- Hello, everyone. Now, I've been involved in some pretty exciting public programmes here at the National Portrait Gallery but I have to say I think this might be the one I'm most excited about. The prospect of talking about some incredible portraits, celebrating some unbelievable women scientists and also crossing to a research vessel has had me anticipating this project for a long time. And thanks to all our panellists for all the preparation that's gone into this today. Now, happy World Oceans Day from me and let's just get straight into it. Sarah, just give us an intro to World Oceans Day and the theme and what it's about.
- Thanks, Penny. So, Australia is a founding member of the United Nations, a 75 year old international organisation which is currently made up of 193 member states. The United Nations is where the world's nations can gather together, discuss common problems and find solutions that benefit all our humanity. Today, the spotlight is on our shared ocean. The United Nations designate June 8th as World Oceans Day as a reminder of the major role the oceans have in everyday life. They are the lungs of our planet, a major source of food and medicine, a critical part of the biosphere and key to our economy. The oceans couldn't be more important. That's what sustains life on planet earth. World Oceans Day also serves as a reminder that the oceans carry the weight of our actions. This year's theme is revitalization, so collective action for the ocean. So, I'm not gonna paint the picture of doom, gloom, climate and environmental hopelessness because the science indicates that there is still a narrow window of opportunity for averting the worst impacts. And because of that, it'll be so tragic if we fell into doom and despair at the very moment where we need action most. So, what are some of the best ways we can celebrate World Oceans Day? First, you can wear it. Clothing, accessories such as t-shirts, caps, button pins or even scarfs are a great item you can display your support for a cause. It might seem like a simple action but it keeps our oceans and environment in the forefront of people's minds. Awareness raising is powerful because it educates people about a topic which are new to them and encourages them to participate in bringing change. Another way you can celebrate today is taking on some lifestyle changes, reducing the plastic consumption, lowering your carbon footprint and dependency on fossil fuels or participating in No Meat Monday, for example. And lastly, another way you can celebrate World Oceans Day is to educate yourself, talk about it and even volunteer and participate in programmes. I wanted to do a quick highlight if you wanted something to educate yourself with. I wanted to highlight one of my recent reads to inspire you. So, this is, "Worlds in Shadow, Submerged Lands in Science, Memory and Myth," by Patrick Nunn. I could not recommend this book enough. It's a great story of sea level rise that sets human experience, ancient wisdom in the context of scientific knowledge. So, to wrap up, I just wanted to remind everyone that Australia is in fact a marine nation. We have a sea floor jurisdiction of 1.8 times greater than our land mass and 3rd largest in the world. Australia needs systematic change. We need policies that completely and collectively move us all in the right direction. Not just people who are environmentally aware or who care about the climate crisis but we want everybody to be making environmentally friendly choices so our nation and the globe can prosper. Back to you, Penny.
- Ah, thank you, Sarah. And another wonderful way that we're celebrating World Oceans Day is by celebrating the incredible research and achievement of women scientists in particular today, in everything we know about the world's oceans. So, yeah, thank you for that introduction to World's Ocean World. As exhibitions curator here, I'm also here to bring in a few collection connections and we're just gonna touch briefly on, by way of introduction, the portrait of Penny Sackett, former chief scientist of Australia and a physicist and astronomer. And this portrait's in our collection, it was the promotional portrait used for this programme. And I always love to hear different perspectives on portraiture. For me, I've always been so struck by the incredible vision and determination in Penny's face in this portrait, the way she's immersed in that imagined research environment and the way that she's cradling the earth in her hands that way. But I would love to hear from Jiani, Sarah and Megan, your reflections on this portrait?
- Yeah, I can go first. So, again, what strikes me first is that giant blue globe in Penny's hand. You clearly understand how earth is in fact a blue planet. You've over 70% of its surface covered by oceans and the oceans are vital to the earth system. And you can see also that the polar caps are visible caused by the climate systems. And to paraphrase the fantastic science communicator herself, Penny Sackett, the connections of the oceans and climate are so deep and strong and yet for most of us, most of the time are unseen and uncelebrated. Yeah, so I just wanted to point out the globe she's holding and how it is all connected. I'll let Jiani comment next.
- I find the setting of this painting very interesting. So, Prof. Sackett is sitting in observatory and she is holding a globe. So, she is studying the earth and at the same time she can look into the universe. So, I'm seeing the connectedness, that only by studying our earth and its processes, then are we able to make comparisons and learn about other planet. For example, ocean scientists are helping to direct the hunt for extraterrestrial life. Think Sarah is dropping an article about this in the chat if you want to have a read.
- Oh, give a second, I forgot to prepare that one but I'll get it up soon.
- Yeah.
- Oops.
- And Megan, is there anything, throwing you in here 'cause we didn't warn you about this one but is there anything you'd like to observe about that portrait?
