Alexis: 0:00

Hello everybody and welcome to the Smoko Podcast. My name is Alexis Armstrong, your host. Nice to meet you. The Smoko Podcast is a place to celebrate and highlight women, trans women, and non-binary folk working within demonstrate occupations. So please tune in, take a break, join us. We're on fricking spco today. We're extremely excited to be joined by the lovely Emily Estes, who is an expedition project manager or staff scientist at the International Ocean Discovery Program, or I O D P. She is a chemical oceanographer and microbiologist. Her research is specific to understanding sediment, organic geochemistry, and geo microbiology, which is a lot of big words that I barely understand, as a geologist. Emily, thank you so much for joining us today. It's lovely to see you.

Emily: 0:48

Yes. Awesome. Thank you for having me on.

Alexis: 0:51

It's a fricking honor. Thank you so much. Me and Emily, we've known each other from working both at I O D P and from Saline together, where she's sail as a staff scientist on a couple expeditions. Maybe that's where we start for it is, this is a repetitive question that I ask everyone, but I'm always so genuinely curious is how did you first discover this field of oceanographic and geoscience? What drew you to these subjects? Why did you discover this? And how did you fall in love

Emily: 1:19

with it? Okay. I know that's always a question, but I also love that question because sometimes like it feels so accidental that people get into certain fields and I love hearing just like how. Yeah, how people wind up on these paths that they don't even intend to. And I'm certainly in that category. I went to college and I wanted to be a journalist and so I was like taking a lot of English classes and doing a lot of writing. At some point I decided that I wanted to cover environmental issues cause I was very concerned about climate change. And as a result of that I took a couple science classes just to understand the state of the planet. And when I took those classes, I just had this revelation about how little we actually know about how our own planet functions. And I instantly converted into a scientist and just really wanted to do geoscience research and, be able to be involved in education and kind of science activism as well. You can't even do the journalism until you know more about the planet. Yeah, so I changed majors and just took as much science as I could and, yeah, got really into geoscience. Oceanography came a bit later and was actually also a little bit of an accident. After I graduated college, I got a research position at a School of Public Health where I was actually looking at human exposures to heavy metals, like lead and zinc in the environment and abandoned mining sites. And so I thought that I wanted to do some soil science work and looking at heavy metals. I went to grad school and then my first day of grad school, the advisor I had chosen, announced to me that she was, moving institutions. And she was moving to an oceanographic institution. And so I wound up transferring with her, but I was like, whatever, I'm still gonna do soil science. I don't care about the ocean. And then as I started taking classes and she sent me on a research expedition in Hawaii, I had never really been exposed to oceanography before, and I didn't have a conception of what it was. I think what I really love about it is that as you said, I'm a geo microbiologist What I am really interested in is how these, like tens of thousands, of billions of invisible microorganisms can actually all doing the same little metabolic process, can actually impact our planet. Half the oxygen on Earth is because of phyto plantin in the ocean. It's so cool

Alexis: 3:45

like that and it's hope is such a cool stat that you're like, that's mind boggling.

Emily: 3:49

That's awesome. Yeah. You can't see these organisms and yet we're breathing. They're metabolic output and they're so important for life. And so I just got really entranced by how important the ocean is. I think

Alexis: 4:01

I love that answer I wanna touch on so many things. First off, I love this asking this question too, because I think that geoscience for science in general, I just don't think it's really marketed to women. So I think in order for young girls to fall into it, it's kind of a mistake. It's usually that they've taken some bird course or they expected it to be a bird course. Something like journalism that you were like, no, I have to have this one course to understand journalism better. And then you fall in love with it. I took a paleontology class and then all of a sudden I was a geologist like that. It was a slippery slope. It could

Emily: 4:31

happen to anyone. Yeah,

Alexis: 4:32

exactly. That was the gateway drug was paleontology to be like, oh yeah, this is actually cool. And like Jurassic Park. Jurassic Park is what gets a lot of girls like, I feel like that brings you down into the path of geology. I love hearing people stumbling into it. A research trip to Hawaii would get anyone onto oceanography. I like how that was the turning point of going from, heavy metals in soil science, which is also so cool and so important as like a environmental and public health aspect. Also the way that you just described like photosynthesis and geo microbiology of being like, everything that we have is because of their metabolic output is the most scientific, nerdy thing that I've ever heard, and I love it. I think I'm gonna call it metabolic output for all time. That's excellent. It's a perfect catch phrase, right? Maybe let's go back to metabolic output and to speak more about your research.

