Deep Blue Sea, #117

Alan Lishness:

It is absolutely essential that every industry reinvent itself and people are working really hard at that. Be open to looking at examples and then understanding what parts of them fit and what parts of them don't fit. Don't do exactly what we do. Understand why what we do works for us so that you can understand what you need to do that will work for you. So I think if I have any advice, that's what it would be.

Dr. Graham Shimmield:

Scientists need to explain the work that they're doing. Well, funding shouldn't just be about the end result being in a scientific paper. They should really also explain why it matters and how it might be used in applied opportunities as well.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

This is Dr. Lisa Belisle and you are listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and podcast show number 117, Deep Blue Sea, airing for the first time on Sunday, December 8, 2013. Today's guests include Alan Lishness, Chief Innovation Officer with the Gulf of Maine research institute, and Dr. Graham Chamield, executive Director of the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences. There is much to be learned from the sea. Many of us here in Maine are aware of the obvious resources provided by ocean the what we may not realize is that school children and scientists the world over are benefiting from marine research and education being done right here in our great state. Some of this research has a direct impact on human health. We hope you enjoy our conversations with Alan Lishness and Dr. Graham Chamyeld about the deep blue sea. Thank you for joining us. If you've driven down Commercial street here in Portland lately, you will have noticed a large, rather elegant building with the Gulf of Maine Research Institute lettering right across the front. And it's something that I'm sure that you've been a little curious about. So we thought we'd bring in an individual who could tell us all about the Gulf of Maine Research Institute here in Portland. And that is Alan Leishness, who is the chief innovation officer over there. This has been a hard guy to get in to talk with us. So we are very blessed to have you here today.

Alan Lishness:

I'm delighted to be here.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I knew the Gulf of Maine Research Institute when I was much younger as a student myself. You guys have grown just exponentially since then. Granted, it's been a little while, but you have a new building, you have new programs, you're impacting children all over the state of Maine, and you're impacting adults and ecological programs really, all over New England, maybe an even further reach. This has been an ambitious sort of cycle that you've been working with.

Alan Lishness:

It really has been. And people are sometimes surprised to learn that we were actually incorporated in 1968 as the Research Institute of the Gulf of Maine. Shortly thereafter, we morphed into the Gulf of Maine Aquarium. Because it was very interesting time back then. There was kind of a the pie is one size. So this Trigon group was very interested in doing marine research in the Gulf of Maine, as was the University of Maine. And there was this perspective at the time, which was a long time ago, 40 some years ago, that whatever work the Gulf, the Research Institute of the Gulf of Maine might have gotten, was taking food from the mouths of the hungry children of the professors. Trying to do that work at the University of Maine now is an indicator of how much things have changed. We have a stunning relationship with the University of Maine School of Marine Science. And two of our six research scientists are joint appointments with the university. So that's how much things have changed over a 40 year period. It's a very, very positive development in Maine.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Why the shift from Gulf of Maine Aquarium to Gulf of Maine Research Institute? And tell me what the differences are between the two.

Alan Lishness:

Well, at the time we were interested in building an aquarium. I came on board 26 years ago and was hired for one year to raise $6 million to build an aquarium. And it was at a time when some really interesting work was going on with public aquaria around the country. And some were large and very recognizable. Of course, the New England Aquarium in Boston was the first, and then the National Aquarium in Baltimore. But then there were aquariums getting built in smaller cities, one much smaller than Portland, Newport, Oregon. So we were looking at some of those models and saying it would be really interesting to engage people because before people can learn, you kind of have to engage their attention and find out what they're passionate about. But then as we embarked down that road, we noticed some missing elements in the landscape. And Maine is Clearly a place where a whole lot of people can't be trying to do the same thing at once. There's a ton of room for collaboration, but there isn't a whole lot of room or there isn't a whole lot of funding for flat out competition. So we said, okay, we have some great colleges and universities in Maine. We're blessed, given our population size, to have the sorts of schools that we do. What's missing and what we discovered was there wasn't much going on in K12 science education. We were doing a few projects as the Gulf of Maine Aquarium and teachers were saying, more, more, more, give us more, we want more. We also noticed that there wasn't a focus on applied research around fisheries. There are terrific research in the Gulf of Maine. One that jumps to mind is the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences. And Bigelow works, of course, in the Gulf of Maine, but also oceans around the world. So we said, I wonder if there could be a focus on Gulf of Maine fisheries, because it's a really thorny area. This was, remember, 20 years ago, and then the third space that we were interested in had to do with biotechnological opportunities in the Gulf of Maine, for instance, there's a lot more stuff in the ocean than there is in the rainforest. And. And we know what's coming out of the rainforest in terms of beneficial compounds, for instance. So we set out to focus on those three areas. Now we've frankly done a whole lot more on the K12 education side and on the applied marine fisheries side, and we're constantly monitoring the biotech side. But it's not a space that we've gotten into heavily. So that's kind of how we got from there to here was a gap analysis to understand what wasn't going on in Maine and in the Gulf of Maine.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I heard you speak at a TEDx talk, I think two or three years ago now, and you said that you actually have had the ability to touch almost every student that goes through in this area. And I think it was maybe around the middle school years. What do you do with students who come in and see the Gulf of Maine Research Institute? What is it that you're trying to put out there?

