EP 123: Designing Oceans | Helen Czerski
Today we talk about building a healthy relationship with the ocean.
Helen Czerski was born in Manchester. She is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at University College London. As a physicist, she studies the bubbles generated by breaking waves in the ocean to understand their influence on weather and climate. Helen has been a regular presenter of BBC TV science documentaries since 2011. She also hosts the Ocean Matters podcast, is part of the Cosmic Shambles network, and is one of the presenters for the Fully Charged Show. She has been a science columnist for the Wall Street Journal since 2017 and she is the author of the bestselling Storm in a Teacup: The Physics of Everyday Life, Bubbles: A Ladybird Expert Book, and Blue Machine: How the Ocean Works.
Episode mentions and links:
Helen’s latest book: The Blue Machine: How the Ocean Works
Scripps Institute of Oceanography
Article: Why we need to respect Earth’s last great wilderness – the ocean - via The Guardian
World Ocean Day: June 8th, 2023
Helen’s restaurant rec: Old Ship Hammersmith
Follow Helen: Twitter | Insta | LinkedIn
Episode Reflection:
Go on Google Earth, center your map over Bora-Bora, and zoom out to the global scale. From this perspective, one can appreciate the scale of our world’s oceans as the Pacific takes up the entire earth. I loved the energy Dr. Czerski brought to the episode this week to educate us all about the ocean and shift our perspective from one that may see the ocean as a flat and singular thing, to a complex system that is the engine for our healthy planet. While she does not avoid the doom and gloom climate catastrophe that we have created, her approach is to blend science and story to weave a detailed narration of the life of this incredible global organism. The more I learn about the mechanics of the ocean system, the more parallels I begin to tie to our own human anatomy, with its inter-reliant connected systems, complex biome, and adaptable nature. Helen challenged us all, no matter where we live, to develop a relationship with the ocean. Whether that means reading her book to better understand how it works, learning how humans impact the oceans and changing our habits to decrease that impact, or just go catch a wave!
We are super excited to be releasing this episode on World Ocean Day! Events are happening worldwide and you can help spread the word by getting involved and sharing your ocean story via Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook!
Written by Rob Pugliese
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Bon Ku: Hello. Welcome back. I am Bon Ku, the host of Design Lab. It's a podcast that explores the intersection of design and health. You can reach out to me on Twitter at B O N k U and on Instagram at D R B O N K U.
Today is World Ocean Day. And to celebrate, we have a special guest is Dr. Helen Czerski helen was born in Manchester. She is an associate professor in the department of mechanical engineering at the University College of London. As a physicist she studies the bubbles generated by breaking waves in the ocean in order to understand their influence on weather and climate.
Helen has been a regular presenter of BBC TV science documentaries. She also hosts the Ocean Matters Podcast. And is one of the presenters for The Fully Charged Show. Helen has been a science columnist for the Wall Street Journal since 2017. And she's the author of the bestselling Storm in the Teacup, the Physics of Everyday Life, Bubbles, a Ladybird Expert book and the recently published Blue Machine, How the Ocean Works.
If you haven't done so already visit our website at designlabpod.com. There we want you to take two actions. One is submit your favorite design fail in healthcare. We will select one and read it to the audience. And you can also subscribe to our newsletter each week. Our producer, Rob Pugliese will send you his reflections on each show and you can learn more about the guest.
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Now my conversation with Helen Czerski
Interviewc
Bon Ku: Dr. Helen Czerski welcome to Design Lab. So stoked to have you on the show.
Helen Czerski: It's great to be here. Thanks for having me.
Bon Ku: Is is it cool if I call you Helen? Helen throughout our interview? Okay, awesome.
As we were saying before, we've recorded I'm, I'm a little intimidated to have you on because physics definitely has my, been my lifelong worst subject, so I'm a little bit afraid of it. And you're an expert on the physics of ocean. So, I'm curious to know when did your passion for Ocean start?
Helen Czerski: Well, after the, I sort of discovered it, like, and actually, you know, so I'm trained as a physicist, you know, all my degrees are in physics, and actually my first book was a about the physics of everyday life, which is how you can understand physics through all the things you see around you. So you know, if you, and it's all about snails and trees and how you can explain the patterns.
