I'm an underwater explorer, more specifically a cave diver.
Son exploradora submarina, máis ben, unha mergulladora de cavernas.
I wanted to be an astronaut when I was a little kid, but growing up in Canada as a young girl, that wasn't really available to me. But as it turns out, we know a lot more about space than we do about the underground waterways coursing through our planet, the very lifeblood of Mother Earth. So I decided to do something that was even more remarkable. Instead of exploring outer space, I wanted to explore the wonders of inner space.
Eu quería ser astronauta cando era unha nena pero en Canadá, daquela, non era posible. Mais resulta que sabemos moito máis sobre o espazo que sobre os cursos subterráneos de auga que percorren o noso planeta, a alma da Nai Terra. Por iso, decidín facer algo aínda máis importante. En lugar de explorar o espazo exterior, quería explorar as marabillas do espazo interior.
Now, a lot of people will tell you that cave diving is perhaps one of the most dangerous endeavors. I mean, imagine yourself here in this room, if you were suddenly plunged into blackness, with your only job to find the exit, sometimes swimming through these large spaces, and at other times crawling beneath the seats, following a thin guideline, just waiting for the life support to provide your very next breath. Well, that's my workplace.
Moita xente diravos que o mergullo en covas é talvez unha das tarefas máis perigosas. É dicir, imaxinade que aquí, nesta sala, de súpeto, quedaramos sumidos na escuridade, coa única misión de atopar a saída, ás veces, nadando en grandes espazos, noutros momentos, arrastrándonos baixo os asentos, seguindo unha estreita corda guía, agardando o soporte vital para a seguinte respiración. Ben, ese é o meu lugar de traballo.
But what I want to teach you today is that our world is not one big solid rock. It's a whole lot more like a sponge. I can swim through a lot of the pores in our earth's sponge, but where I can't, other life-forms and other materials can make that journey without me. And my voice is the one that's going to teach you about the inside of Mother Earth.
Pero o que quero amosar hoxe é que o noso mundo non é unha gran rocha sólida. Parécese moito máis a unha esponxa. Eu podo nadar por moitos dos poros da nosa esponxa terrestre, mais onde eu non podo, outras formas de vida e materiais poden facer esa viaxe sen min. E a miña voz é a que vos vai mostrar o interior da Nai Terra.
There was no guidebook available to me when I decided to be the first person to cave dive inside Antarctic icebergs. In 2000, this was the largest moving object on the planet. It calved off the Ross Ice Shelf, and we went down there to explore ice edge ecology and search for life-forms beneath the ice.
Eu non tiven ningunha guía cando decidín ser a primeira persoa en bucear dentro dos icebergs antárticos. No 2000, este foi o obxecto máis grande en movemento no planeta. Desprendeuse da Barreira de Xeo de Ross e nós fomos alí para explorar a ecoloxía do xeo e buscar formas de vida baixo el.
We use a technology called rebreathers. It's an awful lot like the same technology that is used for space walks. This technology enables us to go deeper than we could've imagined even 10 years ago. We use exotic gases, and we can make missions even up to 20 hours long underwater.
Usamos unha tecnoloxía chamada <i>rebreathers</i>. É moi parecida á tecnoloxía usada nas camiñadas espaciais. Esta tecnoloxía permítenos ir máis ao fondo do que imaxinabamos mesmo hai 10 anos. Usamos gases exóticos e facemos misións baixo a auga de máis de 20 horas.
I work with biologists. It turns out that caves are repositories of amazing life-forms, species that we never knew existed before. Many of these life-forms live in unusual ways. They have no pigment and no eyes in many cases, and these animals are also extremely long-lived. In fact, animals swimming in these caves today are identical in the fossil record that predates the extinction of the dinosaurs. So imagine that: these are like little swimming dinosaurs. What can they teach us about evolution and survival? When we look at an animal like this remipede swimming in the jar, he has giant fangs with venom. He can actually attack something 40 times his size and kill it. If he were the size of a cat, he'd be the most dangerous thing on our planet. And these animals live in remarkably beautiful places, and in some cases, caves like this, that are very young, yet the animals are ancient. How did they get there?
Traballo con biólogos. Resulta que as covas son almacéns de incribles formas de vida, de especies descoñecidas. Moitas destas formas de vida viven de xeitos estraños. Non teñen pigmentos, ás veces nin ollos, e estes animais tamén son moi lonxevos. De feito, os animais que hoxe nadan nesas covas son idénticos aos do rexistro fósil anterior á extinción dos dinosauros. Así que imaxinade que son como pequenos dinosauros que nadan. Que poden ensinarnos sobre evolución e supervivencia? Cando observamos un remípede como este que nada no frasco, vemos que ten cabeiros xigantes con veleno. Pode atacar algo 40 veces máis grande ca el e matalo. Se tivese o tamaño dun gato, sería o ser máis perigoso do planeta. E estes animais viven en lugares moi fermosos e nalgúns casos, en covas coma esta, que son moi novas aínda que os animais son antigos. Como chegaron aí?