Alan Lishness:

Well, what we're trying to do as an education group at GMRI is over time to cultivate a scient, scientifically literate public. So we see that as happening over a series of related events. We don't begin to think that we as GMRI can do all of that. So there's a ton of collaboration going on with other institutions in the state of Maine. One that immediately pops to mind is the Maine Math and Science Alliance. So let me just back up a little bit to talk about what I mean when we say our goal is to cultivate a science literate public. Some people say, oh, you have 10,000 kids coming to the Sam L. Cohen center every year. So Your goal is 10,000 marine scientists. Right. And the answer is no, not exactly. Our goal is to engage kids around critical thinking, problem solving, collaboration, and communication. Those four skill sets which are handy not only in a context of workforce development, but but also life in a very complex 21st century. When we go to vote now, there are almost always technological and scientific sort of issues that are not too far in the background. And if we're afraid of them, then we're probably going to vote against them. If we understand them, we're more apt to come to a kind of a weighed decision because we do understand them.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

The ocean offers us so much more than I think most people realize. We, for a long time have known that there are fish there. We can eat the fish, we can float our boats in it. I mean, there's industry, but there are also plants growing in the ocean that we know are very good for humans to eat. We're more and more eating what are called sea vegetables. It used to be called seaweed. The interesting thing for me is that this is something that our Irish grand great grandmothers knew about somewhere way back when. Are you doing any work in the area of sustainability of food, fish, sea vegetables?

Alan Lishness:

It's so funny that you should ask this question, because when I walked out the door this morning, I met a whole group of people who were at the lab because they had rented space in the lab and they are a kelp farming group. And the guy I was talking with who ran the company said, when you go back upstairs, can you tell people that those seeds we raised in your lab on the first floor at GMRI resulted in £100,000 of kelp? So, yes, we're very, very interested. And one of the things I'll emphasize in our conversation is collaboration. There's, I don't know, 65, 67 of us, and there were one and a half when I started. So that's a lot. But it's still not enough to kind of fulfill our aspirations. So we partner with a lot of organizations in the building. We have a company called FishVet, happens to be a Scottish company that has developed a lot of the work around keeping aquaculture populations healthy. We have A company in the building called Scurr Energy, also completely coincidentally a Scottish company, they're an ocean energy engineering firm and, and they're doing the engineering for the Cape Wind offshore project in Massachusetts. We have a company in the building called imageworks. They produce very sophisticated software and hardware platforms in fact have driven all of our children learning experiences. The design of the platforms, the lab venture experience that we've described that happens in the building. And then two other programs. One is called Vital Signs where kids are using their laptops in the seventh and eighth grade. They to look for the presence or absence of invasive species around the state. And our newest program called Powerhouse, also for seventh and eighth graders, such that students can use their laptops to determine how they're using electricity in their house and how they can better manage the use of that electricity.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And isn't this the sort of idea behind a lot of what you're doing is personalizing it so that it becomes less of an abstract idea of the ecosystem and more about an individual's interaction with it?

Alan Lishness:

Absolutely. Think about a 12 or 13 year old, a seventh or eighth grader, and all over the media we see warnings about climate change, we see debate. Is it real? Isn't it real? While we have our opinions about that, we're not really interested in the debate. We're interested in how we are going to respond to the obvious changes in the climate. And it's very hard for a 12 year old or a 13 year old to, to be responsive. And so for instance, that's one of the things that we're getting at with powerhouse. People often say to us Gulf of Maine Research Institute electricity. What does that have to do with anything? Well, of course what it has to do with is the burning of carbon based fuels and the deposit of that carbon in the ocean and ocean acidification. So anything with calcium in it. Take for instance a lobster shell or a clamshell or a scallop shell has a real problem with increased acidification. So what we're saying to young people is, you know, you really have a role by your really understanding how electricity gets used in your home. You can better manage so that for instance, we're burning less coal and less oil and we're using our electricity at times of day when we have natural gas available or hydro available or wind available. So it's exactly that. It's to personalize it and to say, hey, you as an individual actually can make a difference. And here's how. And by the way, you've learned some science and some Math and some engineering along the way.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You're also trying to impact decision making when it comes to consumers. You have a work that you're doing with sustainably harvested fish. I was at sea Glass at in by the Sea and on the menu it said this fish is certified sustainably harvested by the Gulf of Maine Research Institute.