- [Rob] Ooh, Megan might be on mute.
- Oh, Megan, hold on a sec. You're just on mute.
- Of course, I'm just-
- [Penny] Oh, there we go. We got you.
- I'd just like to contribute some thoughts just on the two surfaces that intrigue me, that are reflective and just to also, I love that that's being captured in this painting and the relationship that we have with water and its ability to enable us to reflect on ourselves as well.
- Wow, thank you, all of you. This is why I asked that question because to me, now that portrait's taken on three additional dimensions that are beyond my experience or understanding. So yeah, you've deepened that portrait for me and I'm sure for our audience today too. Thank you. Now, we're also gonna explore a little bit more about another portrait that's just appeared in the mix here too because it's indicated on what Sarah's wearing there with her beautiful scarf. And I'm gonna ask her to introduce the organisation, WOMEESA, Women in Earth and Environmental Sciences and to particularly talk about a few of the leading women behind that organisation.
- Thanks, Penny. Yeah, so I'm deeply passionate about this. So, WOMEESA Network, I just wanted to say our aim is to create a unified Australasian network of women working in earth and environmental science, in academia, industry and government. That said, we welcome men and allies to join our network to aid our work in achieving our goals. So, please, there's a link in the chat so you can follow through and explore a bit more and how to join the network. It's all free. So, WOMEESA provides visible role models, professional development training, speaking opportunities and, of course, support. We have social media channels, newsletters, monthly seminar series, a shut up and write session to help those academics or get their work out and conference participation. So, the next monthly seminar is actually today by Dr. Carly Segal, which is at 2:00 pm. So, it's a bit of a clash but please check it out if you have the time. So, the idea for WOMEESA and the Portraits Project was originally born at the inaugural Dorothy Hill Women in Earth Sciences Symposium back in 2017, which was hosted at the University of Queensland when I was there. We were deciding on an icebreaker activity where someone mentioned that we could break people up by their favourite superheroes and give them something to talk about. So, very quickly did we realise our superheroes are people like UQ's own palaeontologist, Dorothy Hill that you see here, who was the first female professor at an Australian university and first female president of the Australian Academy of Science. So, a very big person. So, it really got people talking and we're still talking about what a great icebreaker, we're still talking about this stuff and we've carried the theme with WOMEESA to put them on stocks. For that icebreaker, we've got Jiani Sheng here to draw up the first collection of portraits, which later went on to be the motive within WOMEESA Network, which has officially launched on International Women's Day in March 8th, 2018 and we celebrate each year.
- Can you just say a little bit more, Sarah, about your choice of portraiture to celebrate these incredible women and create this additional support network and this recognition?
- Yeah, great question. So, there is such a power in visibly seeing someone like you achieving great things. It tells you and your children that they belong, that they too can inspire to achieve great things. The most important thing one woman could do for another is to expand their sense of actual possibilities. So, by overcoming the visibility issue that many women and other minority groups face, art can then be used to offer new perspective on old problems, to surprise and to help people connect to issues in new ways. But the WOMEESA portraits are an advocacy, are the same thing.
- And we are just seeing there some beautiful examples. Rob, bring that slide back up, I love it. Everyone including pets wearing the beautiful portrait scarf. I love it. Pop onto the next slide, Rob, if you like. So, also I'm interested in your choice of printmaking to do this celebration. So, this is another one of me throwing in a bit of collection connections. So, we don't have a huge number of lino cut or wood cut portraits in the collection but we do have a few, we have these Manning Clark and Patrick White by Rick Amor and we have these lovely set of lino cuts by Eric's Thake, which are incredibly charming in the collection. So, I'm interested, flick just through the next few, Rob. So, we might just with that... I love that, that's my favourite one. I'm just saying. We might just then start to talk about your choice, your work in printmaking as part of this project journey. And should we start with exploring your process of your lino cut for this series?
- Yeah, firstly, I would like to say that I am attracted to lino prints or wood prints because of their beauty of simplicity, just like the ones shown by Rick Armour and Eric Thake. And because they use so little to tell so much, it's a bit like, for me, like a poetry, the beauty of poetry compare to the beauty of a novel, so pure and condensed. Then the reason I choose black and white lino prints to make portraits for scientists is because I found this medium also works really well to tell the story of a person. It's like this one. It's because there are always so much to tell about these scientists and the nature of this medium and being in black and white and using simple lines and flat shapes and suddenly we have the freedom to depict very different things together in one picture, often necessary by telling story. And the image can still look aesthetically pleasant without too much effort. So, I think it's because the simplicity of lino cut unifies the image like a strong filter. And I guess we all have the experience of adding a filter to a photo and suddenly it looks more pleasant. So, in this way I think lino printing gives me more freedom to focus on the stories and the achievement of the scientists. Yeah.