Emily: 5:28

I mean, I was gonna say pooping, but I think metabolic output is more scientific. So there you go.

Alexis: 5:35

As a way to say to pooping, you know what I mean? I think it should be a a new substitute. But I was wondering if you could speak a little bit more about your research, because I think if you're not within this field, and even as a geologist, I barely understand what you look at and what your research does. I know one thing that you look at is microbial mediation of orogenic, mineral formation and mineral transformations. Could you speak to what this actually means and what this looks like? Like how do you study that? What are you studying when you're looking at that?

Emily: 6:07

Definitely. So an orogenic mineral is just a. Mineral that was formed in place as opposed to, I dunno, something like a volcanic eruption that forms all of these new minerals and rocks. Maybe a hundred years after the volcanic eruption, you have a microbe and it changes the chemistry of its surrounding environment and it induces a mineral to form. Taking components out of water and turning them into a solid. so

Alexis: 6:33

cool. Of changing the chemistry because of microbial

Emily: 6:37

inputs. Yeah, exactly. The obvious example is something like coral, where it's pulling calcium and e out of seawater and building its kind of elaborate structure. And so you have things like corals that are big and you can see them, and they have an impact on the chemistry of the ocean. But beyond those kind of obvious examples, you have this process happening. All over the place, especially in sediment. What intrigues me about it is often when a microbe precipitates a mineral, it's the same mineral structure as what would form without the influence of a microbe. But sometimes, the properties are actually a little different. Like a microbe might make more mistakes or something. So like it might accidentally put a rubidium eye on into the calcium carbonate structure, or it might, even do things where it like accidentally forgets to put an atom in a certain position and so then it's just blank. There's all these imperfections. and then they're also, they also tend to be really tiny and, tinier things have greater surface areas, so both because of the imperfections and then because of how small they are. These microbe made minerals are actually a lot more reactive than oh, the kind of non-biological versions. When you're trying to predict how certain things might happen in sediments or soils. We're using what we know is a mineral property, a non-biological thing, but the reality is that a lot of those minerals might actually, behave really differently. I'm interested in, doing both work in the lab where I'm growing organisms and then inducing them to precipitate minerals. And looking at how they differ. And then also doing the inverse of that, going out to the environment and trying to find some of these minerals that were made by microbes and think about, What they're doing in the environment and how they're different.

Alexis: 8:19

Whoa. That is such a different layer to it because we don't think of minerals as being, biologically made. The whole things of carbonates and like our catch rags as a carbonate sedimentologist that will tell everybody is to be like, our rocks are the only ones that are born, not made. Like we always have that tagline, right? Of that being like a biologic chemical precipitation. But we don't think of minerals as being biologic in origin. So that's really cool. And a cool switch. How do you find that a mineral was actually made by a micro versus it being, a natural occurring mineral? Are you looking for size and are you looking for imperfection, or how do you know that's not just precipitation and a mistake created?

Emily: 9:04

That's a tricky area. There's a couple different ways to do it. And again, sometimes it's obvious. Okay. If it's a diatom, then it's built this elaborate structure that is obviously biological. What I specifically work on is manganese and iron oxides usually, and those both form naturally And, are biologically mediated. So some people, not me, but you can use things like isotopes. So essentially an atom with a same element, but a different number of neutrons. So it actually weighs slightly more or less, and then you can differentiate it on a mass spectrometer. So you can use that. Microbes similar to humans like to take the easy way out. So often when they're making, minerals, they'll use the lighter version of an element if they can find it. The approach I take is combining this field and lab work. Going out to the field, getting a sample, trying to grow some of the bacteria that live in that sample. Do you experiments on them in lab to see if they will precipitate minerals? Yeah.

Alexis: 10:02

Yeah. To compare them. I think that's a fantastic way to study it, to get like a lab grown. So you're doing manganese and iron grown precipitation in the lab. What microbes are you using? Is there like a specific like family type or is it like one microbe that rules at all? Is it environmental based? How you describe that?

Emily: 10:20

You're getting really into the weeds here, but this is good. So I think manganese oxidation is a particularly fun one because, It's one of the few reactions that microbes do that we haven't really figured out why they're doing it, and it seems like it might be an accident. Very recently, some scientists have found an organism that is actually getting an energetic benefit from doing manganese oxidation reactions. But most organisms, it seems like they're trying to do something else and then they happen to be releasing,

Alexis: 10:51

ese.