Alan Lishness:

We have three groups working at jmri and probably the most obvious easy is to understand is our science group. They're trying to come to a deeper foundational understanding about how things are working in the Gulf of Maine. And to your earlier point elsewhere, then we have this group called our community group and they're kind of hard to describe. What they're doing is working with people in a context of neutrality. Now neutrality is really, really important to gmri. Take really any issue, take the issue of fishing and picture this long ark. And on one end of the ark are perhaps people who would want to take every last fish out of the ocean. Never met that person, but let's just say. And on the other end of the ark are people who don't want to ever see another fish caught. I frankly haven't met those people either, but they probably exist. The point is that organizations tend to be able to be placed anywhere on that ark. And once you're there, you're kind of defined and you've lost a lot of flexibility. So we said what would be really different would be if we provided a flat table, a neutral table where we invited all parties. And it is amazing how it works. It's difficult because as individuals we all have positions, but as an institution we don't. And we generally know that we're doing pretty well. If every constituency is kind of mad at us about something, it means that we're not over responding to anyone. So our community group are masters at that neutrality, at welcoming all people. And it's a very informed style of facilitation. You couldn't do it if you didn't know the subject area. And so they. For instance, you describe one of our programs, the Sustainable Seafood Program, and we have a bunch of restaurant partners like in by the sea and like 555 who are looking with us at underutilized species and saying, hey, how could we make that more appealing and interesting? We had a big dinner for our national advisory group last week at 5:55 and they had a very interesting redfish appetizer on the menu. Because you know, people who've grown up in Maine remember redfish falling off bait trucks on commercials, lobster bait. I'm not going to eat that. Of course it isn't anymore, but it's kind of hard to turn those perceptions. So our insight was in the seafood space to engage all across the market space. So with fishermen, with processors, with buyers and with grocery stores and it's really been magic. I mean it's hard. It would be really easy to publish this little card that says you should eat this and you shouldn't eat that. But by engaging deeply in the supply chain, it really embeds this thinking across all of the institutions who are making decisions. So that's what our community group does and then our third group. Education I think is fairly easy to understand in conventional terms. It's this business of trying to cultivate a science literate public, trying to engage people in stuff that is personally relevant and place based on so that they really want to learn about it and it can inform evidence based decision making.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

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Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Why does the Gulf of Maine Research Institute need a chief innovation officer?

Alan Lishness:

It ties into our neutrality. We, by a long shot, don't think we know how to do things. We don't necessarily think we know how to marshal the forces to get things done. And the first step in that, it's kind of like the Finland thing, is finding models. So for me, I draw a really hard line between innovation and invention. So invention is a brand new idea. Nobody ever thought of doing it that way. My style of innovation is to look at something that was invented for one purpose and say, if we just tweaked it that much, it could serve this purpose. So, for instance, in program design, we're always looking for ways to engage young learners. Another thing that I'm really interested in is car racing. So to race cars costs a lot of money, and so we always had to find sponsors. Now, what's interesting is the sponsors of our car racing endeavors have tended to also be sponsors of programs at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute. So one of our sponsors was a guy named Kevin Eastman, who grew up in Maine and co created the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. So the Ninja Turtles are everywhere. And in this particular year, he has sold $1.5 billion worth of licensed Ninja Turtle products. So I'm going Ninja Turtles, obviously a big deal with young boys typically, and real turtles. I wonder if we could. So I knew Kevin, and we were talking one day, and he was engaged with us around car racing. But he said, I love this thing that you're doing over there for your work, and is there any way I could help? I mean, could I sign post? And I said, well, I've sort of been thinking, and it was only the most sort of random of thoughts, that we could put this van on the road and we could develop a program where we took the Ninja Turtles and we took away their weapons and we replaced them with the tools of scientific inquiry and said, so if you want to understand turtles, this is a good way to do it. And Kevin said, oh, that's a great idea. And I said, well, would you like me to write a proposal? Because that's what we always do. And he said, well. And this was his conversation. He said, so what would something like that cost? And I'm kind of in my head in the conversation, adding up the cost of a van and hiring somebody for a couple of years and developing some content. I said, well, that would be about $150,000. And I said, I'd be happy to write your proposal. Oh, no, no, no. He said, this is a great idea. Took out his checkbook and wrote a check to us for it. So that's the kind of thing that I really get a kick out of, is repackaging something for an educational purpose when it wasn't really intended to do that. It's kind of like our powerhouse program where engaging middle schoolers was probably not thought about in the design and installation of the hardware and software, but it turns out to be a really engaging tool.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You referred to Finland. I've referred to Finland a few times over the course of this conversation. What is it about Finland that fascinates you so much?