- Wow, that's brilliant. So, the scientist that you've depicted is Professor Emma Johnson. Tell us a little bit about your process and your choices around the setting and how you've put that portrait together, Jiani?
- Thanks, Penny. So, Professor Emma Johnson. So, she is a marine ecologist and an ecotoxicologist and she is not only a world leading authority in marine science and conservation but also a passionate advocate for all types of research, as well as engaging in high level advocacy for a range of policy issues. So, since Professor Emma is such a multifaceted person, it was difficult for me trying to capture her in all her different roles. I had a few failed attempts trying to put three Emma doing different things in one picture and it became too big. And then I saw the Caryatids supporting the Greek temples. So, I decided to highlight Prof. Emma in her diving suit, which is her work outfit. So yes, we see her as a very strong and happy marine scientist and at the same time, by having her as a Caryatid, it indicators her other roles. So, she is one of those people who not only do her own research but also support others and support science. Yes, so...
- Oh, it's such a great concept and I love that. I love the portrait as a strong and happy marine scientist in all her gear, it's just beautiful. Rob, let's see the portrait.
- [Rob] I've got a few of the design process images there.
- Yeah, so this is the portrait in process, isn't it Jiani?
- Yes, so this is the carving and the printing and I also found I love it because I got the same pleasure as doing my microfossil work. So, first day I sketch the portrait, it's like finding a field or location to look for the fossils and the carving is like dissolving the rocks in the lab to free the fossils and we never know what we are gonna get till the last step. So, for the fossils, is seeing them under scanning electromicroscope, it magnified hundreds of times. And for the printing, it's lifting the first print. Like, "Oh." Yes, so I love it.
- [Penny] I love that. I love that equivalence between your scientific practise and your art practise, Jiani, that is so beautiful. I think we've got a few more slides from the process, don't we Rob? There we go.
- [Rob] We do but I've got a bit of a video here actually, which I might just share. So, this is the lino print process.
- So, this is.. That's transferring carving.
- Beautiful.
- [Rob] That's a great video.
- [Penny] That's so lovely.
- [Rob] And also peeling off the first print, we have as well. Oh, it's the same one. I knew that would happen.
- [Penny] That's okay. Rob. Jiani, it's incredible to hear about your process and tell us a little bit more about Professor Emma Johnson and her work.
- Yeah, so Professor Emma Johnson. So, the word ecotoxicologist, it's only after reading about her, it's the first time I hear about this word. So, she studies the toxins in the ocean and to see how they affect the animals, the community, the ecology of the ocean.
- [Penny] Ah, there we go. And there we have her at work.
- [Jiani] Yes, so she dives for her research. So, she has been diving from the Sydney Harbour, all the way to Antarctica. Yes.
- Brilliant and let's see the finished portrait. Rob, are we ready to show?
- [Rob] I think we might be.
- [Penny] Oh, how exciting.
- [Rob] Oh no, we've got the Caryatids, I'm afraid. Here we go.
- [Penny] So, there we go. There's the finished portrait. What was your reaction when this came off the press, Jiani, when you had that reveal moment?
- [Jiani] I was happy.
- [Penny] Brilliant. We're really excited to share these portraits, debut these portraits today in this programme. Thanks so much, Jiani, for sharing your process. Now, the next portrait we're gonna talk about is Sarah's portrait of Professor Leanne Armand and I will ask her to go through the same process Jiani just did, if that's okay? Talk us through your process and say a bit about Leanne's work and introduce us to this beautiful portraits.
- Thank you. Yeah, I'll talk about Leanne first and then I'll go into the composition a bit. So, I'm very glad that we can come together to tribute Professor Leanne Armand, who sadly passed away at the start of this year. She was my boss and mentor to many. So, Leanne was a strong advocate for women in science, a mentor and role model to many Australian women, marine science and geosciences. Leanne was an expert in the Southern Ocean's history. So, she studied the past through tiny glass fossils called diatoms. So, very similar to rads, radiolarians. So, radiolarians both have glass skeletons but they're more animal-like. And diatoms have glass skeletons too but they're a little bit more like plants, so they can be found in different environments and we can use them to tell us about the past. So, Leanne's portrait that you can see here, it's composition mimics that of a microfossil plate. So, you heard the word microfossil getting thrown around, me and Jiani at the same type of scientist. So, this is generally what we produce. Something that looks like this, this is a sketch but our images generally look like this black and white. It almost looks like a lino print, which is fantastic. So, the one on the right is a plate of a microfossil. So, in palaeontology or micropaleontology, we arrange our fossils onto a plate to aid identification where we often scale the fossils to one another to make it easier for comparison. So, I think Leanne would've been very delighted to be featured on a microfossil plate as she regularly used the specimens illustrated here to help her understand past climatic conditions, like sea ice cover. Yeah. Yeah.
