[ Applause ]