Emily: 10:51

A lot of organisms will, exude a compound called superoxide, which is a, it's an oxygen radical, so it's very reactive and it'll react with manganese and oxidize it and cause a mineral to form. And the reason the organism is exuding it, because it'll also damage DNA n a if it's inside the cell. So it's like, get this outta me. Oh, I see. See? Okay.

Alexis: 11:10

They're like, I can't handle this. This is gonna completely destroy me from the inside, so it needs to go..

Emily: 11:14

Right? They're like not eating their asai berries and they like need to get rid of their oxidizing agents. So the result is that unlike a lot of other processes, it's not a single family, or type of microbe that is doing this reaction. It seems to be fairly random. And that makes it hard to predict where it might occur in the environment as well. So that's partly why to study it is if you wanna know where it's happening, we need to know why and how organisms are doing it.

Alexis: 11:41

That's really cool. It's a very complicated thing too, because if it doesn't have just one family structure, that's always the easiest way to be like, okay, let's understand the microbe for the microbe or the family of the microbe. But if a bunch of people can get you to the same thing, it becomes harder to study. Thank you so much for geeking out with me because I just think it's so fascinating and like I know microbiology, it's so important. For people who aren't within this, could you maybe explain the role of microbiology and why it's so important? What does this show us about life hydrothermal environments and then why are these environments so important and interesting and why should we study them? Ooh,

Emily: 12:23

that's such a great big question. I'll start with microbiology in general. Okay. Or at least environmental microbiology. And actually I'll start with humans where we essentially do one process. We like breathe in oxygen, breathe out carbon dioxide. We use the oxygen we breathe in to help us, oxidize the organic matter that we're consuming is food. And that is like the only thing that humans are doing in terms of their metabolism. So from that perspective, we're fairly boring. Microbes in the environment are doing just all sorts of zany reactions. They are like breathing rocks. They are, oxidizing sulfide from hydrothermal events and Wow. And they're also just surviving in these, especially at hydrothermal events, which I've done a little bit of work on. They're at thousands of meters below, the surf sea level. So they're surviving under all this pressure. They're in this hot environment, they're in an acidic environment. There's no oxygen. Yeah, they're in batteries, soup. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And yet they're still surviving. So there's an element of first of figuring out what the limits to life are and like how far can you push a cell before it really can't handle its environment. There's temperature limits and pressure limits probably, but we don't exactly know where they are. And then even when we think we've defined them, we wind up finding organisms that are going beyond that. Yeah. So it's in, and then cells that are doing all these processes, there's certain genes for it and there's certain metabolic pathways and identifying these, we don't even really know. How humans might be able to harness them. For our own health or organisms that could help us, do like lithium ion battery recycling or recover rare earth elements or something. Cause these are processes that microbes do and if we can figure out how to harness them, then it'd be a big breakthrough for renewables and that sort of thing.

Alexis: 14:20

When we're thinking, you're like, okay, this is the limit that they're showing us that they can go past that. Because they are living within these extreme environments like hydrothermal vents, which has just battery soup in my mind. Like it's just, it's so hot, it's so acidic. It has under so much pressure. It's a complete inhospitable environment, but they're there and they're thriving and they're doing all of these crazy processes of eating rocks and producing minerals that it's just, it's insane. Do you ever look at these environments to understand maybe the big lofty questions of first life and what did first life look like in these environments? Is that another

Emily: 14:57

aspect? Yeah, absolutely. That's not something I've spent a ton of time on, but that is something I love about hydrothermal environments. As we've been discussing, like they're pretty hostile environments for humans, but I think for microbes, actually, the fact that. You have this hydrothermal fluid that is hot and acidic and there's no oxygen, it's very reducing, and then it's mixing with this cold oxygenated seawater that's actually like maximal energy zone. Cuz you have this chemical gradient that is so extreme that's really where microbes can just thrive cuz they're able to, get the energy out of that gradient essentially. So that's how you can start seeing life emerge is you get this really huge contrast in chemistry and. Life finds a way to take advantage of it as we learned in Jurassic Park.

Alexis: 15:47

Yes. As we know. Emily, could you maybe walk through what you mean by why a chemical gradient is so useful for microbes? Why is that environment there heyday that they're like, yes, I see this beautiful mixing of anoxic, acidic, versus this really nutrient dense cold water. Why is that gradient important to create life and to create microbial life?