So that's a good place to start
Bon Ku: okay. That's gonna be on my Summer reading list for sure.
Helen Czerski: That's called Storm in a Teacup. , So I was interested in how the world worked more than anything else. And I was interested in lots of things at school, but I kind of, I wanted to understand In quite a fundamental way, and that was what physics gave me.
So I did, you know, degrees in physics and I did a PhD in experimental explosives physics, which, is not the conventional route to becoming an oceanographer, but, you know, and I, so I finished my PhD and I did a lot of high speed photography and I really liked building experiments. I did not want anything else to do with explosives ever again. I never had really. And so I went nosing around for a topic that let me build interesting experiments. But the middle ones, you know, I wasn't, quantum mechanics in cosmology were quite interesting, but I couldn't play with them and I wanted something in the real world that I could play with.
And so I found the world of bubbles and then that took me to the Scripps Institution of Oceanography to work for a guy called Dr. Grant Dean.
Bon Ku: Oh, in San Diego, California.
Helen Czerski: Yeah, so I rock up at Scripps. I don't know anything about the ocean. I'm suddenly in one of the premier oceanography institutes in the world
Bon Ku: with a great surf break, I've surfed that surf break many times
Helen Czerski: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. There's lots of surfboards at Scripps. And so I rock up in the lab and I understand cuz it's got, you know, ocillo scopes and tanks and electronics that I'm used to. And then there was this, thing by the door that I didn't really notice for a bit. And after a few weeks, everyone else in the lab started kind of fussing around it.
And it was like this kind of mon, it was like a big spider crouching in the corner and they were all kind of fussing around it. And it's this frame and then one day, They pulled back the big lab doors and they carried this thing down to the seashore and they put it underneath the waves to look at the waves.
And I realized that what it was was their gateway into another world. And this was a little while into my time at Scripps, and I suddenly went, oh. There's underneath, no one's really ever talked to me about underneath, which sounds a bit stupid having arrived at an oceanography institute, but, you know, , but I was kind of indignant because once I started to think about it and once I started to look at what they were doing, it was obvious how important it was.
And, you know, I was that kid that read all the science books and all the science magazines and, you know, I read all the stuff. No one had ever told me what the ocean was and I was like, How dare you not have told me. So, but then I was in a good place to learn and so I kept working with Grant and I, you know, I, I learned as much as I could at Scripps and so I kind of came into oceanography sideways, which is not uncommon because not many people do a degree in oceanography.
And actually the ocean is so complicated that you need physicists and chemists and biologists and ecologists and geologists. You need all these people. So it's quite common for people to be trained in something and then to kind of find the ocean. So like quite a lot of people, it was entirely accidental.
And I come from Manchester in the uk, which is not. Close to any oceans. We have two seas, the North Sea and the Irish Sea, and they're both cold and horrid. If you are like, you know, seven years old and you're being dragged along by your parents. So, uh, yeah, it was a late arrival, but better late than never.
Bon Ku: You have a new book out called The Blue Machine, how the Ocean Works. What was your inspiration for writing this book?
Helen Czerski: Well, it was all that frustration really. It's not my first book, so I, you know, here in England, , I'm a TV presenter and I, talk a lot about science to the public. I'm, and I'm an academic researcher at, you know, studying the ocean and, all those years on from scripts, it was still, I.
I was like, no one is, everyone talks about the fish and the whales and the pollution, but no one is talking about the water itself. And there are all these massive stories, And it's quite a hard topic to write about I think, for an oceanographer because you're kind of talking about water and there's water and more water and other water.
And the advantage that I had was that, you know, I've spent years telling stories and so I knew how to find the stories and I was sure they were there. So a lot of it was that I was having these conversations, like the oceans like this, but it's like this. And. You sort of need to see all the stories. It's like there's um,you know, an ancient tale of the three blind men and an elephant, right?
And one of them reaches out and they find the trunk and they say, oh, an elephant. It's like a snake and another one finds the leg and they say, oh, an elephant is like a tree. And the thing about the ocean is, and in the case, of the elephant, right, they're all correct. And the ocean's a bit like that.
