An interview with Dr Trevor Platt, POGO's Executive
Director
1st December 2008
PML is please
to announce the arrival of Dr Trevor Platt to PML as a
Professorial Fellow and Executive Director of the recently awarded
Partnership for Observation for the Global Oceans (POGO)
Secretariat.
At PML Dr Platt will continue research into his primary areas of
interest, including plankton, remote sensing, optics and satellite
ecological indicators and follows the appointment of Dr Shubha
Sathyendranath as PML's Head of Science for Remote Sensing,
Modelling & Optics.
Coming from the Bedford Institute of Oceanography (Canada), Dr
Platt founded and developed the widely-admired Division of
Biological Oceanography, providing intellectual and administrative
leadership to it for some thirty years. As an active researcher and
a Fellow of the Royal Societies of Canada and of London, Dr Platt
is widely respected in the international scientific community and
will bring to PML a wealth of experience, a proven vision and a
demonstrated respect for excellence.
Dr Platt was interviewed about his aspirations for POGO and move
to Plymouth:
Trevor Platt. I am an oceanographic scientist
and have just accepted the new role of Executive director of POGO –
Partnership for Observation of the Global Ocean. It’s an
international consortium whose members are all Directors, or
Director level individuals associated with the main marine
institutes around the world. It is an advocacy group for making
public awareness of observing the ocean, especially the
significance of global change and also very active in education and
capacity building arena of this particular activity, one of its
jobs is to award and monitor fellowships for people, especially
from developing countries, to be trained at specialised labs around
the globe for periods up to two months – very successful and now
oversubscribed by applicants 8:1.
Q. POGO is an international collaboration, we
are starting to see more of these, is that the way forward for
marine science in particular, science in general?
A. I think it is because one of the dimensions
of the issue is that there is an imbalance in the world of
capacity. In marine science for example there is an imbalance
between the northern and southern hemispheres, and of course the
ocean extends in both hemispheres, in fact occupies more of the
southern hemisphere, there is a need to observe it no matter where
it is, so that involves strengthening and helping and
bringing on expertise where it doesn’t exist. The mechanism to do
that is through international cooperation, this is true for
intellectual capacity and is equally true for facilities, it is
even more acute as the price of fuel increases and needs to be used
more efficiently. There are many reasons why people want to
cooperate between institutions and I have to say that in marine
science the tradition is already well established; more so than in
many other areas of science.
Q. It is probably quite timely, we’ve seen huge
advances in processes and technology, equally we’ve seen huge
increase in the threats to the oceans.
A. This is exactly the point. In the last few
years we have seen the formation of GEO (Group on Earth
Observation) this is at cabinet minister level and run by
scientists, and it recognises the reality that we must keep
observing the earth to detect change and anticipate the direction
and magnitude of change might be. GEO is an umbrella organisation
for all science and is typically directed to the societal benefits
of the science that we do so in our field now, in our field which
has been up until fairly recently a research field, there is now a
movement towards the so called operations. So there will be
operational oceanography which is intended to realise the societal
impact of the research science to date. If you could imagine 100
years ago the science of meteorology, it was not a weather
forecasting activity at the beginning but it has become very much
an operational discipline, that we rely on now as members of the
public every day and in the same way in marine sciences we are
following this lead. So operational oceanography and the societal
benefits of what we do are coming much more into prominence So GEO
is very much directed at realising the benefits of investment in
research and technology, for example, for remote sensing.
Q. What some people might regard as
inaccessible and out of reach for most people, because it’s global,
is very pertinent to individuals?
A. The impact is every day for everybody,
because the climate problem, if we can call it that, is very much a
global issue, the problem starts with CO2 increase in
the atmosphere. The atmosphere is continuous around the earth, and
the ocean and the land are in intimate contact with the atmosphere,
a contact that is continuously maintained around the globe. So
these three components: the atmosphere, the terrestrial land
biosphere and the ocean are all interacting all of the time and
nobody can escape - in a sense, we are all hostage to
the same group of processes at that global scale.
Q. You’ve mentioned climate change as an
example, is that the greatest challenge POGO faces?
A. I would say it has to be and if you go
outside of science and you remember the G8 meeting held in
Scotland, Mr Blair, then PM, declared, in the communique from that
debate, this to be the biggest problem facing mankind in general.
So it is very much a predominating issue for POGO as well.
A. So it’s never been more important to look
globally, and long term as well?
Q. The recognition is becoming more acute, that
the long term observations are the key and funding, supporting,
sustaining or maintaining long term observation systems is an
obligation that we have. And of course POGO is a very strong
advocate of long term observations in the marine context. So this
requirement is very much brought into focus. At the same time, of
course, we are developing other ways to observe the ocean globally
at very large scales, using satellites. So this is another benefit
that heightens the time limits of what we are doing. We have a
problem that’s acute and we have collaboration at the international
level to tackle it.
Q. Satellites – it’s using outer space
technology to look at what has become known as inner space. Using a
whole raft of technologies across the globe, and putting them all
together?