- [Penny] So, how did you find the process, Sarah?
- Yeah, so this was my first lino. I went up to Brisbane and Jiani gave me a little workshop and we carved together and we actually hand pressed it. I didn't realise how hard it was to hand press a lino but it took a few goes and we worked really fast. The paint was drying 'cause it was so humid. But the process was really fun. It was hard to wrap around your head trying to do the negative carving. But I really enjoyed this medium and I think I'll do a few more.
- [Penny] Wow, that's great to hear. It's a beautiful portrait and pretty impressive for a first attempt, Sarah. That's pretty incredible.
- [Sarah] Thank you. I have one more thing to say.
- [Penny] Yeah.
- Just discuss but we'll probably maybe email out or put on our social media that we'll probably donate a bunch of prints of these portraits to WOMEESA for them to sell, to help organise and support women in earth and environmental science going forward. So, please stay tuned 'cause a few of the prints, my exclusive prints, might be up for auction soon.
- That's fantastic, bringing it full circle in the project. I think that's one of the things I really love about this project is seeing portraiture living at work, in communities and really being an integral part of how you understand your community and celebrate achievement and inspire people for the future. So, that's brilliant. Thank you, Sarah. Now, we're gonna move on to Megan Cope and her portrait of Mibu Fischer. Megan, are you happy to do the same thing as our other brilliant artists and take us through your process and portrait?
- So, I was really rusty on the lino cuts and I was terribly anxious actually. I wanted Mibu 'cause she's such a beautiful woman, I wanted her to feel proud of the work and she loves it, which is fantastic. And actually she said, "Oh my goodness, I can't believe it looks like me so much." So, I was very happy that we achieved that. And she was quite sympathetic because she remembers doing lino cutting in high school and how challenging it was. How challenging it's but I just did this at my flat. I currently don't have a studio, so this is the beautiful thing about lino, is that it's portable, it's simple and it's complex, as for reasons you've discussed earlier. But sometimes it's the simple things that give us great pleasure. And so, I printed this at a friend's house, my friend's mom, she's got a little press under her house and it was lovely to connect with her. I've recently come back to Brisbane, so it was a great excuse to connect. But I'd like to just also say a few words about Mibu, if that's okay?
- [Penny] Absolutely, yeah.
- Mibu is a cousin of mine and her grandmother and my great grandmother are sisters. And yeah, so at all times, I pay my respects to our elders. I acknowledge that I'm on Yaggera land today and that we are Quandamooka People and we are also Yuli Baruba, which means we are people of the sand and sea. And so, both Mibu and I have a very deep connection to our country, which is Morton Bay. I know that many, many scientists come and study our country. And so, it's really, really wonderful and important for us Quandamooka People and as a community that Mibu is doing the work that she's doing. She's committed to marine science, broadening to include social sciences as a way into understanding the need for indigenous perspectives and co-designing research with both indigenous and non-indigenous worldviews. And this is very important because for us, our understanding and our connection to country and our knowledge systems are deeply embedded within kinship structures. And kinship structures, I think, help us understand how every single living thing is interconnected and how it's connected. And we remember that through art practise, through language, storytelling, song, all of that stuff. So, our culture is science in many ways. And so, it's very exciting to announce that there's a Wikipedia page being developed for Mibu. It should be going live any day now and there's a little section here that states, "She's an early career scientist who aims to bridge a gap that draws attention to the indigenous communities facing the frontline of impacts and changes to coastlines, ecosystems and livelihoods from climate change impacts. She's a marine ethnoecologist within the multiuse ecosystems and tropical coastal groups in the CSIRO's Oceans and Atmosphere in Brisbane." So, she's doing very important work. So, keep your eye out for my deadly cousin. I'm very proud of her. And as an artist, I'm very interested in the intersections and spaces that contemporary art can connect with science and art and how we may broaden the language and through the visual language, connect with greater audiences. I love the movement of citizen scientists and that art helps connect people. My dog is barking. Excuse me. Shh. Sorry about that, he likes get involved. Yeah. What else? That's probably it for me unless you wanna hear some more?
- No, that's a beautiful summary of both Mibu's contributions and also your process too. I know you've done a lot of commissions for various programmes and institutions. How is this one special or different for you for this time?
- Well. Yeah, portraiture is quite challenging. Most of my work is mapping practises and trying to connect all of these aspects of country to decolonize the way we might see country and view it historically and in the present. So, there's a sense of removal from the intimacy, I guess. And yeah, with the portrait, it's my cousin and I wanted her to want one as well. Yeah, it was a real challenge but I enjoyed it and yeah, I think I'll do some more. It was great.