Like you need to see all the stories and then you kind of go, oh, I get it. I get that this is part of culture and part of history and that's this massive engine and it's a landscape and it, you know, and it's big and it's small and it's fast and it's slow and it's all these things. And so, and I could never say that people would go, oh, you know what's interesting about the ocean?
I was sort of, I would get a little way in and then I just couldn't, there's too much stuff and so I was like, right, I have to get this outta my system. I have to write this book and find these stories because Because then people stick with a book long enough, right? That they can see the patchwork.
And that's the point of the book, is it, so, it it's about the structure, the insides of the ocean or this great big engine that's doing all these things. But the stories are told through history and culture and where animals go and, and how it's mattered really. So, yeah, it is very cathartic having finished it.
Bon Ku: Well, I've read so many great reviews on it. I can't wait to get my hands on a copy. Hopefully when I'm in Ireland next week, I could, pick up a copy. It's, coming out here in the US this fall and, Yeah, I'm, personally fascinated, by the ocean. I have intimate knowledge of the texture of the ocean being, being a surfer, and waves actually dictate my daily existence.
I look at oceans every day. What I do during the day determines if there's waves or not. So I'm like obsessed with the ocean and, you know, if the ocean is so important to us as humans, like why do so many of us ignore the ocean and pay so much attention to soil?
Helen Czerski: There's this term that the Merchant Marine use, which is sea blindness, and they say we're sea blind. And I think that is correct. partly it's ego, right? Humans are very much, oh, look at me, look at me, look at me standing here on the land. But the other thing is that, the ocean is, is so big and it's such a huge background backdrop that it's kind of hard to see what it's doing.
And of course, we can't look into it the way we look into the sky. But , the other reason I think is that, well, and we quite like having a void around humans. Like, oh, there's the great void, and I can look over it and think soulful thoughts. But the other thing is that you can't see why things happen.
So, you know, sometimes when you're at coast, I'm sure you've experienced this as a surfer, sometimes you get like a really big set of ways, or sometimes there's an algal bloom, or sometimes there's a whole load of jellyfish just one day. Right. And it, it looks as though it's random. So, oh, today they're jellyfish.
There we go. Jellyfish. Right. And, and actually what has happened is that the engine has turned underneath and something has happened that has brought something to the surface, or a storm has happened a long way away that has made those waves travel. And so it isn't random, it's just that we can't see directly the mechanisms that are causing it all.
And so as humans, we just kind of scoot about on the surface and we think we're in control and you know, We're out to see today, would you We're gonna, exactly as you said, you know, you, check to see what the ocean's doing today to see if you're gonna go surfing. And what we tend not to do is talk about what's going on the, like, the big picture.
And it's much more satisfying to be honest, because it, instead of, instead of it being this randomness, you can actually connect. Like when you see something, you can imagine, oh, I've seen, you know, I see the jellyfish. So I can imagine, you know, there's a. A tongue of cold water has come from somewhere or, or whatever it is, depending on where you are.
Bon Ku: I heard you talk about outrigger canoes and how that's impacted your worldview of oceans. Can you describe that?
Helen Czerski: Yeah. So I am very fortunate. So I paddle Riga canoes in London on the Thames, which is not a typical place
Bon Ku: is amazing. People actually do that.
Helen Czerski: Yeah. Yeah, there's quite a few. It's, it's a growing sport in the uk. So for people who have never met an Riga canoe, these are the, the smaller canoes of the Pacific, not the voyaging canoes, but the day canoes.
And they're quite often, um, a six person canoe. They're very narrow, but then they're stable because they've got this extra hull on the side so there's these two sort of connecting, Sticks that go out and they connect to the second hull and there's no, there's no people in that hull it just sits there as a little extra float. But what that means is that canoe, the canoe is really stable and it's really good at riding the waves. And so, you know, I saw these once in Hawaii on, you know, at sunset years before I ever paddled them. And I sort of saw this silhouette and I was like, oh, that's, that's kind of, um, it's unusual.
And then years later when someone told me, People did that on the Thames. I was like, anyone who's bonkers enough to paddle a Polynesian canoe on the Thames is probably quite interesting. So I went along and, and it was interesting. I mean, I do a lot of sports and it, it was interesting as another sport, but also it became more interesting because of the culture and the history behind it.
