Iain Kerr - Snot Bot

 

So, I'm a whale biologist. Sounds cool, right? Well, actually, not too bad. But whales are really hard to study. If you're studying a rhino on the Serengeti, your Land Rover can't sink beneath the sand. You don't get seasick. And when you approach the rhino, it doesn't dive beneath the Serengeti and reappear five miles away. [audience laughter] 

 

So, I was born in Scotland, and I grew up in a small village in Cornwall called Lostwithiel. It really was lost within the hills, and maybe not the best place for a kid with more questions than answers. As a consequence, as I grew up, I actually spent more time building machines, fixing things, dreaming of adventure than I did actually making friends. In my 30s, I still hadn't found a real job. I tried, but I just couldn't seem to find a fit. I became a whale biologist by accident. 

 

Over 30 years ago, I was in Argentina, and I met a guy on the beach called Roger Payne. Roger's Payne that founded our organization, Ocean Alliance, and he's the guy that discovered that whales sing songs. When Roger introduced me to the world of whales and whale conservation, I thought, wow, this could be my place. So, six months later, I get this call from Roger, and he says, “Iain, would you captain a research vessel to go down and study sperm whales in the Galapagos?” I'm like, “Roger, I'm in.” 

 

When I got down there, it was everything I dreamed of. These are just ocean brothers and sisters. It's just incredible. Think of this, there's over 80 different species of whales, from blind pink dolphins that live in the Amazon to blue whales that are 100 tons with a heart the size of a VW. You know, the largest, most complex mammalian brain doesn't walk on the land. It swims in our ocean. 

 

So, Ocean Alliance is, what we call, a conservation science organization where we collect data to try to affect change. One of the things we're really interested in, is like a whale health assessment. We do this assessment by collecting little skin samples, biopsy samples from the whales. But there's the issue of, what we call, the observer effect, where the act of collecting the data can change the data. And let me give you an example. If I were to chase any of you down the street with a biopsy gun, [audience laughs] I'm sure whether I caught you or not, your blood pressure would be elevated. [audience laughter] 

 

So, I'm in the Gulf of Mexico collecting biopsy samples from sperm whales. It wasn't going whale. [audience laughter] That was actually a slip. [audience laughter] But anyway. I can't take credit for that. It wasn't going well. All right. No, the reality was I just wasn't getting-- the whales were diving and we weren't getting there in time. I felt like I was playing the world's most expensive version of Whac-A-Mole. [audience laughter] But seriously, I was just racing after diving whales. It had been a long few days and the end of one day, the sun's going down, and the last whale dove right in front of me, just out of biopsy range. I was sitting on the bow of the boat, incredibly frustrated. And to add insult to injury, I got covered in a cloud of whale snot. [audience laughter] Sticky, smelly, fishy stuff. 

 

As I sat there exhausted, desperate and somewhat disgusted, I thought, wait a minute, can we do a whale health assessment by looking at whale exhalations?” Whales are actually, what they call, explosive breathers. They're breathing out from 60 to 80 miles an hour. I'd always been like a fixer and a builder, and I'm like, “Wow, could I build this machine? We'll put some petri dishes on it, and I can fly to those whales that are just out of range and bring it back in the petri dishes, will have all of this biological information.” I was really excited. I thought, we can do this. 

 

But you know what? With any new tool, when you're really trying to push the boundaries here, I think it's really important that you have a name that best represents the importance and the significance of this new tool. So, we called it SnotBot. [audience laughter] Guess what? You won't forget that name. [audience laughter] Actually, that was part of the idea, because we're trying to get kids engaged in the environment and the wild world. What kid doesn't like snot and technology? 

 

Now, there's a little problem here, in that if you have a new tool with a great name, you can't actually fly it over an endangered species to test it. So, we had to build our own whale surrogates. All right. So, we started with this compressed air gun with a 3D printed whale blowhole, and we called that SnotShot. [audience laughter] Well, of course, whales were in the water, so, we built this little boat and the platform and sensors and put Snotshot on it, and we called that the SnotYacht. [audience laughter] Anybody noticing a little theme here? [audience laughter] 

 

We didn't actually have a SnotBot space to build this, so we borrowed a converted shipping container and built this robotics lab. I walked in there one day and I thought of that kid, of Lostwithiel. I looked at all that stuff and I'm like, “Man, I would have killed to have this stuff to play with.” So, we started a free robotics club, where literally hundreds of kids have since been there, they've built, they've burnt, they've broken, they've dismantled and they've created some amazing machines. 