Alan Lishness:

Well, every question you ask me, there's always a story behind it. So Finland. There was an ad in our local newspaper, The Cape Courier, 15 years ago, and it said that the South Portland Cape Elizabeth Rotary Club was looking to put together a group of people who were not Rotarians to send them to Finland for a month. And I've always had this thing about Scandinavia, and I don't know why. And as a family we travel there and I just love the design and the Eastern, and they just can't do ugly. And even the paper napkins are beautiful. And so my wife said, alan. And this was when there were one and a half people working at the Gulf of Maine Aquarium. She said, alan, you should apply for this. I said, are you crazy? I can't take a month off. And then she played her trump card, which is, well, if you don't apply, I will. So I did and got selected as one of four people to go with this Rotary leader to Finland for a month. So who knew that the purpose of the Rotary foundation is world peace and they do 560 of these group study exchanges every year. So they sent five of us to Finland for a month. And while we were there, we met five Finnish people who were coming back to Portland for a month. And when I got there, one of the reasons I was interested was, believe it or not, this was so long ago that we didn't all have cell phones. Maybe if you were a busy business executive, you had this crazy bag that sat on the transmission tunnel of your car. We don't have transmission tunnels anymore either. And it was really, really expensive and it cost $1,500 and a whole bunch of money every month, but you could make telephone calls from your car. Well, when I landed in Stockholm on our way to Helsinki, everybody in the lounge is talking on cell phones. I mean everybody. So when I got to Finland, I started doing a survey because of course Nokia is in Finland. And Nokia had driven this incredible ramp up for cell phones. And it turned out that about 75% of the calls that people were making on their cell phones were family related. It's raining. The football feels too wet. We're not going to have practice today. I'll be home early. Honey, could you stop on the way home and pick up a loaf of bread? And I just found that culturally interesting because we're always interested in how and whether technology platforms can inform learning. So I kind of came back with that and I was attentive to that. And we got to tour Nokia factory and I was kind of thinking about whether these platforms would become widely available, which of course they did. So then kind of eight or nine years ago, something funny started to happen. I had made a lot of contacts in Finland. I get back to Finland pretty much every year. And all of a sudden there's this test called the PISA test, which tests kids from 56 countries, 400,000 kids, 15 year olds, and Finland comes out at the top and it's like, what the heck, this is a country of 5 million people. Why are they performing so well on these tests which are very open ended and are about reasoning and problem solving and all the stuff we want to accomplish. The tests are given every three years. And every three years Finland is either first or second and the US 17th or 26th. The other interesting thing about Finland, when we went there for a month, we had to give these talks at Rotary clubs. You had to sort of pay the piper somehow. So we'd stand there and of course, once you'd done the talk six or seven times, it was kind of on autopilot. And I couldn't help but notice as I would gaze out the windows, I would see trees, rocks and water. I was like, wow, this is just like Maine. And it really was. It's just four times the population on four times, a very similar land area with four and a half times the gross national product to our gross domestic product. So it's really a lot alike, the weather in Helsinki any day of the year, it's probably within 2 degrees of the weather in Portland. They're just, they feel very, very similar. And for all of a sudden, Finland to emerge as a leader in educating kids for life in the 21st century was just interesting. So I studied it a lot more and made some comparisons between Maine and Finland. And that was the basis for the TEDx talk. And of course what's really interesting about it is Finnish teachers don't get Paid quite as much as main teachers. They don't work as many hours as main teachers. They don't give the sort of standardized test that we do. Yet year after year after year after year, they get these great results. So I'm just out looking all over the place. It's not just that it's Finland, it's that Finland has proven perhaps to be the most transferable. I'm always, you know, Singapore and Japan, there's a whole bunch of countries who are doing a good job with education. They may or may not be applicable to what we're doing here in Maine, but Finland really appears to be.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Our conversation is very interesting to me because as a physician, of course I'm involved in an institution. I'm calling it the. I guess it's called the Medical Industrial Complex by those who know and having some growing pains. And I think that we really could benefit from looking at other models. Sometimes it's hard to convince people that looking at other models might be a good idea. If you're thinking about changing within your institution, what advice can you give to someone like me who's looking to do this sort of thing?

Alan Lishness:

Well, so let me say first of all that certainly the medical industry is facing massive change, but every single institution is every single one. And that's kind of the thing I learn as we get to talk to more and more people, that it is absolutely essential that every industry reinvent itself. And people are working really hard at that. I don't know that I have any great advice because I can't necessarily speak from a position of fabulous success of getting everybody to agree to do the same thing and head in the same direction. But I would just say it's really the point you made. Be open to looking at examples and then understanding what parts of them fit and what parts of them don't fit. I mean, there are aspects of the Finnish culture that are so dissimilar to culture here in Maine that that transition will never be made. That doesn't mean we shouldn't be attentive to perhaps the pieces that will fit. So I'd say be really open minded and don't presume that there's a single solution and you can pick it up and repot it here. The guy I've become friends with, the guy who's kind of led the Finnish education revolution and he's out giving talks now saying, don't do exactly what we do, understand why what we do works for us, so that you can understand what, what you need to do that will work for you. So I think if I have any advice, that's what it would be.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I think that's great advice. I'm very excited about the work that you're doing at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute. I'm now motivated to go down there myself, having had two children go through your program and another one on her way through as a seventh grader. So thank you for what you're doing and for spending time here in Maine the last, I guess 26 years. How can people find out about the Gulf of Maine Research Institute?