I also work with physicists, and they're interested oftentimes in global climate change. They can take rocks within the caves, and they can slice them and look at the layers within with rocks, much like the rings of a tree, and they can count back in history and learn about the climate on our planet at very different times. The red that you see in this photograph is actually dust from the Sahara Desert. So it's been picked up by wind, blown across the Atlantic Ocean. It's rained down in this case on the island of Abaco in the Bahamas. It soaks in through the ground and deposits itself in the rocks within these caves. And when we look back in the layers of these rocks, we can find times when the climate was very, very dry on earth, and we can go back many hundreds of thousands of years.
Tamén traballo con físicos, e moitas veces interésanse polo cambio climático global. Poden coller as rochas dentro das covas, poden cortalas en rodas e mirar as capas interiores, que son como aneis dunha árbore, e poden recuar na historia e aprender sobre o clima do planeta en tempos moi afastados. O vermello que vedes nesta foto En realidade, é po do deserto do Sáhara. O vento recolleuno e empurrouno a través do Atlántico. A choiva depositouno, neste caso, na illa de Abaco nas Bahamas. A terra absorbeuno e pousouno nas rochas dentro destas covas. E ao mirar as capas destas rochas podemos atopar os tempos en que o clima era moi moi seco na Terra e podemos recuar centos de miles de anos.
Paleoclimatologists are also interested in where the sea level stands were at other times on earth. Here in Bermuda, my team and I embarked on the deepest manned dives ever conducted in the region, and we were looking for places where the sea level used to lap up against the shoreline, many hundreds of feet below current levels.
Aos paleoclimatólogos tamén lles interesa coñecer onde estaba o nivel do mar noutros tempos da Terra. Aquí, nas Bermudas, o meu equipo e eu embarcamos nas inmersións tripuladas máis profundas na historia da rexión e buscamos lugares en que o nivel do mar acostumaba tocar a costa, moitos centos de metros por baixo dos niveis actuais.
I also get to work with paleontologists and archaeologists. In places like Mexico, in the Bahamas, and even in Cuba, we're looking at cultural remains and also human remains in caves, and they tell us a lot about some of the earliest inhabitants of these regions.
Tamén traballo con paleontólogos e arqueólogos. En lugares como México, nas Bahamas e mesmo en Cuba, analizamos restos culturais e tamén restos humanos nas covas, e dinnos moito sobre algúns dos primeiros habitantes destas rexións.
But my very favorite project of all was over 15 years ago, when I was a part of the team that made the very first accurate, three-dimensional map of a subterranean surface. This device that I'm driving through the cave was actually creating a three-dimensional model as we drove it. We also used ultra low frequency radio to broadcast back to the surface our exact position within the cave. So I swam under houses and businesses and bowling alleys and golf courses, and even under a Sonny's BBQ Restaurant,
Pero o meu proxecto preferido foi hai máis de 15 anos, cando fun parte do equipo que fixo o primeiro mapa tridimensional preciso dunha superficie subterránea. Este dispositivo que guío a través da cova en realidade ía creando un modelo tridimensional mentres conduciamos. Tamén usamos radio de frecuencia ultrabaixa para retransmitirlle á superficie a nosa posición exacta na cova. Así que nadei baixo vivendas, negocios, casas de birlos e campos de golf e mesmo por baixo dun BBQ Restaurant.
Pretty remarkable, and what that taught me was that everything we do on the surface of our earth will be returned to us to drink. Our water planet is not just rivers, lakes and oceans, but it's this vast network of groundwater that knits us all together. It's a shared resource from which we all drink. And when we can understand our human connections with our groundwater and all of our water resources on this planet, then we'll be working on the problem that's probably the most important issue of this century.
Algo extraordinario, e o que isto me ensinou foi que todo o que facemos na superficie da Terra hásenos devolver para beber. O noso planeta de auga non son só ríos, lagos e océanos senón unha ampla rede de auga subterránea que nos conecta a todos. É un recurso compartido do que todos bebemos. E cando entendemos as conexións humanas coas augas subterráneas e todos os recursos hídricos do planeta, entón ocuparémonos do problema que quizais sexa o asunto máis importante deste século.
So I never got to be that astronaut that I always wanted to be, but this mapping device, designed by Dr. Bill Stone, will be. It's actually morphed. It's now a self-swimming autonomous robot, artificially intelligent, and its ultimate goal is to go to Jupiter's moon Europa and explore oceans beneath the frozen surface of that body.
Así que nunca cheguei a ser a astronauta que sempre quixen ser, pero este dispositivo de mapeo deseñado polo Dr. Bill Stone serao. En realidade transformouse. Agora é un robot autónomo que nada, con intelixencia artificial, e o seu obxectivo final é ir a Europa, a lúa de Xúpiter explorar os océanos que están baixo a súa superficie conxelada.
And that's pretty amazing.
E iso é bastante abraiante.
(Applause)
(Aplausos)