And I have been privileged to paddle with, Hawaiians who are mentors, to our London Club and they have showed me, you know, they've talked to me about their way of seeing the world and their way of seeing the canoe. And, and what was interesting about the canoe for me was that. know, in science, we sort of pretend we're not human.
Quite a lot of the time we say, oh, the per, you know, the perfect scientist is this perfectly objective person who just follows where the evidence takes them. And they have no emotion or no personal anything. And of course it's not true, right? The questions we ask and the way we ask them and the way we try to answer them, and all of that is, is determined by, by us being human, by our, by our culture and experience. So I realized that, you know, in my working life I study breaking waves and bubbles at the ocean surface.
So I know how they're measured. I know how we like quantify them. I know what generates them physically. I can see all these mechanisms, but I realized that when the, canoe steersmen looked at the same waves, they saw them very differently. And of course they're looking at the same thing. They've just got very different perspective on it.
And their perspective is much more something that they can work with, something that they can collaborate with, something that yes, they have to have respect for, but it's something that connects people rather than separates them. You know, in the Western world we see water as the thing that separates people.
But if you live on a small island out in the middle of the Pacific, then the ocean is what connects you. Cuz it's often easier to travel across the ocean than the land. , So the thing about the atri of canoes is that there was this dual view that I could see. I could sit in a canoe and look at the ocean as a scientist, or I could sit in a canoe and look at an ocean.
The ocean as a paddler, you know, so you've got the science, the scientific side and the human side together, and they're both matter, right? They're both correct. They both require very detailed observation and, you know, remembering what's going on and being aware of your surroundings, but in such different ways.
and you know, the canoe is seen, they will talk about the canoe as being sort of a very representative thing in the culture and that, you know,
Bon Ku: Hmm.
Helen Czerski: If you're in a canoe, you need everyone in in your canoe to be on board, you have to be working together, you have to be cooperating, you have to be happy.
All of those things make a good canoe, right, if you're gonna get somewhere, cuz you're in this sort of harsh environment. And of course that's also an attitude to life. If you're on a small island, you've gotta work with people. You can't afford to annoy them because you're gonna see them next week. And it's not that it's a perfect way of living, but you've got that attitude where you know you're far better off working with people. And of course, and that's the way they look at it. And of course with my sort of earth scientist hat, it's very easy then to look and say, well, the earth is our canoe.
Right? The planet is our, our canoe in space that we're traveling through the universe, which is a harsh environment. And here's our little canoe and here's what we've got. Right? there's lots of perspectives that you get from it and they really highlight that it, you can't be a scientist without being a human, and you can't care about the ocean without being a human.
And so the whole thing all kind of connects up.
Bon Ku: Hmm. How do oceans, shape our health as a species that primarily live on land?
Helen Czerski: Well, there's the big answer and the little answer, the, the sort of local answer is probably the easier one, which is that we, know, a sense of awe for a human is looking at a big thing and kind of feeling small in is looking at the night sky and sort of in your mind's eye imagining. how tiny you are in relation to this huge, great thing.
And it's the same when we look out at the ocean. We, we have a sense of awe because we are looking at something much, much bigger than ourselves. And it's humbling and, and we respond very well to that. So there are the, you know, the health benefits of being in nature and being, you know, seeing what's in the ocean, seeing the creatures in the ocean and all of, there's, there's all of those kind of benefits.
But then there's also the much sort of larger ocean benefits, if you like, which is that the ocean shapes what happens on land. , it's the source. The way the weather is driven quite often is that the sun heats the water and then the water heats the atmosphere. So the weather is driven. Using energy that came through the water, uh, you know, the water makes earth habitable.
It keeps, its sort of buffer against extremes of temperature. the way the ocean engine turn, you know, the ocean isn't just a big blue pond. It's got structure, it's doing things and some of those things. bring floods to land or bring droughts. They dictate where agriculture is. They dictate how warm somewhere is.
you know, you were talking about going to Ireland, and obviously we've got warmer water than we should have at these latitudes because it's, it comes across from the Gulf Stream. You know, and, and the ocean's important for all these other, you know, we get some food from it. All this stuff, like there's all these.
