In The Blue Machine (Norton, Oct.), oceanographer Czerski surveys the biology and physics of the global ocean.
You write that you became fascinated with the ocean through bubbles. Could you expand on that?
I was interested in the physics of small things that happen very quickly. Bubbles are like that; you can see them, but they don’t last long. They’re interesting to study because though you might think that a tiny bubble wouldn’t have much to do in a great big ocean, bubbles are actually really important because they help the ocean breathe by transporting gases in and out.
What do people get wrong about the ocean?
The most significant misunderstanding is thinking the ocean is a void that doesn’t really matter and isn’t doing anything. That drives me nuts, because it’s really this engine keeping us all alive. It’s ungrateful, frankly, to think that the only good thing about the ocean is that it’s where fish live. The fish are very nice, but if you just look at the fish, you’re missing 99% of what’s happening. The ocean is not nothing. It defines our planet.
You lament that humans have lost much of their relationship with nature. Are there steps that the average person can take to restore that relationship?
The first thing is to talk about and look at the natural world, because I think that leads us to think about it more. I would also recommend people get a globe. People think of it as an old-fashioned thing, but I’ve got one in the corner of my room. You can look at a globe and see this is it, this is the ball of atoms, this is what we’ve got, and isn’t it amazing? But also, isn’t it finite? Everything we know is on this ball and this is what we’ve got to work with. If we see that we live as part of an engine, we think about the whole thing differently.
What gives you hope about repairing the harm humans have done to the ocean?
Knowledge, because if we understand what is happening, we can act to change it. I think the hardest thing to fix is damage that you don’t understand, but we do understand the damage we’re doing to the ocean. That knowledge can be depressing, but it gives us tools to do something about it. Just in the last five years, people have woken up to the idea that the ocean might be worth talking about. That’s my reason for optimism, because once people start talking about it, they start asking questions about how it works and taking an interest. We have the knowledge to fix this problem, we just have to choose to use it.