A. That’s so it’s not just space, in addition
to conventional oceanographic work there’s also an array of
unmanned observation systems in the water, which are becoming
increasingly important as providers of information.
Q. You as an individual have been working on
plankton, have you been noticing changes in the plankton?
A. You know on the open ocean, as opposed to
the coastal fringes, the kinds of things that I have studied are
not the kind of processes that lend themselves to dramatic
revelations of change. However, in the meantime people have already
noticed changes that are arising because the ocean has become more
acidic than it used to be. The CO2 that’s dissolved in
the ocean modifies the pH of all ecosystems. That have to
adjust to this new acidity is a demonstrated consequence of
concentrated CO2 in the atmosphere increasing.
Q. But plankton is very important, because its
very tiny it’s often a question of out of sight out of mind, but
beyond all proportion tom its size, it’s important?
A. This is not always appreciated or fully
understood by the man in the street. On land you can see plants,
touch them dig them up; in the ocean they happen to be microscopic
and the average person may not realise immediately how abundant
they are and how energetic they are in their metabolism, so
the microscopic green plants in the ocean that we refer to
collectively as phytoplankton, they have exactly the same
physiological properties and nutrition as terrestrial plants
so they grow by photosynthesis just as land plants do and
photosynthesis is a process that consumes CO2 so
CO2 is able to diffuse from atmosphere into the surface
layer of the ocean and be consumed by phytoplankton as part of
their everyday nutrition. Because Phytoplankton is very abundant
and very energetic, the activity of organisms per unit weight is
very much higher in smaller rather than larger – think of the
activity of a mouse versus that of an elephant. Per unit weight
mice consume so much more oxygen in respiration than elephants do.
It’s the same in microscopic organisms – in the small ones
(phytoplankton), their activity is so much higher than is the
activity of plants on the land. So the high abundance of
phytoplankton and its widespread global distribution and innate
high activity means the global impact of phytoplankton on the
Carbon is very huge. Globally speaking in one year the
phytoplankton will consume 50,000 million tonnes of carbon – 50
giga tonnes, it’s a huge ocean flux in one year. The global oceans
are an important reservoir of carbon and play an important part in
the whole carbon cycle of the earth as a planet. In particular the
phytoplankton are very much involved by virtue of their
activities.
Q. And the kinds of observations that the
members of POGO will be carrying out are massively important for
the future of this planet?
A. I would say so, and it should be recognised
that POGO is not just concerned with the biological aspects of the
ocean, it is also concerned with the physical properties of the
ocean – that means increases in ocean temperature, changes in
salinity. The consequences for these modifications for the ocean as
these changes continue, the consequences on the weather; that means
the increase in the number and intensity of storms for example
which we’re all affected by when they happen, so physical and
chemical and ecosystems are all the concern of POGO.
Q. So globally these observations are helping
to understand how even small parts of the ocean behave and are
affected?
A. That’s right, and how the different
subsystems of the ocean work together.
Q. Back to POGO, a world leading organisation,
why has it come to Plymouth?
A. Plymouth as a city is powerful centre of
marine research, and PML in -particular has a long and fine
tradition as a host of international secretariats for
internationally coordinated marine programmes. It’s very receptive
and has always made a very good job of hosting such secretariats so
in this way POGO is following in the footsteps of other programmes
such as GLOBEC, and such as the CPR, which is also part of the
PMSP. I would say that POGO is aware that PML is a hospitable and
effective host for such offices and we’re very glad to be here.
Q. What aspirations do you have for the future
of POGO?
A. First we want it to do a good job, for the
organisation and the Lab hosting it. My personal interest is in the
education of scientists from countries less privileged than this
one and so I certainly hope to try to develop the capacity building
part and the ability for countries to observe the ocean effectively
and continuously into the future, enabled by what POGO can
contribute. And another thing we want to do is to build capacity at
the level of facilities by asking shipping industry to participate
in a partnership way with POGO.
Q. As far as PML is concerned you are also
coming here to work directly for the Lab?
A. I do remote sensing, especially the optical
problems of looking at oceans from space. One interest is the
identification of so-called ecological indicators and we’ve
realised we can pick these out from ocean colour observations.
We’re trying to be more specific, how many objective quantitative
matrix can we extract from ocean colour data?
Q. Does this mean you can gain a measure of the
health of the oceans?
A. If you ask me health or vigour, how do you
quantify that? We need to understand what is quantifiable and can
be understood. From ocean colour and remote sensing - I can give
you 18 different numbers that will index useful properties of the
ecosystem, now if you try to translate that into health, it could
be any combination of these indices. We have to define what you
mean by health, it has ot refer to some pristine condition for
which we have no yardsticks.
Q. But what can your indices tell us?
A. The first four indicators are about the
spring plankton bloom, time of initiation, etc. It turns out that
fluctuations between years, inter-annual, are important for
survival of larval fish. I have found that the survival of a ground
fish its recruitment to the next year class is very strongly tied
to the timing of the spring bloom. The early spawned larvae have a
better chance of survival. I can also get the primary production or
the loss of primary production. If your job is to manage the marine
resource here are 18 pieces of information that are part of your
ammunition.