Alan Lishness:

We do a lot of different things, so I'd say first of all, check our website and look at what's going on. And one of the actually there are two things you can do. On the first Thursday of every month. We have what we call a Lunch and learn where we invite people in for an hour and a half and I'll talk about our education programs and our chief science officer will talk about our research programs and our chief community officer, we'll talk about community and we'll serve you lunch. There actually is a free lunch, so first Thursday of every month. So just give us a call or send us an email to say, hey, I'd like to do that. And then the other thing we do is we have these monthly lectures called the C State Lecture Series. We're up to version 8.1 now, so we've been doing it for several years. And it happens that the topic right now is we're digging really deep into education. So we had a psychologist visiting with us a couple of months ago talking about how kids learn. So for instance, if you wanted an adolescent to learn anything, you'd know better than to start school before 10:30 in the morning. And there are just things that adolescents are brain wise not able to do. Their prefrontal cortex isn't fully developed. Great talk. Last week we had Glenn Cummings in talking about why charter schools work for some students and not for others. So I'd say two things. The lunch and learn on the first Thursday and check our website for the C State Lecture series because while they're on education right now, they'll be about lobstering or research or slime eels or some crazy thing in the coming months. So that's two ways to learn about what we do, what's going on down there. And Your website is www.G.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

we've been speaking with Alan Leishness, who is the Chief Innovation officer at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute. Thank you for continuing to serve the state of Maine. And I'll be down to check out your facility in the not too distant Future.

Alan Lishness:

Sounds great. Dr. Lisa, thanks so much for having us.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

As a physician and small business owner, I rely on Marcy Booth from Booth, Maine to help me with my own business and to help me live my own life fully. Here are a few thoughts from Marcy Fair Winds and Following Seas I think that phrase is most appropriate given today's show theme of the deep blue sea. After all, who doesn't want smooth sailing in their lives, especially when it comes to business and finances. Too often though, we look at the business side of our lives. The financial part anyway. As an ocean that can toss us about with its rough waters, it doesn't have to be that way. Just chart the proper course and you'll enjoy smooth seas. I'm Marcie Booth. Let's talk about the changes you need. Boothmaine.com

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

If you've spent time in Booth Bay harbor up in the mid coast of Maine, I hope that you will have also taken the time to go to the Bigelow Lab's brand new facility right there on the coast and see what they're doing. But first just see their architecture. It's really a testament to what we're doing with Maine and research and what we think is important important in this state. So today to talk to us about the importance of biological and marine research and what they're doing at the Bigelow Labs is the executive director, Dr. Graham Chamield. Dr. Chamield, I think people are going to notice right away that you don't have the accent of a Mainer. You are from elsewhere.

Dr. Graham Shimmield:

That's right. I'm from away.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You're from away.

Dr. Graham Shimmield:

So I moved to Maine from Scotland in the United Kingdom. I spent most the time of of my working life in Scotland. Although I was born and grew up in the West Indies on the island of Trinidad.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

How did you end up making that big kind of leap across the pond?

Dr. Graham Shimmield:

Well, I think that's probably a testament to the powers of persuasion of the Bigelow scientists and the board of trustees. So there was an international search for a new executive director, and they tempted me over to come and have a look, and a few months later, I agreed to make the move. But Bigelow Laboratory is very well known internationally in the scientific circles, probably less so to the people of Maine and general members of the public. But it's been a great honor to come and work for a laboratory that's really had a great place in oceanographic science.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, the Bigelow Labs is very well known internationally, and I'm not sure that people really quite understand the scope of what you're doing there. So talk to me about that.

Dr. Graham Shimmield:

So the scope is global. That's the first thing to say. Our scientists work in the oceans all around the world, from the polar regions right to the tropics. And our primary focus is on the smallest things in the ocean, the microbes. So we work on the viruses, the bacteria, and the plankton, whether they're the small microscopic plants that we call phytoplankton or the microscopic animals, which we call zooplankton. So pretty much everything that you can't see with the naked eye that's living in the ocean is what we study. And those smallest things have big influences. They influence the way in which the climate system operates. They are at the base of the food chain, so they supply food to the other animals that live in the ocean. And, of course, they're a source of energy as well, and maybe new products for pharmaceutical purposes. So there's many aspects to our research, and we are global in nature, as I said.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And these little organisms can really reflect big shifts in the environment over time.