Emily: 16:12

Oh, sure. So essentially there's reactions that are thermodynamically favorable, but they might be tally happening very slowly. And what microbes can do is, for instance, There's a lot of sulfide, hydrogen sulfide coming out of hydrothermal vents. And in oxygenated seawater that sulfide is actually thermodynamically stable as sulfate, the oxidized form. But the rate of oxidation is not that fast. So a microbe can come in and can actually make that reaction happen faster because it's transforming the sulfide into the more thermodynamically favorable form, but then because it's doing faster, it can get the energy out of that reaction.

Alexis: 16:56

Cool. That's why a gradient is necessary, is because it's basically like a way to harness energy for the microbe.

Emily: 17:03

It's the way that humans, so organic matter that we eat in food is actually reduced carbon and carbon dioxide is oxidized, and it's the same way that we eat food and then we breathe in oxygen and we use the difference between the oxygen and. The reduced carbon in our food to get

Alexis: 17:20

energy. That's amazing. Thank you for explaining it and that's a way that you can look at past environment to be like, how did, life on Earth first happen and what did these environments look like? But it's also a way to look at future environments or future planetary science as well. Yes. To be like, what does like early life look like, maybe on a different planet, maybe it looks like a hydrothermal environment. So it's really important, to look at, and thank you for deep diving into the research. To take a step back at that, from research, because I know another part of what you do is being a project manager and a staff scientist at I O D P. Could you describe your role and your job at I O D P?

Emily: 17:55

So my role at I O D P, specifically I work for the Jodi's Resolution Research vessel that runs a lot of the I O D P expeditions. And how those work is 30 scientists at a time will come out for about a two month period and will go to a specific area in the world that they've selected and will drill some holes through sediment and ocean crust and clock samples. And my role is essentially to work with the two co-chief scientists of those expeditions to figure out how to actually achieve their scientific objectives and then work with those 30 scientists to make sure we can actually do their research on the ship. The kind of very exaggerated example that I always use is the scientists want to drill to the center of the earth and we say, we actually can't do that. But I've talked to the engineers and here are the things that we can do and try to accomplish that. And then actually right now on Expedition 3 99, they are drilling into what looks like mant rocks. So, exactly.

Alexis: 18:55

Yeah. I was like, that's a funny example cuz we actually have done that. Like,

Emily: 19:01

I know we're getting pretty close. Yeah, so I, I love it's, there is no typical day. It's a lot of, interfacing with different scientists, really getting to learn about their own research. I have learned so much, being in this job. Including things like micro paleontology and what paleo magnet tests do, which had been a bit of a mystery to me before still is. And then interfacing with our technical staff and interfacing with our engineering and operations team as well, just to make decisions about what our plan is, whether we can actually accomplish our aims with the equipment we have available shipboard or if we need to order anything and. Then I guess once we are actually at sea, the big part of the job is also getting these kind of reports together that summarize everything we've found so that we can make it publicly available and everyone can read about what we're accomplishing.

Alexis: 19:53

A huge job. Like it's absolutely insane the work that like a staff scientist does, I think the smallest job is probably the public facing job of like report writing and being like, what did we do? What did we discover? What is our data? But then there's a whole aspect of is this achievable? What is our goals? Is everyone getting their science that they need? Are we doing the base measurements? Can we do this? What's happening? What's broken? Who's where? Like it's a logistical project management of what's happening? What can we do? What can we do with weather? A lot of it is also on the fly decision making it's a huge job that you guys do. It's pretty incredible.

Emily: 20:33

It's just staying as informed about everything as possible so that when you do have to make an on the fly decision, it can at least be somewhat informed. That's the goal, like having a plan A, a plan B, a plan C, and then having the plan you make when you ditch all the other plans.

Alexis: 20:48

It's having plan A through Zed with this chaotic, like big job that you're doing, and with all these responsibilities, what's your favorite thing about your job and then what's something that's maybe a little bit challenging about being a staff scientist?