It's a life support system. It's a massive part of our life support system. and it of course, that affects our health as well. So it's, it's the very big and the very small.
Bon Ku: Yeah. And so it sounds like we should pay attention to ocean health like we do of like Soil health. Right. That's began more popular of, People paying attention to how healthy our soil is, cuz that's an impact in nutrients of the food that we eat. And there's pathogens in, in the soil and environmental exposures like, dust.
is that something that an average person should care about ocean health beyond just like plastics in the ocean, of course. Right. That's
Helen Czerski: well, the thing, yeah, so the thing about the ocean, so you are right, but the thing about it is that. The ocean is doing stuff. You know, we have this kind of cultural perception of in the western world of the ocean just being this big blue pond where, you know, it's just some water and it's not, it's got internal structure, it's got anatomy, it's doing things.
And so the health of the ocean isn't just what life is in it. It's kind of. You know, we rely on the engine behaving as it does of bringing warm water when it does, of generating rain. When it does, we kind of, you know, we've set up our systems relying on, on the physical nature of the engine. And if we change that, if we heat up the surface, then it causes physical changes in the engine.
And so I think the first thing about Ocean health is it's doing loads of things already. and if, those things are very valuable, you know, especially at the moment, it's taking up about a quarter of all the extra carbon dioxide we are putting into the atmosphere. It's doing us an enormous favor. You know, if it wasn't for that, we would've been way past the Paris Climate targets years ago.
and you know, oceans have I live on the Thames, right? So in London, the river, the estuary that runs through London and the water there has taken away London sewage. I mean, it's not what we should have been doing with our sewage, but the ocean has been taking it away, right? so the ocean is doing things all the time.
So, so when we think about ocean health, it's really, it's about the physical nature of the ocean, because that provides the framework for the biological nature of the ocean. And so ocean health is kind of both those things together. but of course it's more visible in
life.
Bon Ku: that's not like, the framework A normal person has I, I would say
Helen Czerski: Right. Well, that's why I
Bon Ku: like.
Helen Czerski: book because
it drives me nuts that we don't talk about it
Bon Ku: why? is that? Like why wasn't I taught this growing up in elementary school or high school? It just seems so fundamental.
Helen Czerski: See, that's what I thought when I got to Scripps. Right, exactly that. Why did no one tell me this? And I think it's partly that we are very visual creatures. You know? we can all look up into space. It's almost the most democratic thing you can do as a human. Everyone can look up and see the stars.
And if we want to look a long distance, if we want to know what's happening a long way, where we look, but the ocean, in the ocean, sound and light are kind of switched around in importance. So when the ocean light doesn't travel very far, few hundred meters at most. So you don't get those big vistas in sight, but you do get them in Sound.
Sound is the important messenger in the ocean, but we're not really. we don't listen to soundscapes. Right? we don't interpret our world like that. So if, if I could invent one completely unphysical thing, it would be a pair of binoculars that lets us look down into the ocean, the way we look up into the atmosphere, because I think then, you know, there's something there.
Otherwise it's just kind of a surface with some mysterious stuff underneath that might have sea monsters in it. So I think, it's partly that I think that we in the western world also have a very combative relationship with the ocean, and it's partly because. Of the sorts of places where we are.
So, you know, up here in Europe, we get storms that come across the Atlantic and they provide, you know, big waves and nasty weather and it's a battle, right, to get across that you've gotta kind of fight your way. And then if you look at where humans went exploring, especially in the Southern Ocean, you know, these stories of these explorers, Scott and Shackleton going on their ships. what they wrote about when they came back, Partly to make themselves look good.
And partly cuz it was horrible is the big waves and the serious conditions. And it's like, you've gotta fight this, you've gotta defeat it. It's all about conquering this scary environment. So it's not exactly, you're not gonna pop along and have a quick look. Right. you know, you've talking to some sailor in a port in the 19th century and he's kind of like entertaining the bar with.
These horrendous tales of things that happen at sea, right? The way he makes himself look good is by making it sound awful. so I think partly it's that, and partly it's just that it took humans a long time to, to do the science of the ocean because it took us a long time to work out that sea.
