Mission Blue Page #3

But I wasn't

interested in anybody

who wasn't interested in

what I was interested in.

It's just very self-centered,

I suppose, but I just...

Football-schmootball. I mean "Who

cares about that?" I thought.

I was attracted to the

nerdy types, I suppose,

who loved talking about the stars,

about space, about animals,

or about diving.

So, you had this sort of

perfect, idyllic life

with this man you loved.

Jack Taylor and I got

married in 1957.

His first job was

as a park ranger,

and we moved from national

park to national park.

It was just a glorious

couple of years.

And he wanted to get his doctorate

and I wanted to get mine.

Then Elizabeth came along.

This is such ancient history.

Good heavens.

The '60s, the '70s

in all of history

really stands out as a time

of exceptional discovery.

This is the first

time an undersea boat

has ever had an undersea base.

We were exploring the ocean

aggressively for the first time,

and we were trying

to go to the moon.

Roger, the EVA is

progressing beautifully.

So it didn't matter which

direction you were going.

It was all great

because either way you were

going to a new and alien world.

As a young scientist, this spirit

of exploration was all around,

and I wanted to be a part of it.

And then came this opportunity

to go on the International

Indian Ocean Expedition in 1964.

The other side of the

world on a boat.

But it'd mean being away

from home for six weeks.

And my children were four and

two, Elizabeth and Richie.

I had never been west

of the Mississippi...

never been out of the

country before then.

And then I really went

out of the country.

Met the boat in Mombasa.

I was interviewed.

It was my first real

experience with the press.

They wanted to know,

"Why are you here?"

And somebody let it be known that I was

the only woman... and all these guys.

And the headline the next

day, Mombasa Daily Times...

- You did say seven-zero men?

- Seven-zero.

Oh, yeah. Big boat.

United States participation

in the biological program

began by converting the former

presidential yacht, Williamsburg,

to an oceanographic ship.

The purpose of the expedition

back in 1964 was... to explore.

"To explore." What a concept.

It was to document the nature

of what lived in the ocean.

No one had been to the

Seychelles diving.

No one had been to

Aldabra diving before.

No one had been to a little

island called Fungu Kizimkazi.

It was really amazing.

I think the biggest discovery

that we made in the International

Indian Ocean Expedition...

was the magnitude of how

much we didn't know.

During this cruise, a total

of 16,000 pounds of fish,

200 pounds of shrimp, nearly a ton

of swimming crabs were caught.

The sea at the time... seemed...

endless in its capacity to yield

whatever we wanted to take from it.

And whatever we wanted to

put into it, it was okay.

You'd dump things in the

ocean, deep-six things.

It was the way to get

rid of something.

It didn't clutter up our backyard,

our land, so it went into the ocean.

Our aquatic backyard.

I have yet to take a dive, even in

the deepest dive I've ever made,

and not see tangible

evidence of our presence...

to see trash, junk on the

bottom of the ocean,

two and a half miles down.

Things collect there and

just continue to gather.

So at the surface and even raining

down to the great depths below...

our signature is there.

It's not just dumping

waste and garbage.

Three, two, one...

Between 1950 and 1998,

there have been more than a

hundred nuclear test blasts.

Either underwater or on remote

islands in the middle of our oceans.

1964, when another

opportunity came

to go on the same ship,

but in a different ocean,

the southeastern Pacific,

I... had to say yes.

What about the kids? Were

you worried about them?

Well, for me, life has always been

a balancing act, if you will.

But it was particularly

true at that time.

I think, for me, the stress

was being apart from family,

and of course as a mom with kids... but

certainly with my husband as well.

And maybe it was inevitable.

We did come apart.

You don't think about it as,

"Well, I'm gonna be an explorer."

You just... You become curious

and you start to follow a path.

Then pretty soon that path

is leading you away...

from all the other

well-trod paths.

Then you start saying,

"Why am I doing this?

I'm risking every

relationship I ever had."

And then you start asking this question

that has no logical answer to it...

other than the fact that

there's something deeply woven

in the fiber of our

being as human beings,

that we just have to know

what's over the hill,

or around the corner or beyond

the edge of the lights.

1964, I was in

graduate school...

and working on a dissertation.

Gathering seaweeds from

the Gulf of Mexico.

I had a lab at home.

I began assembling records of what

kinds of plants live in the sea.

I came to understand the beauty and

the history and the importance

of these marine seaweeds.

And I haven't looked back. I

mean, they are the anchor.

Can I ask you a question?

When you say, "study seaweed,"

what does that mean,

studying seaweed, exactly?

What does that mean? Like you

pick up seaweed, you study it...

Yeah, and it's like

going to a place

that no one has ever looked

at what lives there before.

So you're an explorer basically.

You wanna find out

who lives there,

how many of what kind

of creatures are there.

Do they have names yet?

And if not... let's find a

name, let's make up a name.

I spent years

gathering seaweeds.

Ultimately, I gave my plant

collection to the Smithsonian.

There are about 20,000 specimens of

mine that have come to the Smithsonian.

There's another big batch at the

Farlow Herbarium in Harvard.

This is one of my favorites. I did

my dissertation on the brown algae.

- Brown algae.

- Brown algae.

This goes back to 1955.

Were you born then?

Uh, I was not born, thank you.

Here's another one. This is 1966.

That's down in Sarasota.

- This is the Gulf then.

- This is Gulf of Mexico, right.

Galapagos.

Oh, I have so many amazing

things from the Galapagos.

Now this is... Ha!

Oh, gosh.

I'd like to go back and see if

these things are still there.

I first got to see the

Galapagos Islands in 1966.

I was one of 12 scientists on this

big ship that enabled us to dive

for the first time

in places that no one had

been to underwater before.

It was an enchanted kingdom...

underwater.

It was the sharkiest

place I'd ever seen.

Look over the side, it looked

like somebody had taken

a box of those wooden matches and

just dropped them on the bottom,

and every match was a shark.

You could dive down among them.

Sharks just

Like this, serenely

going around you...

not paying any attention to you.

But at the time, people thought

sharks were the enemy.

The only good shark

is a dead shark.

Shark, tiger of the sea.

Of all sea terrors, the shark is

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