[...]
ERICA STAATERMAN: So I've been interested in acoustic
communication in the ocean for a long time, ever since I was a
kid and I had just put my head underwater and I heard all these
crackling sounds. I was really fascinated by it. So that's
been an interest for a really long time, but it wasn't until a
few years ago I read a couple of scientific papers that really
sparked my interest in acoustic navigation. And there's this
hypothesis now that the larvae of coral reef fish may actually
find their way home back to the reef by listening for the reef.
Turns out that coral reefs are very noisy places and sound
travels very quickly underwater. So it's a very likely
navigational cue, but this work is very new and it's always nice
to pick something new in science. It tends to help with
getting funding. So that was part of my motivation. It just
seemed like a really fascinating question to focus on for my PhD.
I guess the best advice I've ever received was from someone
who really inspires me and encourages me, and he said that
there's just not enough people out there who are really
passionate about what they believe in, especially when it
comes to ocean issues. This person is an ocean scientist as
well, and just there's not enough people out there who are
really passionate and really care, and are trying to really
do good work, people that are genuine and don't have, really
their own interest at heart, but more the interest of the greater
good and the planet, and those people just need to keep on
working, and keep doing what you're doing because it's
important, even though it might seem trivial at times.
I was in ninth grade, which isn't really a child, but it's
the first time I had a real scientific experience and I was
actually lucky enough to make contact with a professor at
Harvard who granted me access to their micro observatory, which
was a telescope where you could take images at certain times of
the day. I don't know how he allowed me to do this in ninth
grade, but anyhow what I did is I followed the period of an
eclipsing binary star, which are two stars that are next to each
other and they orbit around each other, and I watched throughout
time as they became brighter and less bright as they sat next to
each other and then eclipsed each other and then next – and
so I got to follow that process and sort of measure
the periodicity of that cycle, and that was really
my first experiment.
Well in my field, what's really fun – I make all these
recordings of underwater habitats from all over the world
and the best part for me is definitely when I get back and I
put on the headphones, and I listen and I just hear something
completely new that I've never heard before that's usually a
really cool animal sound, like some sort of crazy growl or
squeak or something that probably nobody knows what it
is. At the time, I usually don't know what it is and
sometimes I'll share it with a colleague and try to find out if
they know, but usually it's a mystery. We really don't know
what a lot of the sounds are in the ocean now. It's very
un-described. So it's really new territory and it's exciting
when you hear that thing that just kind of sends chills up
your spine. It's really cool.
I think there's two things. I think good communication skills
and leadership. I think that if you can't explain why you're
doing what you're doing and if you can't also inspire others to
care about what you're doing, then your work is meaningless.
I mean it's – today, there are so many things facing our planet
and we really, as researchers, are obligated to inspire and
communicate with others, and if we don't do that, I think
we're just failing as scientists. So to me those are
the most important things.
Most marine populations, whether it's crab, shrimp, fish,
whatever depend upon a replenishment to their
population in the form of larvae, which are like, the
little babies that come and return home. And the process of
larvae making their way back to that settlement habitat, whether
it's a mangrove area or sea grass or a coral reef or
whatever it is, that process is critical because if the larvae
don't arrive, then you don't get that replenishment and the
population won't survive. So understanding the navigational
cues and the processes that drive that navigation is really
important to maintain population – any sort of marine population.
So this person is actually related to me but is also a
scientist and that's my uncle Chris. He's actually a whale
acoustics scientist and he's the person who told me that, "You
just need to stay committed to what you're doing and genuinely
passionate people are hard to find and are important," but
anyway, he always really encourages me to look at the big
picture and to really ask, "Does this work matter and if so, why?
What's important about what you're doing?" and,
"Stay focused on that big picture."
How many animals in the ocean make sound and how many animals
can perceive sound. Most people don't really consider anything
beyond whales and dolphins, maybe seals as sound producers,
but it turns out that a lot of things in the ocean make sound –
fish, crabs, lobster, shrimp, you name it – and a lot of them
are not deaf, either. In fact, it actually makes very little
sense to be deaf if you live in the ocean. That's because it's
very dark, so your visual sense doesn't do very well and sound
travels very quickly underwater. So it's a very useful sense to
be able to perceive the world around you acoustically. Most
people don't really consider that – for it, like I said,
anything other than whales and dolphins. And the other thing
that I think would surprise a lot of people is that there's
actually a lot of anthropogenic noise in the ocean now, and this
is a real problem due to a lot of shipping traffic, oil and gas
exploration, which is the seismic exploration where they
blast really loud sounds down to the bottom of the ocean, and
then the other is oil drilling in the ocean. And so these are
really noisy activities, and they actually have the potential
to mask or cover up the natural calls of animals trying to
communicate with each other, and it could be a real problem if
these animals are depending upon communicating with one another
for mating or finding food or whatever it may be. So a lot of
people don't consider that as a conservation issue, but it
really is a growing problem.
The – so the office or lab means that that's where all my data
is. So probably the same answer that every scientist gives, but
I would grab my hard drive which has many gigabytes of acoustic
data I've collected over the years.
Right now, it would have to be Coldplay and Mumford & Sons.