Dr. Graham Shimmield:

That's right. We're still trying to understand how quickly there are changes in these microbial communities that might represent changes in ocean chemistry or change changes in what we call the trophic structure, the sort of food chain structure. But certainly by studying them and understanding their chemistry and genetics, we hope to be able to predict changes in the ocean that may be coming faster than we currently would like.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You also, I believe, have the ability to send sports specimens, really all over the world. So other labs can do research on certain organisms.

Dr. Graham Shimmield:

That's right. We are the US National Collection for marine phytoplankton, but we also have some bacteria and viruses in the collection The national center for Marine Microbiota. And this collection kind of operates as a mail order service. We have over 3,000 strains and specimens in the collection. And there's a dedicated website. You can go onto the website and look for your favorite organism and order it with your credit card. And then it'll be shipped to you living either in packed in dry ice or in a liquid medium. And then you can grow it. You can grow up larger quantities for scientific study or for fish feed. That's another purpose. Or if you want to study biofuels, there are many purposes for these algae.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I like that we've talked about this before on the show that in Maine we use what we have and we think about, well, okay, in the past we've had a timber industry, you know, we've had a shipbuilding industry. And of course we have little organisms in the ocean. Maybe we just didn't even really realize it, but now we really are utilizing what we have and we're making it available to people everywhere.

Dr. Graham Shimmield:

I think that's right. I think as we recognize the pervasiveness of these microbes, whether they're on land actually, or in the ocean, but we're understanding what a critical part they play. And I think here in Maine, being closely connected to the sea, we've been pretty familiar with the seasons coming and going on land and in the ocean. So often when the oceans are turning green or in cloudy in the summer, that's the blooming of these microscopic plants in the ocean water. And then of course, the ocean gets clearer in the wintertime when they die. And that's an important part of the food cycle in the ocean.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I know that the Bigelow Labs, the building is really pretty brand new and it's so impressive. It's right on the water. It looks down through evergreens on either side, and there are places for researchers and students to sit and ponder. There are labs, there's a big meeting space, there's different wings that have different foci of interest. Why is it that it was so important to create this new structure and why do it in Booth Bay?

Dr. Graham Shimmield:

I think there's lots of aspects to that question. Firstly, the laboratory has been in Booth Bay for coming up on 40 years. In fact, our 40th year anniversary is next year. Originally at McCown Point west booth Bay harbor, where we occupied some relatively unused buildings that the state had. The founding scientist, Dr. Charles Jentsch, working with the then commissioner for Department of Marine Resources, Spencer Apollonio, essentially were able to locate the laboratory as a non profit research institute in those unused buildings. And Bigelow had that great opportunity to grow over three and a half decades in those facilities. But gradually, quite quickly, we were starting to outgrow those both in terms of people, but more particularly the buildings were not really fit for the scientific purpose that we needed them to be. So some years ago, about eight years ago, the board of directors, trustees were able to secure some new property, some land at East Booth Bay, which you're referring to, on the side of the Tamariscotta River. So we have a 64 acre site there, beautiful location with deep water frontage. And then three and a half years ago, we were able to start winning funding from both the state and federal sources, together with our own money and private financing to construct the new facilities. So it's a $33 million facility covering on this 64 acre site. And what was important to us was that we built a building that was sustainable, that was in tune with the environment, and of course, as you've hinted, was able to do the kind of science we wanted to do. So we're delighted that it's turned out to be a lead platinum building. That's the energy efficiency and design criteria at the highest level. And we think that it's a building that does justice to the great science that we do.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I actually met Dr. Jentsch when I was a student at Bowdoin, and I believe it was a flow cytometry conference. And this was a very long time ago. And it was striking to me that actually I met his wife, I think at the time, Clarice. Dr. Clarice Jentsch. And it was striking to me at the time that there was so much passion about something like marine biology sort of focused right here in Maine. You attract this sort of interest, you attract this sort of researcher. Here, it's not just a great facility. You actually have people coming from all over the world to do their research here.

Dr. Graham Shimmield:

We do the type of scientist that's attracted to come to Bigelow Laboratory and to Maine, is entrepreneurial, is passionate, is collegiate, wants to work with a group of colleagues and has really visionary ideas, scientific ideas, because we are almost exclusively focused on our research mission. We do do education and we do work with industry as well. But we're primarily a research focused organization. So the kinds of person that that come are extremely passionate, dedicated and enthusiastic. And as you say, they're international as well.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

The teaching piece, I don't think that I would underplay that because I know that my own son, as a college student spent the summer up at the Bigelow Labs and did his own research project and was really impressed with the caliber of individuals that he was surrounded by. Not only his fellow student researchers, but also the, I guess the doctorate level researchers. Why is this educational piece so important? And why is role modeling when it comes to marine biological research? Why is that important?