- Oh, that's great to hear, Megan because it is an absolutely stunning portrait. Thank you so much for being part of this and taking us through your process and Mibu's work today too. And thank you all of you, Jiani, Sarah and Megan. I know it's incredibly hard for artists sometimes to share the intricate workings of your creative process and sometimes the confronting experience too. So, it's actually really incredibly generous of you to take us through your work like this today. Thank you because as Megan just said, it's an intimate form and the work you're doing is so personally important to all of you. And so, now we have our extra treat and I think a first for the Portrait Gallery and the thing that I'm most excited about is because this, that idea of working portraiture and portraiture in society and in communities. We're demonstrating that today through our connection to a research vessel. And I know they're on standby and I'm just gonna hand over to Sarah to introduce the vessel and the crew and the next part of the programme. Thank you.
- Thanks, Penny. And thanks Megan and Jiani, absolutely fantastic portraits. I'm blown away by the stories of the actual artworks. Yeah, so to tie it to also a pay tribute to Leanne Armand, who was the director of Australian and New Zealand Inter-IODP. We're gonna cross live to one of the ships, which is the JOIDES Resolution. So, I wanted to first, just to really celebrate World Oceans Day, so first, how do scientists go into the past? We explore the earth under the sea. You see rocks and sediments are like libraries and hold the archives of our earth's history and the best books are preserved in the oceans. So, to study these rocks, scientists collect longs cores, sort of like this and this width, this is modelled after an IODP core and examine the material trapped within to reconstruct past oceans and climate conditions. So, now let's get wet. Let's dive into the science by crossing live over to the IODP's world famous floating laboratory, the JOIDES Resolution. Are you guys there?
- Yes. Hello. Thanks to everyone for including us in this event. It's a really unique opportunity and I'm excited to be here. So, my name is Emily Estes, I'm a expedition project manager and staff scientist with the JOIDES Resolution. We are a scientific drilling vessel. We operate year round, 24 hours a day collecting drill cores of both sediment and ocean crust for scientific purposes. And we are actually just back from two months at sea. This is my last day on the ship before I get to get on land again. So, here's some greenery in the background that keeps us sane while we're out there for that extended period of time. This programme has been operating since 1968 and this vessel, the JOIDES Resolution has actually been operating since 1978, I believe. It is, for some scale, since I can't actually convey the sense of scale. The vessel is 143 metres long and our drilling derrick, which I will show you in a minute after I put on my safety gear and go outside, is 62 metres high from the base of the ship to the height of the derrick. All right, so I have safety gear and I'm going to go out on deck and show you some of our process. Here we go. So, if the sun had risen already, you'd be able to see Table Mountain in Cape Town, South Africa behind us but it's not visible yet. So, here is our drilling derrick. This supports the weight of a drill string made of steel pipe that we extend down through the water to the sea floor where we can start coring sediment. We have the capability to deploy 6,000 metres of drill pipe and we can operate in water depths of up to 5,000 metres. So, this allows us to access some of the deepest parts of the ocean. So, when we are coring, the core will actually come up here and you may notice there's a red circle in the middle there and that's what the drill pipe extends through. And then it goes through a hole in the bottom of the ship that's called the moon pool. And Sarah has been in the moon pool with me, well not in the water but we've been down to look at it when it's opened up for deployment of certain things and I actually wanted to highlight the moon pool a bit, even though I can't show it to you because there's this really cool phenomenon where the moon pool is just open to the water but on really nice sunny days, the sunlight will actually refract through the water under the ship and then come back up through the moon pool and it creates this really deep ultramarine colour that I always find incredibly contemplative and there's a Twitter hashtag that I think Sarah created, #SpecialBlue that describes this ultramarine colour. And it's one of the ways in which I think there is a little bit of art incorporated into the science on our ship. All right, so I will go downstairs to where the core is received. This is the catwalk or core receiving platform. So, the core will come up on deck here and be handed off to our team of technicians who then carry it. It comes up in 10 metre sections. And so, it gets laid out on these racks. Once it's laid out on the racks, it's cut into 1.5 metre long sections that we can actually carry around and handle. And from there we bring them inside the lab. So, I apologise that things are very empty and inactive right now since we don't have a lot going on. But so we collect these 1.5 metre long core sections and we bring them inside and put them in these racks here for analysis. First, they get inscribed with their label and core name and the depths that they came from and where they were collected using a laser inscriber. And then they equilibrate to temperature so that we can do analyses on them because many of the analyses we wanna do are sensitive to temperature, which can include things like density and the physical properties of the core and how it responds to a magnetic field actually. So, we have some instrumentation for doing that here. This is a x-ray imaging system. Imagery is actually incredibly important as part of the core description process. So, here we can x-ray it and see what's inside of the core and see bioturbation, which is worms that live in the surface of the sediment or other organisms can create these boroughs that you can visualise. Oh, and I'll highlight a little bit of art that we have on the ship here too, that I believe Sarah did actually.