Emily: 21:02

The answer is probably the same to both questions. The people, first it's just, so we have 21 different member countries that are part of the Ocean Discovery Consortium right now. When you come out on the ship, it's just this like incredibly international and then our crew and our technical staff represent in even broader diversity of, countries. So it's just this incredible diversity of people who are all coming together to accomplish this really complicated goal that. We wouldn't be able to do otherwise. And there's something like unbelievably beautiful about seeing teamwork actually turn out well. Yes, agreed. It's just really impressive, like things that you could never do on your own that you're able to accomplish. And then seeing these kind of international collaborations develop as a result of the work that you've been doing to like, connect people. Help them get their samples and research done is also amazing. Not to Overstate the importance of I O D P, but we're the ocean version of the International Space Station. And I think completely the science diplomacy part of what we do is also important and incredible and I really enjoy it. And then also people can be challenging to work with, especially when you, haven't been sleeping much and it's a high stress environment and you're isolated from your friends and your family eight days away from port in the middle of the ocean. And yeah, certainly emotions are heightened and Yeah. On the other side of that, I actually think the being able to problem solve and get things working again is incredibly gratifying, as unpleasant as it is when people are not getting along.

Alexis: 22:35

That's a perfect answer. I think the answer of that worthy international space station of the sea is perfect. And that's why it's challenging. I we're in the middle of the ocean for two months straight. No one's sleeping. You might not have seen the sun. Everyone's just eating potatoes and onions.

Emily: 22:51

Don't forget the cabbage,

Alexis: 22:54

like people are grumpy. Right? That's just, that's part of it. I think like you hit it like a nail on the head when you talked about how beautiful it is because I think it is This gorgeous thing of working with scientists from all over the country and all over the world that are focused on something bigger than themselves. We're all there to create data, especially because it's publicly available data that's supposed to be for the entire scientific community, the entire world has access to this data, and you're part of the expedition that's going to gather it. I always find it really rewarding when maybe you're working with someone from a different culture, from a different country. Maybe there's a big language barrier or there's a complete cultural barrier, but you're still there to work on something together. And that's been some like best friendships and collaboration with scientists have been when there's been a huge cultural divide or a huge language divide, but we're still working together. Kind of like writing it out or being like, what mineral, what sample are we running? What are we looking for? There's a beauty in that and it's pretty unique. I don't think that happens many other places.

Emily: 23:56

That's exactly

Alexis: 23:56

it. Yeah. Like it's, I don't know, there's something, it's something out of a movie, right? Like you get to be part of this international organization for science, which is, I don't know, it's pretty beautiful.

Emily: 24:08

I think it's easy to be cynical about the state of the world and politics and stuff. And then we have the JR where every day we're going out and we're working together as a team. And achieving these, pretty cool scientific findings as a result of that.

Alexis: 24:23

Yes, maybe some days the team is a little bit more dysfunctional than others that you're like, okay, ma'am, you need to stop doing that. You need to stop chewing with your mouth open and or you need to let me work on my equipment. We're still there at the end of the day getting data. And that in itself is pretty beautiful. And maybe with this it's like, Because it is like something out of a movie and I think maybe the public might not understand like chemical oceanography or microbiology. Is there something that's like a misconception about what you do and is there something that the public or like even your family members friends that they don't understand about what you study?

Emily: 24:59

For oceanography and for what the JR does as a whole, and then for my own research in chemical oceanography and geo microbiology, I think maybe a misconception is just how big of a field and a research topic it is. It sounds so niche when you say it like I'm a chemical oceanographer, but. It just touches so many areas. Like it's everything from photosynthesis and how we generate oxygen on earth to what earth was like 4 billion years ago to, we touched on kind of mining reclamation and, even the work that I did starting out on lead and zinc contamination is part of it as well. Like how these elements cycle in the environment and how do we prevent human exposure. Even these things that might sound really esoteric are actually have these big impacts. And just the way that we measure them happens to be very niche and detailed, but they're these really big questions that we're answering. Our work on everything from like geohazard and underwater volcanoes and tsunamis to climate change. To monsoons and how we predict where there's going to be like really heavy monsoons. We just do such a wide breadth of work.

Alexis: 26:12

What I've found in my personal experience has been that maybe people don't understand how much science impacts their lives or how much science is involved in their lives, whether they know it or not. And I think maybe sometimes that gets lost in the sauce of

Emily: 26:27

the Yeah, it's definitely, it's like each scientist might be doing this like little tiny brick of The entire building, but then it cumulatively adds up to I don't know, a pyramid really. And you

Alexis: 26:39

interact with the pyramid 10 times, whether you know about it or not, right? That's part of your life, whether you can see it or not. So I think that's a good answer of just understanding like the scale of it, of how important it is, how big the questions are, and the impact that it can go. And we've touched a little bit on I O D P already, and it's terrible to say, and it's sad to say out loud, but the program, this beautiful international, space Station of the sea is coming to an end in September, 2024. And it's a huge blow for the scientific community and I think for the world personally. What do you think, in your opinion, will be the future of oceanography? Where do you think scientific ocean drilling will move to and how do you think the industry is gonna change with I O D P leaving?