 

I love the way kids think. They aren't into these fixed thought processes as we are. One kid came to me and said, “I want to build a plane with five wings.” And I'm like, “Well, you can't do that.” And he's like, “Why not?” And I'm like, “You know what? Why not build a plane with five wings? [audience laughter] Who knows? Maybe that'll be the newest thing.” So, we go up to southeast Alaska and there with the SnotBot team, and, man, it was amazing. There had to be 50, 60 whales. Beautiful weather, glaciers. Wow. Snot on the horizon. [audience laughter] SnotBot performed flawlessly. I was really excited. Like, the tool was working. And then, in the fall of 2016, I get a phone call, National Geographic Earth Live. [audience cheers and applause] 

 

“Can I fly SnotBot into the exhalation of a whale on live TV?” Now, everybody I know wants to work with National Geographic, so what do you think, I said. “Sure, no problem. I can do that.” I didn't think it was going to be easy, but two things came to mind. One, I think the boy from Lostwithiel wanted to prove himself. And two, we only needed one whale, right? So, the National Geographic show, Earth Live, was going to be this two-hour show visiting some of the most amazing places on the planet, and we were going to be a part of it. And that was a really big deal for a small NGO like Ocean Alliance. 

 

As I'm sure you can imagine, in those early days, when I went to these formal foundations and funders and said, would you fund SnotBot? [audience laughter] They didn't quite get the vision. But that's okay. I thought, the shoot would be like a revisit to 2016. It's beautiful weather, there's 50 whales around, the sun is shining, I'm flying my drone, “Hey, Iain, you're good?” “Yeah, I'm good.” “Okay, let's film it.” Get the snot, come back. All right, mission accomplished. Turned out, it was going to be a little bit more complicated than that. So, they actually said, “Okay, we're going to shoot the signal from the boat up to an airplane that's flying over us, and the airplane will shoot it down to a ground station and the ground station will shoot it up to the satellite. So, you'll have a 20 square mile box to find the whale.” “All right, we should be able to do that.” 

 

So, four days before the show, we arrive in Alaska. And guess what? The weather is terrible. It's howling winds, it's raining and the whales just didn't seem to be there. The morning of the shoot, we go out, and the producer comes to me and says, “Iain, we can't fly the plane. So, you've got to five square mile box to find a whale.” I'm like, “Okay.” I'm thinking, one whale, one whale. And then, we're out there in this five-mile box, and I saw some whales outside of the box. I'm like, “Live TV.” [audience laughter] Didn't work. Didn't work.” And then, we actually had to do the dress rehearsal, which is flying a drone. But they didn't want me flying the drone because of the torrential rain. 

 

So, about 20 minutes before the show, I get handed the death knell. The producer comes up to me and says, “Iain, mate, this is like an impossible challenge. It's just not going to work, okay? So, here's what we're going to do. We'll start the show, blah, blah, and then we'll cut to a commercial break. And right after the commercial break, we'll come to you, and you can prep the drone, you can put on your petri dishes and fly it off, and then we'll cut to another exciting segment.” He said, “Hey, you know what? If you get snot, we'll play it, but not live.” 

 

Honestly, I was devastated. My team had put years of work into this, into an idea that had been criticized at every level, from the name and actually even to the concept, because if you think about this, the drone blows down and the whale blows up, so would it even work? We were on the boat. We had the National Geographic film team, we had my team, we had the boat team. And everyone was like, “Yeah, we're going to do this. We're going to make it happen.” Man, it was tough. The big thing for me was-- I actually think that the environmental problems that we face are not going to be solved only through traditional methods. We need people thinking outside of the box, taking risks. This risk-taking needs representation, and the representation was going to be SnotBot and that wasn't going to happen. 

 

So, okay, here we go. 04:30. “Iain. Three, two, one, you're live.” I put on the dishes, blah, blah, blah. We randomly launch SnotBot into the sky. You know in those movies where everything suddenly goes quiet and everything freezes? That's what happened. Everything went quiet. You could hear a pin drop. You want to know why? Right in front of the blooming drone, there was a whale. [audience laughter] And then, all the sound comes rushing back in and people are like, “A whale.” [audience laughter] The guy in the studio in New York is like, “A whale.” [audience laughter] Anyway, I fly the SnotBot up to the whale, okay? I miss the first blow, I miss the second blow and it blows one more time before it dives and I got the snot. [audience cheers and applause] 

 

People on the boat were crying, were laughing, were cheering. They're like, “Wow.” My wife called me up and she said, “Did that really happen?” And I'm like, “Yeah, that really happened.” My friend called me up and said, “Yeah, did you miss the first two blows to increase the tension?” [audience laughter] I'm like, “Are you freaking kidding me? [audience laughter] I wasn't expecting to see a whale.” Anyway, SnotBot was seen live by millions of people around the globe and was voted as one of the best segments of the show. Since that time-- Thank you. Thank you. [audience cheers and applause] 

 

Since that time, we've actually gone to six different countries. We've collected snot from nine different species of whale. Thank you. [audience laughter] We are now actually working with over 20 groups around the world, innovating, capturing hearts of minds and hopefully, democratizing marine science. For me though, the big deal is I'm hoping there are some kids out there, like that kid from Lostwithiel, who maybe didn't quite fit in, but were inspired by SnotBot to get involved with wildlife conservation. Not only to save whales, but hopefully, to save us from ourselves.