- [Sarah] Yeah.
- [Emily] Yeah, so there's our x-ray. Yeah, so after we've measured properties on the whole core, we come into the core splitting area where we have a series of saws that allows us to split the cores in half and produce what's similar to the core that Sarah showed you. So, those split halves are what we do a lot of our actual work on because much of the science is descriptive. So, once they're cut in half, we come into the description area where we can lay many cores out and work them all at once and compare their different features, different colours. Oh, I think we put them away already but... Oh, nope, nope here it is. I will show an example of the Munsell Soil-Color Charts. This is an incredibly important part of the description process because small colour changes can actually indicate different changing chemical conditions or changing inputs. One of the major inputs of sediment to the open ocean, where we just were, is actually terrestrial matter that's in wind and then is deposited in the ocean. And that is brownish or reddish as opposed to the fossilised microorganisms that Sarah was talking about earlier, which can range in colour from grey to white to even pink. So, one thing we do with the core is actually assign a colour to it and it has this very organised hierarchy that you can see here. So, that's a cool highlight. So, we do core description. Oh and we've made it very cosy since there's no one on the ship right now. So, core description. And then one of the main ways we can reconstruct the past is through paleomagnetism. So, every couple million years or so, the orientation of earth's magnetic axis actually flips. So, by measuring the magnetic orientation of minerals in our core samples, we can understand where we are in past history. And that's something, so the expedition I was just on, we were exploring the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and the process of sea floor spreading and we were revisiting sites that were actually first visited in 1968. And in 1968, they were verifying the theory of plate tectonics, which to me is something I grew up knowing about and seems like a very old discovery but it actually wasn't. So, in 1968 we cored ocean crust in a transact moving away from the Mid-Ocean Ridge and we found that as you move away from that ridge, the magnetic signatures show that the crust gets older and that shows that the ridge is generating new ocean crust and pushing the older stuff away. So, verifying that plates are created and then subducted in turn. And so, we revisited some of those sites in the past two months to see what more we can learn now that there's 50 years worth of better technology or a different technology. So, that's the magnetometer. And now I will move into our microfossil lab. So, Sarah mentioned this earlier but looking at microfossils is one of our best tools for... Let me try and turn the lights on. There we go. It is one of our best tools for understanding the past. Both because we have this knowledge of when different fossils either evolved or went extinct. And so, when you examine a sample and you see a certain assemblage of species, you can figure out what time period you're in. And that allows us to figure out, when you pull up a core from 5,000 metres under the water and from 200 metres deep in the sediment, you can then look at the assemblage of organisms, fossil organisms to see where you are in time. And we do that by sieving the samples. So, here's our sets of sieves of different sizes for pulling out certain types of organisms. And then you can also do some chemical treatments which we have set up in this hood over here to disintegrate some of the parts of the sediment that we care about less. If you wanna observe just the fossils. So, these fossils range in size, from being visible to the naked eye to being so small they need to be looked at with a microscope. So, some of them, on average actually, if you imagine if you look at the end of a tip of your hair, just a single hair, they're the width of a hair. And actually, Sarah can talk about this a little bit but part of the process for sampling we use and for picking them out so that we can image 'em on the microscope can sometimes involve using an eyelash to manipulate them. So, we have a series of microscopes here and this is the first step after you've sieved and washed the samples, you can look at them under just 10 X or 100 X magnification on a microscope. And then once you've picked out the ones that you wanna image to make the plate that Sarah showed in her lino cut, we have a scanning electron microscopy microscope here that can take images that are zoomed in 2,000 or 4,000 or more times. Sarah, I don't know if you wanna say anything more about how you do this type of research?
- [Sarah] Yeah, no that's perfect. Yeah, I like to refer to myself as a time lord like Dr. Who So, we're the timekeepers, the palaeontologists and the paleomagnetist on the ship. It's all very exciting. That exact lab, I've done many, maybe a whole year of my life on the JOIDES Resolution at this stage. So, you stand in that lab and you can look out the window sometimes, it's right there, you're processing ancient cores to research and you can see icebergs, you can see whales coming by every couple of seconds. So, it's really exciting research out there. Yeah.
- [Emily] Yeah. Oh and I guess I'll add, it's not just the imaging and the counting of the fossils. Those fossils record chemical history as well. So, their shells are made of either a silica dioxide or a calcium carbonate and that calcium carbonate, depending on the water temperature, a greater or lesser amount of magnesium may also be in the mineral phase. And so, by measuring changes in those ratios, we can look at how hot the ocean was a million years ago or 60 million years ago. And that's how we learn things about what past climate was like and then how we predict what future climate might be like as well. So, it's the chemistry and it's the visualisation that's important here. I see some questions but I can't actually figure out how to get to chat on this iPad.
