Imagine Magazine - Johns Hopkins - January/February 2015 - (Page 6)
The Glow of Discovery
Edith Widder, Ph.D.
President and Senior Scientist
Ocean Research & Conservation Association (ORCA)
Edith Widder has spent a lot of her career underwater-deep underwater.
In diving suits and submersibles, she has collected, measured, and studied
bioluminescent creatures of the deep ocean. Working with engineers,
Widder has also developed innovate instruments that allow scientists
to see the deep ocean in new ways. Her camera systems Eye-in-the-Sea
and Medusa have captured video not only of new species, but also of
the giant squid in its natural habitat. In 2006, Widder was named a
MacArthur Fellow for her work with ORCA, an organization dedicated
to conserving the oceans-the setting of what she calls an "absolutely
amazing, dream career."
Action potential
In my high school yearbook, I said I
wanted to be a marine biologist. But
when I got to college, I started to realize
that not many people get to become
sea-going marine biologists; there just
wasn't a lot of funding for that kind of
work. At that point I was getting really
interested in neurobiology, and as it
turned out, a lot of my undergraduate
neurophysiology work was on marine
organisms.
I did my Ph.D. in neurobiology in
James Case's lab at UC Santa Barbara. When I started, Jim
and Beatrice Sweeney, a major authority on bioluminescence, were planning an experiment in which an electrode
would be inserted into a bioluminescent dinoflagellate to
record the action potential that triggers the flash of light.
Bioluminescence was a cool topic, and to be working at the
edge of human knowledge about it was thrilling to me.
Drawn to the light
With a grant from the Navy, Jim acquired the latest and greatest
spectrometer that could measure really, really low light levels.
It was key for being able to measure the emission spectra of
bioluminescent organisms. It was a complicated piece of gear,
but I've always been a gadget freak, and over time I became
the lab expert on it. At that point, Jim decided that we needed
to start measuring all these animals in the ocean that make
light. Suddenly, I was a sea-going marine biologist.
The first time I went to sea, the researchers were doing
trawls with special nets that could bring animals up alive,
6
imagine
and they were bringing up unbelievable creatures. I
couldn't believe these things even existed-I'd never
even seen a picture of anything like this anglerfish, this
dragonfish-and they had light organs all over them. I
was beside myself.
On another cruise, they were testing a diving suit called
the WASP as a tool for ocean exploration. I was out there to
measure any of the animals they were able to collect, but
I'd talk on the headset to whoever was down in the suit. I'd
ask them to turn out the lights and tell me what they saw,
because I knew they'd see bioluminescence. They would
say, "Oh, wow, that is so cool!" It was driving me nuts. I
trained as a pilot over the next year so I could go down
and see for myself.
An explosion of curiosity
My first dive was an evening dive in the Santa Barbara
Channel. I went down to 880 feet, and I turned out the
lights. I was blown away, just absolutely blown away. There
is no statistic that can prepare you for seeing that kind of a
living light show. I knew that this was what I wanted to see
for the rest of my life.
I was suddenly filled with questions. Why were all these
animals making light? A single photon of blue light is energetically equivalent to the hydrolysis of six ATP molecules,
and one of these flashes of light can produce 1011 photons.
It's a staggering amount of energy for an animal to use, so
what were the driving forces? I wanted to know the evolutionary pressures that led to this. I wanted to know how it
all worked. I wanted to know which animals were communicating with which animals and what they were saying.
Mission: Imperceptible
When I was diving in the WASP, I wanted to talk to the
animals. I created a blue LED light stick that I could flick
on and off, thinking that the animals would respond. They
didn't. It was very frustrating for me, but then I realized that
I wasn't exactly unobtrusive, bouncing up and down in a
big bulbous yellow suit. I knew we'd been scaring a lot of
animals away with motion and noise.
So we set out to develop a camera system that could sit
inconspicuously on the ocean floor and record animals
without disturbing them. After a lot of development and
testing, we finally had a system that we took on an expedition to the Gulf of Mexico. We put the camera down
next to a brine pool-an amazing underwater oasis
Jan/Feb 2015
OCEAN RESEARCH CONSERVATION ASSOCIATION
in my own words
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Imagine Magazine - Johns Hopkins - January/February 2015
Big Picture
In My Own Words
Land & Sea
Going Full Circle with Ocean Conservation
At Home in the Water
Diving into Marine Science
Ocean Views
Becoming a Steward of the Seas
Engineering for Ocean Health
Selected Opportunities and Resources
The Wonderful World of MOOCs
Super
Off the Shelf
Word Wise
Exploring Career Options
One Step Ahead
Planning Ahead for College
Students Review: UC San Diego
Creative Minds Imagine
Mark Your Calendar
Knossos Games
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