Dr. Graham Shimmield:

It's kind of all about the next generation of scientists. I think for scientists to really transmit the knowledge that they acquire in the course of their research, they can do it in a number of ways. They write scientific papers, they go to scientific conferences and talk about their findings. But one of the most lasting ways, of course, is to transmit that knowledge to the next generation of scientists to mentor them. As you said,

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

the goal of the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour is to help make connections between the health of the individual and the health of the community. The goal of Ted Collected inspired landscapes is to deepen our appreciation for the natural world. Here to speak with us today is Ted Carter.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and podcast understands the importance of the health of the body, mind and spirit. Here to talk about the health of the body, Travis Boyer of Premier Sports, a division of Black Bear Medical. At Black Bear Medical, we want to

Alan Lishness:

help people who want to stay in

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

their homes but can't access it due to a mobility deficit. Our home accessibility department has some great solutions that allow people to get everywhere in their home. We have ramps and wheelchair elevators for negotiating entrance stairs and stairway lifts that will help people access upstairs rooms. When climbing the stairs becomes unsafe, our product experts will come to Your house offer advice and a free home accessibility quote. We can even accommodate temporary needs with our rental program. We even take it a step further with products that can help people transport their wheelchairs and scooters in or on their vehicles. Stay safe in your home and go where you want to go. With Black Bear Medical and our home accessibility geeks, visit our locations in Portland and bangor or visit blackbearmedical.com for more. That communication piece that you've alluded to, I think, is very important because when I was up at the Bigelow Labs and I was looking at the poster that I believe all students create for the end of the summer, I was having my son, Kimball, explain to me what it was he was doing, and I had to have you explain it to me again. So it has to do with bacteria. Why don't you go ahead and describe it a little bit?

Dr. Graham Shimmield:

So particular project your son was working on was on bacteria. They're some of the smallest microbes that we have in the ocean. These specific ones oxidize iron, the element iron, to derive energy. And they're some of the most primitive microbes on the planet in the sense that they were around actually before oxygen started to form in the atmosphere. So they've survived over billions of years. They are quite ubiquitous on the floor of the ocean, and you may also find them on land, in wetland areas and pools. But they've never been really studied in the focus that we have at Bigelow Laboratory. In the laboratory of David Emerson, he's able to look at their biochemistry and their genetic makeup and really understand a very fundamental role they play in. In the cycling of elements and energy in the oceans. And he goes to some very interesting parts of the world, including the new volcano that's currently under the water just off Hawaii, which will be the new island of Hawaii, probably in a few hundred thousand years.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

One of the things that I was trying to get my son to do with me was to explain, okay, as a physician, is there any relevance to the research you did this summer and the health of people? And he was able to talk about this, and he was able to talk about gut bacteria and how gut bacteria is related to this project and is related to the health of humans. We've had some interesting evolutions in this area.

Dr. Graham Shimmield:

That's right. We all carry a large consortia of bacteria in our guts, over two pounds in weight as bacteria. And they perform a lot of functions obviously, obviously associated with digestion and regulation of body chemistry in a way that we don't totally and fully understand. We do know that diet affects the bacterial populations and that those commensurate bacteria in some way are an indicator of the health status of the individual. But they've been traditionally quite hard to study. We know the common ones and we know the ones that make it ill, but we don't know about some of the other kind of species of these bacteria. But we now have new techniques where we can isolate just individual cells, bacterial cells, from the guts of humans and other animals and essentially decode their genetic information, and those genes tell us about the functions that they perform. So we're making some now rapid progress in having, if you like, the hard science that underpins some of the anecdotal knowledge that we have about the role of gut bacteria and human health.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And gut bacteria is something for people who are listening, that becomes an issue when you, for example, take antibiotics and things get thrown off. And the antibiotics might work on one thing over here, but they cause problems over here with the body. So there probably is more of a link to illness and wellness than people have been able to understand previously.

Dr. Graham Shimmield:

I'm sure that is right, because as you say, an antibiotic is a rather blunt tool for curing ills. And of course, it can remove some of the positive bacteria that are playing a key role. And those people who have taken an antibiotic course kind of know that there are some of these side effects. So I think over the next few years, we'll see a rapid jump forward in the microbiota of human digestive systems and in veterinary medicine as well, where it plays a very important part of animal welfare as well.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And the reason that I even sort of play this out a little bit in my conversation with you is just to really reinforce the idea that what you're doing at the Bigelow Labs has a direct impact on human health. I mean, there's the ecological impact on human health, but there is also the individual, the health of an individual. And this is something that I think labs are being called upon more and more to explain. They're being called more and more to translate what they're doing for your average consumer, because we really need to have an idea as to what's really happening in research.