- Yeah, did you wanna quickly show the stairwell and then we can get to questions all at the end?
- [Emily] Oh, yes I do.
- So, as you walk I'll explain. So, there's a sense of legacy in this programme. Again, it's been going for 55 years and there's something we do on the JOIDES Resolution. So, you go to sea for two months at a time and to do all these science objectives and you have all this experiences with people. So, there's a logo competition that goes on too. So, every expedition has this logo competition which used to be silk printed onto t-shirts. So, there's this giant legacy as you can see here. All these are about two months each.
- [Emily] So, these are getting to some of the older ones now. Yeah.
- [Sarah] Yeah. So, now we digitally print, so we can have all the colours but going back in time we only had a silk screen to print onto t-shirts. Some are hilarious, some are very informative of that whole two months condensed to one image, one figure.
- [Emily] This is one of my favourites 'cause I like the comic style of it. Yeah. So, it does really record our history, yeah. And it all the way to logo that, here's one that someone's kid drew for us and then goes all the way to our logo from the past two months in the South Atlantic Transit.
- [Sarah] That's so cool. And it just goes to show you how creative artistic scientists are too and same with artists too. They can be very scientific, just like Megan Cope's work. Yeah, fantastic and I think it goes down another stairwell too, down to the old research lab-
- [Emily] Yeah, you're right, it does. Yeah.
- [Sarah] Yeah, such a history. And so, this really brings a sense of community and legacy to people who join the programme, the Scientific Ocean Drilling Programme. And yeah, I think that's a good place to end. If you wanna get somewhere comfortable and we can do some Q and A, maybe Penny?
- Rob says, "Yeah, that sounds good Sarah," and thanks so much Emily. Wow, I feel like I've learned more in the last 20 minutes than I have in a long time. That was an amazing crash course on how research vessel works and just so brilliant to feel like we're on the ship there with you. That's just fantastic. And the reason there's not a lot going on there right now is 'cause it's around 4:00 am isn't it? So, it's a little early in the morning for everyone to be out working. But how many people are on the ship when it's fully staffed, when all the researchers are there?
- Sorry, I'm just going back to my office. There can be up to 120. We've been operating at a slightly lower capacity due to COVID in the past couple of years. But yeah and that's usually comprised of 30 scientists, about 30 technicians who support the science and then the ship crew, the captain, the people who are operating the ship and the drill crew who are actually doing the hard work of getting the core to the surface.
- [Penny] How many people does that take? How many people in the drill crew team?
- I think around 30.
- [Penny] Wow.
- So, we operate 24 hours a day, so that is 15 on each shift, 12 hour shifts and off we go.
- [Penny] Wow, it's a massive operation isn't it? And that question was actually from Barbara. Thanks so much and keep those questions coming everyone. We actually have one from our colleague Jill, who feels like this is all sounding very sci-fi, hilariously and she's just wondering what's the most unusual discovery you've come across on the research ship?
- Oh, good question. Scientifically or things that have interested me personally?
- [Penny] Oh, either or both. Both sound fascinating. Thank you.
- Yeah, so I'm trained as a chemist and what I'm used to doing is taking these sediment samples and actually squeezing them under hydraulic pressure to extract water that's contained in them. So, the actual science I do is just on clear fluid. And one thing when I started working on the ship and seeing a broader range of the science was just the textures of the cores are always so surprising. So, one thing that Sarah will appreciate, is we cored through a layer of diatoms where there's about, not very thick, just maybe 10 centimetres thick but it was just pure fossilised diatoms and it actually appears a little bit spongy. It looks like you've gone through a sponge but then when you put it under a microscope you can actually see that it's these fossils of silicon dioxide or essentially quarts. But just the way that that texture doesn't look like what you expect it to look like was fascinating to me. Unusual things we've discovered. I guess, in general, we have a couple of main research areas. One is paleoclimate that we've highlighted. Another is hazard prevention. We do a lot of coring in faulted areas to look at how you can predict earthquakes better. And then a newer area for us is looking at microbiology. So, we've discovered that there are microorganisms that can live 2000 metres under the sea floor and that there's actually an incredible diversity of organisms down there. There's bacteria, there's archaea, there's fungi, there are viruses. And so, we've been able to test the limits of life, like how hot can life get? 'Cause it gets hotter as you move down through the sediments towards the mantle. So, how hot can life get? How much room does it actually need to survive? 'Cause as you move down, the sediments get compressed by the weight of the water and the sediments and then what do you eat when you're down there? There's very little food and there's organisms that can actually breathe iron instead of oxygen or can breathe sulphur. So, what are these organisms doing and how are they surviving?
