What lies hidden beneath the sea is one of the Earth's biggest mysteries, with only 5% of the area explored - but the Schmidt Ocean Institute are changing this.

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This lecture was recorded at the Ri on the 22 January 2024, in partnership with the Schmidt Ocean Institute.

With alien landscapes, an immense variety of life forms and only 5% of it so far explored, the ocean is the most fascinating place on our planet.

The Schmidt Ocean Institute are hoping to increase this with the sophisticated technology found on board its research ship, R/V Falkor, which is exploring the oceans with state-of-the-art laboratories, an underwater robot reaching depths as far as 4,500m, and high-performing computing facilities. These free-to-use tools are allowing scientists and engineers internationally to collaborate and share their data, and even the public as underwater imagery from deep dives is livestreamed to a global audience.

Join Jyotika Virmani, executive director of the Institute, as she uncovers this new era of ocean discovery providing us with unprecedented abilities to explore the wonderful world beyond our coastline like never before.

Find out more about the Schmidt Ocean Institute: https://schmidtocean.org/

00:00 Why is the ocean so important?
5:00 The exponential growth of technology
7:28 The Schmidt Ocean Institute
09:07 Capturing and livestreaming ocean footage
11:17 The first fully remote science voyage
15:51 Mapping the sea floor
22:18 New discoveries from the ocean
25:53 The evolution of ocean mapping technology
31:34 Hydrothermal vents and microbes
40:18 Discovering a new animal ecosystem
41:51 Life in the marine water column
45:12 The new technologies for marine biology
51:52 Communicating the discoveries made

Jyotika Virmani is an executive director of the Schmidt Ocean Institute. Before this, she was the Executive Director of Planet & Environment at XPRIZE and the Rainforest XPRIZE, a competition for innovations in biodiversity assessment technologies. She was also Executive Director of the Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE to spur innovations of unmanned and autonomous deep-sea technologies that will allow the global bathymetric community to map the seafloor by 2030. Embedded in this XPRIZE was a NOAA Bonus Prize for technologies that could detect a biological or chemical signal underwater and autonomously track it to its source. Dr. Virmani joined XPRIZE in 2014 as the Technical Director for the Wendy Schmidt Ocean Health XPRIZE, a competition advancing pH sensor development to measure ocean acidification. Before joining XPRIZE, Dr. Virmani was the Associate Director of the Florida Institute of Oceanography and a Senior Scientist at the UK Met Office

Virmani has a Ph.D. in Physical Oceanography from the College of Marine Science, University of South Florida. As a Rotary Foundation Ambassadorial Scholar, she earned a M.S. in Atmospheric Science from SUNY at Stony Brook. She also has a B.Sc. in Physics from Imperial College London and is an Associate of the Royal College of Science. She currently serves on the Catch the Next Wave Committee, the U.S. Integrated Ocean Observing System Federal Advisory Committee, the National Geographic Executive Committee for Research and Exploration, and the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute Board, and is an External Advisor to the Seabed 2030 Ocean Frontiers Mapping Committee, and a member of the XPRIZE Climate Brain Trust and the World Economic Forum Global Future Councils. She is a Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society and The Explorers Club, and a Member of the American Meteorological Society and American Geophysical Union.

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