Sound was the way to understand it. You know, it was, it was only in the 1940s when Sonar was for, it wasn't, you know, the concept of being able to, like, how do you send the sound into the ocean? We didn't know how to do it in the 1940s. Someone works out that piezoelectric transducers are a thing and suddenly you can.
Push sound into the water deliberately. And of course humans have been making lots of noise. They just hadn't, you know, it was just, it was just sort of accidental. but once you can make sonar, then you have a tool that will let you see the ocean. So actually it's less than a hundred years, since we've had any tools that would letters.
Look into the ocean because you have to look with sound. so there's all these little sort of things and you know, this concept of the void that we, it's quite nice to have a void around, sort of great, it's a very friendly void. You can kind of stab, you know, you can go paddling in it. It's a very approachable void, but you can also stare out to see and see the great unknown.
And so it's a mixture of all of these things that, and it, they, you know, they're all, important parts of the culture, but we've gotta move past that. It's time to see the ocean for what it is.
Bon Ku: So as humans living on this planet, what should our relationship with the ocean be? What should it look like?
Helen Czerski: well, the first thing is we should have one, and we should be explicit about that because I think at the moment, people don't think about having a relationship with the ocean
Bon Ku: Well, especially if I live in a landlocked place, should I have a relationship with the ocean like, huh?
Helen Czerski: Well, you totally should because you know it's changing the air that you breathe and the weather that you have and where you can do stuff and all of that kind of thing.
so. But actually we do know we already have the stories. We already have the things that will help us care about the ocean. and that's what the book is really. It takes situations that people might have heard of. They might have heard of the Ming Dynasty. They might have heard of Sea Turtles traveling across the ocean.
They might have heard of, , uh, the Battle of Antium where Anthony and Cleopatra were defeated by, Augustus, you know, Octavia, who, which was the, transition from the Roman Republic to the Roman Empire. So they might have heard of those points in history and that, know a little bit about those stories. And the ocean has affected all of those situations. It was in there changing what happened, and so I think the first thing is to look at what the ocean's doing, but to look at it through stories. Because when you see what it's doing and how it affects people and how it's already affected our history and our culture and where animals go, then it's easier to care about it.
So, so I think, really what the book is about is kind of providing a framework. It can't tell everyone everything, but it can kind of go, here's a, you know, I think a lot of, sharing perspective on science. I dunno if you have a Christmas tree when Christmas comes round, but you know, for those people who have Christmas trees, you have these baubles and hang on in these pretty decorations.
And the thing is that if you have ball balls and you don't know what a Christmas tree looks like, then you've just got a box of baubles. But if someone gives you a Christmas tree, then you've got somewhere to put them. And I think the problem with the ocean is that sometimes we tell the stories, but we don't have anywhere to put those stories in our minds, right?
We are like, okay, now I've got a box of bobbles. There it is, it's in the cupboard cuz I dunno what to do with it. And see if you have some framework then you can put the stories in place and then you've got something to talk about when you talk about the ocean. And, so it's that kind of thing.
I think it's like sharing the stories, but having somewhere to put them once you've learned a thing.
Bon Ku: Are you optimistic or pessimistic about the future of oceans? Because nowadays a narrative just seems like it's getting polluted with plastics, the icebergs are melting in it, it's heating up. It just seems such a downer. Thinking about the oceans.
Helen Czerski: Yeah. And actually I should say, so I very deliberately wrote almost all of the book with mostly without referencing that because I think it's important, you know, what it is and how it works. First, there is a bit at the end of the book, which is kind of like, okay, so, and there is no doubt that things are changing in the ocean because of us, but the thing that makes me.
At least somewhat optimistic is that. We know enough about them to understand what's happening. Like almost the worst situation you can be in is to be damaging something without understanding why? Because then you, don't know to stop. You don't know why you would stop. You dunno what would make a difference.
But Once you understand what's going on, then you can do something about it. And so actually, I think we do have the tools now to really understand what's going on. And that means we can do something about it because we, can care. There's this phrase that came from, the astronaut, Lacy Veach who says, you, can't fix something you don't understand and you won't if you don't care. Something along those lines. And so the, the first thing is you have to care, but actually we do have the science to know what we should be doing and, we already know how to do things differently.