- [Penny] Wow. Oh, that's incredible. Have you got any unusual ones to throw into the mix, Sarah?
- Yeah, I've got one. We were offshore in North Sumatra on my first expedition and you're thinking to see just marine fossils and whatnot, then down, about a kilometre down into the sediment, all of a sudden we got a tree about this big, we caught through a tree from 20 million years old. So, what it was was a tsunami deposit. So, a tsunami or giant wave that was associated with a big earthquake happened around that area 20 million years ago and deposited all this sediment and a tree in the middle of the ocean. So, that was really exciting to find. And we also find tektites which are tiny meteorites in the ocean. We measure many things. I did wanna point out that we do have a school group onboard if they wanted to ask questions too.
- Wow, that's brilliant. Any questions from the school group? Just get ready, we can pop those through the speaker. We've got a question, someone with some inside knowledge, Sarah, has asked what the story of the core sample is that you were holding up earlier?
- I see. So, here we've got, this is a famous core very close to the Chicxulub crater. So, that was the asteroid that came and killed the dinosaurs. So, that 66 million years ago, so this was cored about 2,000 kilometres away. So, not that close but still close enough. So, the further you go down in the core, the further back in time you are. So, this was before the meteor impact. Then right here is when the meteor hit. Then all this here got deposited within seconds or within a day at least. So, this is the tsunami deposits. Then right here is the ash fallout. So, this here has that famous iridium spike. So, that tells you that it was an asteroid impact, so that all the dust got flown into the air and then settled down and then after here it looks very similar to the stuff down below. But if you look under the microscope, what me and Jiani do, the fossils have completely changed. So, there was a mass extinction. So, a lot of life, not just dinosaurs went extinct. A lot of other marine fossils also went extinct and new stuff emerged up here. So, yeah, this is quite a famous core for IODP and this is just a play core. This is why I can throw it around a bit. Yeah, thank you.
- Wow. Emily and Sarah, I'm doing that thing which probably hosts shouldn't do, which is my jaw's just dropping and dropping open as I'm more and more fascinated by what you're saying. So, sorry about that everybody. We've got a lot of comments in the chat about this incredible meshing of art and science and I was particularly thrilled. Thanks for showing us, Emily, the logo designs on that stairwell. I think that it's really gives, actually, quite a visceral picture of the community and the time you're all spending together. How did that start? That sort of tradition I suppose and I love the connection back to print making to as well, they seem so naturally connected.
- Yes, I think it's pretty natural thing to arise from being on a ship with the same people for two months. It's just a way to build community and it's this inclination to commemorate it somehow and for people to express things that made the experience unique. Some of them are very funny but also highlight that things maybe didn't go so well on that expedition. You can tell just from looking at the logo. And yeah, so I think it's just a way to acknowledge the experience that you've been through together. It started very early on. Sarah, I will credit her with doing all of the research to find all of these logos and pulled them together and then display them. I don't know if Sarah wants to comment on that process.
- Oh yeah, no, it was really fun 'cause we're going around 50, almost 60 years now. So, it was a call. We didn't archive them properly so we had to do a quick call to see if people preserved the logos. So, we got photos of t-shirts. Some people sent me their shirts 'cause for the future of oceanographers. So, it was a fantastic exercise to even meet the past and bring multiple generations together.
- [Penny] That's brilliant.
- It's a great legacy and I think everyone feels it when they get the t-shirt, so much excitement and it's a story. You can just sit there talking for almost an hour, just about the t-shirt logo and everything on it.
- Wow. Well thank you so much, everyone. I know I've learned so much and I've enjoyed these discussions incredibly. What a way to celebrate World Oceans Day. I think we've done brilliantly. So, thank you so much. Thank you Emily, there early in the morning, Sarah, Jiani and Megan. What an incredible programme. I'm gonna just throw back to Robert to finish off but thank you so much.
- Thank you.
- There we go. Wow. Mind blowing. Fantastic. Thank you, Emily, for taking us through at such an inhospitable time of the morning. It was so good to see the inside workings of the Resolution. That was incredible. Thank you to Sarah, Jiani, Megan and Emily and Penny for hosting today. This was a slightly different session for the National Portrait Gallery but science is a part of everyday life and art is a part of everyday life and so, we thought it was a great opportunity, on World Oceans Day, to bring those two fields together. Thank you for sticking with us. We had a really nice audience. I see the school class there as well. I'm going to leave the session open for a little while so that you can scroll back through the chat and copy any of the links that you might want to access after the session is over. So, that's it from us. Come back next Tuesday for our regular, more arty focused virtual highlights tour at 12:30 next Tuesday. Thanks everyone. It's been wonderful seeing you all. And don't forget World Oceans Day.