Dr. Graham Shimmield:

You're absolutely right about that, that we call it technology transfer or sometimes translational research, and that technology transfer is very important. It might be on the specifics of a bacteria and its function. It might be around the tools that we've developed to look at them. It might be because our scientists can collaborate with a medical researcher and jointly together look at new areas of research. And earlier on in our conversation you mentioned flow cytometry. That was another technique developed for human medicine, essentially for blood cell research. And we apply it in the oceans to count plankton cells and vice versa. Some of the techniques that we have been developing have applications into biomedical research. So this whole area of technology transfer is really important to try and understand the way in which new scientific discoveries can feed out into other areas of research and human well being.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

It's also important because funding for science research has really changed. It used to be that there was more, say US government funding available for some aspects of science and now there seems to be less of that. And so people who are doing research need to go out and look for foundations, private funders. And these individuals are asking more, they're asking more questions about the value of the research and they're asking to understand what the research actually means.

Dr. Graham Shimmield:

That's right. Certainly government funding, like many areas of government funding, has to have priorities and identify what areas to spend money on wisely. And we're seeing a diversity of, of funding opportunities. You mentioned foundations which are now playing a major role in funding scientific research. But I think the other aspect of research funding is to work collaboratively as well with other institutions, to kind of share our resources and pool our knowledge together. That's something we're very keen on at the laboratory, making that happen. I think that scientists need to explain the work that they're doing. Well, funding shouldn't just be about the end result being in a scientific paper. They should really also explain why it matters, what should happen next, and how it might be used in applied opportunities as well.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

That's an important point because I don't know that people really, if you're not in the scientific world, you may not realize how different that is. The idea of collaboration, I think traditionally there has been competition amongst researchers and to be able to ask not only individual researchers but also institutions to collaborate, that is a big deal.

Dr. Graham Shimmield:

It is because if you think about then the ideas are a very personal thing. In a sense, your reputation is tied to your ideas, your ideas are who you are. So you clearly want to hold on to those to a certain degree and feel that you're making a personal contribution and your reputation is growing. But at the same time there's a recognition that really advancing knowledge is going to be about sharing those ideas and also putting together people with different skills to work on a problem. I mean, some of the problems we would like to solve are pretty massive and they really need several different types of scientists working together to resolve those. So I think this is a sort of a recognition of changing times. And the spirit of openness is certainly something that we like to promote at Bigelow Laboratory.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

What are some of the most interesting and exciting things that you think people who are listening to our conversation might want to know about at the Bigelow Labs?

Dr. Graham Shimmield:

Wow. So I think that, well, we're studying the microorganisms that live beneath the sea floor, where there is probably as much biomass, that's the sort of organic material in these organisms as there is on the whole of the surface of the planet. And yet we hardly know anything about them. We're probing into the genetic makeup of, of the microbes that live in the dark part of the ocean that's below the light penetration, depth of sunlight. And there in that dark world, there are many microbes doing really important aspects of the biochemical cycle of the planet. And we're just beginning to discover those at this time. And then we're looking at the climate change aspects. The fact that the sea ice in the Arctic is, is melting quite rapidly in the summer periods now, and as a consequence, the plankton in the surface waters can expand and grow, and there they produce gases as well as the oxygen that the phytoplankton produce. They produce other trace gases and they affect climate, and they have a feedback effect on the melting of sea ice. And we're also studying things here in the Gulf of Maine, where we are essentially using the ferries and also a robot submarine, a very small one, only about 6ft long, that can travel across the Gulf of Maine making measurements and sending those back to the laboratory by satellite. And we repeat that quite a few times each year. And over the years, we build up a picture of how the whole Gulf of Maine ecosystem and physics and chemistry is changing. So there's a lot of really exciting aspects. Those are just few snippets and of course, I've left some out. But it's an exciting time to be a marine microbiologist.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

What is the website for the Bigelow labs?

Dr. Graham Shimmield:

Very simple. Www.bigelow.org.org yes.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, Dr. Chamiel, we are thrilled that you've come over from Scotland and are sharing your knowledge with us. And thank you for taking good care of my son this summer as a college student down at the Bigelow Labs. I know he enjoyed his experience. So we appreciate what you're doing for education and for research with the biology and the marine aspects of Maine thanks for coming in today.

Dr. Graham Shimmield:

Thank you very much. Enjoyed it.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You have been listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and podcast show number 117, Deep Blue Sea. Our guests have included Alan Lishness and Dr. Graham Chamield. For more information on our guests and extended interviews, visit drlisabelisle.com the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast is downloadable for free on itunes. For a preview of each week's show, sign up for our E Newsletter and like our Dr. Lisa Facebook page. Follow me on Twitter and Pinterest and read my take on health and well being on the Bountiful blog. We love to hear from you, so please let us know what you think of the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour. We welcome your suggestions for future shows. Also let our sponsors know that you have heard about them here. We are privileged that they enable us to bring the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour to you each week. This is Dr. Lisa Belisle. I hope that you have enjoyed our show about the Deep Blue Sea. Thank you for allowing me to be a part of your day. May you have a bountiful life.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Sam.