It's not difficult actually. We just have to actually do it and make those changes. So, I'm more optimistic cuz what I see behind the scenes because, you know, I, I do a lot of work well like you do, you know, I interview a lot of people and I talk to people with new ideas. And I do see the ideas that make are gonna make things better.
I see them, they've not quite scaled up yet, but they exist. And I think things are changing quite quickly and the way we talk about these things is changing quite quickly.
Bon Ku: Can you share one of those ideas that you're excited about?
Helen Czerski: Well, some of them are really simple. You know, it's the important like wind, energy and solar. They are the cheapest forms of energy.
Today, like bar none. If you want cheap energy, you want wind and solar and, we are learning how to make them so that they don't have, they don't use some of the heavy metals that they might have used in the past.
We are learning how to recycle wind turbine blades. we are already learning how to do it so it doesn't have a long-term impact. And so that's kind of a simple thing. But actually, and it doesn't, you know, there are good scientific reasons why these schemes to artificially remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere are not going to do anything for 30 years.
We need to stop putting the carbon in. Like otherwise it doesn't make any difference. But we know how to stop putting the carbon in, right? We know how to change our energy support. We've just gotta actually do it. So and what I see is so much willingness. People are like, 10 years ago, having this conversation, people are like, oh, should I care about that?
And now what you get is, what should I do? And that's the biggest, that's the bit that really makes a difference is like, , maybe you can't do everything yet, but keep asking that question, what should I do? Because that's the thing that is gonna change things, right? And even though it feels like change is slow, you know, when people ask that question, we're going in the right direction.
Bon Ku: Is the damage that has been done to oceans is that reversible, kind of like some of our organs, like liver that can get damaged, but can regenerate itself? Can the ocean recover from the damage that we as humans have caused to them?
Helen Czerski: Some of it, yes. And some of it no. So ecosystems are actually quite resilient and you know, if, if you give them a chance, there's this idea now 30 by 30, that 30% of the world's oceans should be protected by 2030. And there's a debate about what protected means and you know, all of these details.
But the point is that if you leave these ecosystems alone, In most cases, they do recover and they do recover quite quickly. You have to properly leave them alone. But they are now, they are still coming back in most cases, and, you know, there are examples where, I was just reading today about something where there's a scheme, you know, whales, endangered whales often get hit by boats. Right whales in the, in the North Atlantic. And there are starting to be schemes where they're getting better at identifying where the whales are. And so the boats can just, the ships can just go around them. And then the whales don't get hit by the ships, right? You can basically change that, you know, basically with one rule in one day.
You can just stop whales getting hit by ships. so those sorts of things are, reversible quite quickly. The ocean heat is the biggest thing that's, that's not reversible. You know, warming up the surface of the ocean doesn't just make the ocean warmer.
Kind of makes the layers in the ocean stronger. So the ocean has this internal anatomy, but the biggest feature is that there's this kind of warm layer. It's like a lid. Nice warm lid on the top. Above everything else. And if you warm it up even more, then it becomes an even stronger lid. and that affects kind of what goes up and down and, know, where nutrients can go and where oxygen is and all that kind of thing.
So those things are a bit harder to fix. And of course, if you warm the surface water, Corals, for example, are struggling to survive and ocean acidification is hard to reverse. So, it's a bit, it's a mixed bag to be honest. But the point is that what we can do is make it better now.
Like there's a whole load of worrying about the past that you can spend your time doing, but we haven't got time for that now. We need to work out, we need to make it better now, to prevent it getting worse. So there's no downside to making it better now. You know, and we can worry about the what ifs and how it could have been and all of that later, but really we need to get on with.
Making the change and think about the future and what we can change. Cause I think it's all about feeling of agency and there is a lot that we can do. and we must, you know, I think it's very, you know, this sort of, eco anxiety. It's a valid thing to feel, but you can't let it stop you.
You know, feel that when you've gotta feel it, but you've gotta do the doing, not the complaining, not the protesting, not the, you know, all those things have a place, but really it's what you can do and you can change your workplace, your home where you, you know, how you go to work. All of those things. and that's agency. We have that agency.