Emily: 27:26

That's such a tough, big question and a scary question. So the Jodi's resolution will be retiring. It's nearing 50 years of operations. And I think we had hoped that. We might be able to get four more years of operations out of it, but the decision was made that, that will not be the case. It's leaving this really big void. At the simultaneous with that, I O D P itself, the agreement renews every 10 years, and right now it's looking to be a little bit fragmented. The European Consortium and Japan have an agreement together where they'll be using these mission specific platforms, to go out and do expeditions in areas that mostly the JR can't access. If you're drilling on ice or drilling in more shallow waters or something like that. And then Japan has the, Riser based drilling vessel, the chick that they can also use for operations. Right now the US is not formally going to be part of that.

Alexis: 28:26

Shame. That's terrible. Yeah. Yeah. It's very sad. They've been part of it since the 1960s to put in hindsight for people listening. They've been involved since the very beginning of ocean drilling. So it's sad that the US is leaving.

Emily: 28:38

Also building a drilling vessel is a huge undertaking and the process from planning and getting blueprints to actually building it if the US decides it wants to build another drilling vessel is probably on the order of 10 years. It's a really huge gap and a lot of uncertainty. It's hard looking in retrospect cuz I think we just had so much optimism that. Kind of countries would get it together and figure out the financing and figure out, how to make something come together. And that didn't happen. Right now I think there's so much uncertainty about how things will go. What one of the discussions here is whether or not all of the instrumentation that's in the labs on the JR would come back to Texas a and m and whether we might have an analytical facility people could come travel to and Oh, that would be

29:31

really

Alexis: 29:31

cool. Analyze cores with

Emily: 29:32

something. Yeah. Yeah. So that's an idea. there's just so much uncertainty. I feel like it's hard to envision what it will look like. I guess things that I am optimistic about first is just the huge amount of community support that, ocean Drilling has in general. it's a really large number of scientists in the US and globally that are. Pretty disheartened by the retirement of the JR. And are really rallying and advocating for, some continued ocean drilling. Yeah. Program. There's excitement about better using the legacy samples and data that we already have. So here at Texas ana, we have a core repository that has, I am not going to remember the number of Columbia core we have. It's insane.

Alexis: 30:15

It's like probably one of the best core repositories of the world. The only other two are breman and Japan that are also linked to the program. Right. Like those Exactly.

Emily: 30:24

There's more insight we can get from the cores we already have. And obviously you can get even more insight from going to areas we haven't drilled before. Or going back to places we have, but with better sampling techniques. Microbiology is a great example of that cuz you need fresh samples, to do microbiology. And we have new techniques that we didn't have when we started drilling in the 1960s, for sampling. I'm just hopeful overall that this kind of dissolution of I O D P will ultimately spur a lot of creativity about what a drilling program can look like, because I think people really will feel the loss and Oh, totally. Put effort into trying to figure something out. There's no reason the US is the de facto leader of I O D P either, no, it's true. Maybe this is just a shift.

Alexis: 31:07

I do like that, like hopefulness and I like that positivity of it. But I do think that the US is just such a powerhouse in funding and it's just such a powerhouse in university power as well, in research. You're right, it's not gonna be the defacto leader of all oceanography. Doesn't have to be, but it does have a historic. Institution of research and a historic amount of funding that they've put into the program. So it's just a shame to see it go. And it's a shame to see the program end because to put it into perspective for maybe people who don't know the I O D P or its importance, this is the program that found, plate tectonics, right? Which is a foundation in science and a foundation in earth history. The research that's coming out of these expeditions is mind boggling, lean and so powerful. And then because of the fact that it's a public organization and expeditions. It's also the amount of public data that we have. It's one of the biggest core repositories in the world that all over the world, scientists can request to see this data and they can get a better understanding of past climate, current conditions, and from that model future climate, right? It's very important and has direct effects to, change and to what we understand in oceanography. It is a big loss. I do hope to see that there is some positivity or some creativity and innovation about what happens next. Could you maybe touch on. The importance of these programs? I probably just made my 2 cents why I think that they're so important. But why, in your opinion, should these programs continue?

Emily: 32:40

I think I've touched on all of this a little bit as well. But I think what's so impressive and valuable about the way the program is currently structured as like these really strong networks of collaborations that are across borders and across career stages as well. You get graduate students who are working directly with, full professors nearing retirement and just the amount of like training and international collaborations that come out of our expeditions, I think is really invaluable, for just building up science. And again, I think you really need these large teams to accomplish the really big transformational science. Every once in a while, it's one person alone in the lab stumbles on radium or something if you're Marie Carey. But like really the re major discoveries that happen are from these extremely large international teams working together. I want to see it continue to see how much more we can. Discover about the world. And I think also we touched on a little bit just the infrastructure that, the Jodi's resolution especially has built up. we have a team of people who have been working for the organization for 30 or more years. Just the amount of institutional knowledge and expertise and in-house instruments that we've built that do things that. No other manufactured instrument in the world can do. It's something that is going to be very hard to recreate.

Alexis: 34:03

You touched on how long it takes to build a drilling vessel that it takes 10 years plus to just to build the actual structure, but like the infrastructure and the people behind it of the crew and the technicians and the equipment and the software program that have all gone into it. There's just years and years of institutional knowledge and expertise that has gone into creating a program like this. And I think you're, you nailed it on transformation science needs collaboration, right? Like it needs a big group of people that are all looking at it a little bit differently and everyone comes in as a different subject matter expert. Like you might come in as being like, yeah, I'm looking at sulfate. Someone else is coming in to be like, I'm actually looking at manganese. Someone else is looking at the diatom itself. You need that layered science and perspective, I think, to make a big, big discovery.

Emily: 34:52

And that includes our crew as well. Like you need people who know how to navigate the ship and certain weather conditions and people who have experience, Drilling these really weird types of rocks. A lot of our, drilling equipment and our crew come from the oil industry, the reality is the oil industry is not trying to figure out how to drill brittle basal on the sea floor. And so having people that like have experience on like how quickly you try and penetrate this formation in order to maximize actually recovering the materials. A very rare thing to find and

Alexis: 35:26

develop. It's like a lot many drillers drill into that cuz they don't have to, there's no like economic value. But then you have someone like Wayne that knows what we've hit before we've even hit it to be like, oh, you just hit shirt and you're like, I don't know Wayne, you don't know that yet. He was like, I do you hit shirt? Go take a break. You're gonna be here for two hours and then it comes up and it's shirt and you're like, oh mother. Yeah. Yeah. It's true. This is a little bit of an aside and it's a little bit of a break, but I did wanna talk about something that's also like a big kind of like passion for you and something that's a big initiative for you that you've also done at I O D P is producing e d I committees within, stem. And one big thing is that you did an E D I committee at I O D P, and I just would like to touch on it, in your opinion, when we're looking at E D I what's something in an as an industry that we need to work on? Maybe what's something that we've gotten right? Maybe it's just the diversity of I O D P in itself, and then what's something of that in an E D I perspective that gives you hope?

Emily: 36:24

Ooh, great questions. So within I D P right now, or within the Joy Resolution Science Operator office, we have a committee. I was not the one who started it. I'm now co-lead of it though. And I think our focus has been on kind of things that on the surface like aren't inherently d e I related, but are touch on it. How do we do a better job of unbiased hiring? How do we ensure staff retention? And then on the ship, how do we make scientists and staff and crew all feel like comfortable and welcome and how do we maximize productivity by making people just feel happy and comfortable in their environment? I think the thing that as an industry, We need to work on is maybe just particularly when you're exhausted after six weeks of being at sea in this high pressure field environment where it really feels like your career is hinging on this moment. Yeah. Just getting people to think through their impacts that they're having on others in those moments. And just being really aware of how every interaction is potentially going to, influence others. Moving from where we are now, where, at the beginning of every expedition we email out the code of conduct to all of the scientists so they know that there's general behaviors they need to follow, don't sexually harass people. That's a great first step. But moving beyond this kind of here's our document that tells you how to behave into kind of thinking about Yes. Yeah. And like treating, I guess maybe like golden rule ask, like going from don't sexually harass people to actually treating others the way you want to be treated and or the way they want to be treated. Really considering your impact on others. That's the big thing we need to work on. If you can get there, you also resolve all of the other kind of little bullying and harass wealth.

Alexis: 38:13

What you're touching on right now of being like in these environments, they're so rough and they're so extreme in a way because you're so isolated and you're out in a field setting where there's nothing there that they've gone in a way with the label because they're so intense that you can get away with certain bad behavior, right? Like you're allowed to be grumpy. You're allowed to interact with someone in a harsh way because you're like, yes, because I haven't slept for three weeks at a time and we're in this isolated environment and it.