Bon Ku: Well thank you for giving us this knowledge of the ocean. so many of us don't know how it works, how it's composed of this book. Such a nice autopsy of the ocean, which which is, which
Helen Czerski: not dead yet. It's not. It's very important. You know, I made a series for the BBC a few years ago about the ocean, and they called it Ocean Autopsy. I was like, but it's not dead yet.
Bon Ku: We could do live autopsies.
Helen Czerski: Can you? I don't,
I thought, I thought it
Bon Ku: bi, bi, bi
Helen Czerski: Yeah. Ocean. Ocean biopsy. I am on board with, yes.
Bon Ku: I have, two personal questions, , before we end. One is, can you explain to someone who is terrible with physics how waves are created? Just as a personal question for me as a surfer.
Helen Czerski: Well, so you can see that if you blow on a cup of tea, actually. So if you have a mug and you blow on a cup of tea, you see little ripples. And the thing about the little ripples is they, they give the surface a texture, which makes it a bit grippy. And then as the wind pushes on it more, you can push up bigger waves, which even more grippy.
And so the wind pushes on the surface. You know, first of all by kind of making dimples cuz of turbulence, but it kind of pushes on it. And once you've got waves, you've got something to push on. And then there's actually two types of waves that you will see. And the first ones are in the middle of all of that process, what we call windy.
So the wind is blowing and you get these peaky waves and it's all quite messy and you get big waves and little waves and they're all on top of one another. And the higher the wind speed, the more wavey is because wind has something to push on. But then the thing about a wave is it's a shape that must travel.
So if the wind completely stops, you've still got all those waves and they must travel because they're waves and they travel outwards. The big waves travel, the long wavelengths travel faster than the small ones, and the small ones tend to get absorbed by the ocean. So then you get these really long, smooth waves that can go, you know, hundreds of kilometers across the ocean, and that's swell.
So as a surfer, your ideal surf day I'm imagining is no wind, but somewhere three days ago across the ocean, there was a big storm and it's generated all this swell and that swell has been traveling across the ocean and now it's arrived at your beach and now it meets a steep beach. So the waves steepened, and then you get the kind of breakers you can surf on. So, so it's, it's a thing about, it's, the ocean surface shape, you know, the ocean surface has a shape.
Bon Ku: Yeah.
Helen Czerski: but it, all comes from wind. That's, uh, a long way away.
Bon Ku: I love that and I love that. Have it recorded cuz I'm going to like reinterpret this for people who ask me how waves are, are created. Cuz I've like, I have a sense but I really can't explain it. And, but what I'm fascinated it's energy. Like when I'm out there, there is energy that's in the ocean and it's transferring. it's
a lot of energy.
It is
alive.
Helen Czerski: So there's a, one explanation in storming a teacup, which was my book on everyday physics, and then there's a, there's a slightly more developed explanation to do that's got a historical story in the blue machine. So yeah, it comes into all kinds of things.
Bon Ku: Yay. So if a listener were to come out and visit you, where would you take them out to eat?
Helen Czerski: Well, I'm British, so I've basically got to choose a pub because a summer evening, sitting outside at a pub is one of the nicest things you can do. And I like the pubs that are by the Thames. You know, the Thames is the big, big, uh, river that runs through London, and I would pick. A pub called the Old Ship, which is in, Chiswik just upstream of London.
And you can sit out there on sort of b little balcony. You can look over the Thames, which is this enormous feature. You know, it's the reason London's there. And you can have traditional British pub food, some nicer things. Traditional British pub food is not to everyone's liking, but it's, it is what we call a gastro pub.
So it's got, um, Slightly less traditional and slightly healthier options as well. So there's the full range, so that, that would be my recommended place to eat The Old Ship in Chiswick.
Bon Ku: Love it. Well, thank you Helen for coming on the show. Uh, so good to have you on.
Helen Czerski: Thanks for having me. I'm always happy to talk about the ocean and I'm glad to share some ocean enthusiasm.
Bon Ku: I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Helen. You can find her on Twitter at H E L E N c Z E R S K I. And on Instagram at H E L E N underscore C Z E R S K i. Design Lab is produced by Rob Pugliese editing by Fernando Queiroz our theme music was created by Emmanuel Houston. And the cover design by Eden Lew
See you next week.