Emily: 38:42

And there's hierarchies. So you're allowed to just tell somebody what to do and they don't get to question it. Yes. you're allowed to do that. But should you do that I think to some degree the staff and the crew who are sailing with each other on a AB rotation, so four to six months out of the year you're on the ship with them. I think on that side, we actually do a pretty good job of kind of instilling this Everybody is a person. You have to respect everybody. Everybody's gonna have off days and on days and days where they're more or less social and you get to know people well enough that it's you can maintain that. Yeah. Level of respect and understanding. Then it's just what small changes can we make on the ship that, make that kind of a universal thing. Like you want everyone to be like curious about everyone else and get to know everyone else and have, and develop this camaraderie, that then prevents people from maybe blowing up as much when things do get tense. Totally. There are some obvious big changes you can make that would do things like increase the diversity of people on the ship and get more women and more people of color and more people falling on different places of the gender and sexuality spectrum. Good to make those like kind of big changes that do increase diversity, but if you're bringing them into an environment that is not going to then treat them well or respectfully Yes. Then you're not solving the problem. In fact, you might be making it worse. So what are the changes we can actually make on the ship to really improve things? I've had, not on the JR, but I've had cruises that I just kept my head down and worked through and, I still got research out of it, but it didn't have to be that way. No. I wasn't, participating optimally and then that impacts the science overall the JR still has a lot of work we can do, and I think this is also a function of now being in a position where I have a lot more authority than I did as a student. But just how. Having kind of structural support from the organization and feeling empowered in my job, I'm able to do even better at my job than. It's always just surprising to me where I'm like, oh wow. I can accomplish so much when I'm not feeling stressed out about things.

Alexis: 40:45

When I'm not stressed out about the fact that I'm a girl in this environment that, like, that yeah. That worry's gone outta my brain. I now, I'm actually a way better scientist because of it, and I can have a better impact on my community. It has a big impact and thank you for talking about it. I think it's super important. I think the work that you're doing is fantastic. Yes. And I love that you are the co-lead of this chapter in this committee. I think it's fantastic work. To end on a positive of, I have this of like oceanography, but it could be in, in stem or science in general. Take it however you will, is like, what's something that's new and exciting in this field

Emily: 41:18

ooh. I think this has actually been happening for a while, so I don't wanna ignore people who've been working in this field for a long time. But one thing I'm excited about is the influx of funding and attention to, things like carbon dioxide capture and removal systems and it feels like there's like an explosion of like climate tech and mitigation, companies and startups happening right now. And it feels like a culmination of the last 50 years of research that we've done. We now finally have enough pieces of the puzzle that we're able to start translating that like basic fundamental science research into, public. It does feel just recently like these pieces are coming together. The last expedition I was on the Jr we weren't explicitly researching this, but we were drilling into one of the types of basalt formations that would possibly be able to host a lot of carbonate deposits that would help remove carbon dioxide. So the better we understand those basalt formations, the better we understand the parameters of like, how much can they contain, what do we need to do to them to, induce the carbonate precipitation? It just feels like we're really like building towards finding solutions right now. In a way that is exciting to me.

Alexis: 42:29

We're moving from theoretical and research and academia to all of a sudden we can actually put it into place and we can make it public and we can start bringing it to an actual solution base, which is like what you always want in science.

Emily: 42:41

Unfortunately we also have the incredible urgency right now. Yeah. To try and figure out how to combat climate change. But, A hundred percent things are coming together.

Alexis: 42:50

Yeah. There's also a necessity aspect of it too, that if we don't do this now, it's not gonna be good and we need to do this yesterday. It definitely does give me hope, cuz it could be a little bit douma gloom without it. So it's nice to see people actually Yeah. Creating a solution and creating a change.

Emily: 43:07

Starting to see like our own little pieces of those changes that we're helping make too.

Alexis: 43:13

I think that's a wonderful place to end. It is. End it on a place of hope Emily, I just wanted to say thank you so much for coming on the show today. It was so nice to see you again. And thank you for explaining your research, for talking about the program. it was wonderful. I learned so much.

Emily: 43:27

Yes, thank you. You're a wonderful host. Oh,

Alexis: 43:29

thank you. That's very, very nice of you today. Thank you again and thank you guys for listening. This was the Smoko podcast. We will see you next, week bye bye.