Edith Widder
on the Magic of Bioluminescence
“What did you lose?”
“Nothing.”
“Then what do you search for?”
This question has always made Edie (Edith Widder) laugh. No wonder, especially when you hear it exactly when you’re about to discover not only what you were searching for, but something bigger, majestic, fantastically strange and wonderful: endless light.
During her first deep dive into the Santa Barbara channel, Edie was just so unprepared for the abundance, the brightness and the spectacle of light she saw. The underwater version of Van Gogh's starry night!
Bioluminescence!
The light that is capable of “exciting the imagination and firing the inborn curiosity that defines the core of what it means to be human.”
Her career mixed optimism, curiosity and frustration: “In our world, the main pattern has been exploration followed by exploitation, but in the ocean, we have managed to reverse the order: massively exploiting before exploring what’s actually there.”
Edith Widder is a brave spirit.
A MacArthur Fellow, a deep-sea explorer and a conservationist, she is the founder of Ocean Research & Conservation Association, Inc. (ORCA).
Edie helped invent new equipment to enable deep-sea exploration that has produced observations never seen before, including the first video of a giant squid filmed in its natural habitat. She dedicated her life to the study of bioluminescence, “a consequence of millions of years of evolution resulting in fantastic light-emitting creatures with evocative names like crystal jelly, cockeyed squid, bearded seadevil, shining tubeshoulder, or stoplight fish.”
She brought some of these glowing friends’ stories on stage at TED Conferences, sharing astonishing footage of this glimmering world.
Her book, Below the Edge of Darkness: A Memoir of Exploring Light and Life in the Deep Sea, shows how wonderment is the key motif in Edie’s life:
“Our future on the planet depends on concentrating on what makes life possible, which means we need to be able to see life with new eyes”.
Read Edith Widder’s answers for this new edition of #inspirators and play the game of hide-and-seek! Who knows what you’ll discover?
Thank you, Edie, for being a Bioluminescent Magician!
#INSPIRATORS QUESTIONNAIRE
Name: Edith (Edie) Widder
Company / Institution: Ocean Research & Conservation Association
Title: CEO & Senior Scientist
Website: www.teamorca.org
LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/edith-widder-65a3266/
Country of origin: USA
Country you currently live in: USA
Your personal definition of Regeneration: My personal definition of regeneration is based on the First Law of Thermodynamics, which states that energy is always conserved.
It cannot be created or destroyed.
Work is accomplished by converting one form of energy into another. If we use this concept to think about spiritual energy, I think our greatest accomplishments in life are when we manage to convert negative into positive spiritual energy. That’s how we do work that matters!
Main business challenge you face: Fundraising.
Main driver that keeps you going: My love of the ocean and my curiosity about its fantastic mysteries.
The trait you are most proud of in yourself: Figuring out a Plan B when Plan A doesn’t work.
The trait you most value in others: The ability to not be deterred by negatives and to turn negatives into positives.
Passions & little things that bring you joy: Bioluminescence!
The #inspirators who determined you to take the regenerative path:
My mother.
A hint or starting point for companies or professionals that are taking the first steps in the regeneration journey: They need to focus on upstream solutions to pollution problems. Downstream solutions are not cost-effective or environmentally sound.
In terms of bringing about substantive change, we need companies to be thinking about whole new models of how humans interact with nature. We need radical change, but it can’t be strong-armed into existence.
Buckminster Fuller said “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” For that, we need innovators.
Most used and abused clichés about sustainability that bother you:
Radical geoengineering solutions like installing sun shields or seeding clouds make me crazy. They are downstream solutions that assume we fully understand the life support machinery of our planet. We don’t, and, clearly, many would-be geoengineers don’t. For example, sun shields and cloud seeding ignore other devastating consequences of CO2 build-up in the atmosphere like ocean acidification.
An honest piece of advice for young people who lose hope:
Being optimistic is sometimes hard work, but it’s essential that you make the effort because it’s only the optimists that find the pony in the heaping pile of manure. When you feel overwhelmed, change your focus. Just concentrate on finding the next handhold.
Books that had a major impact on you: Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg.
Must-reads for any Regenerative professional: This will seem self-serving because I wrote it, but a major focus of Below the Edge of Darkness is the importance of optimism in the face of our daunting environmental challenges.
Movies / Documentaries you would watch all over again:
The Martian, as it’s a blueprint for how to maintain optimism in the face of overwhelming odds. Confront your reality and just keep working on the problem, taking on challenges in the order of their priority.
Blogs / Websites / Podcasts etc. you visit frequently: ORCA’s Kilroy live feed of local water quality data at www.teamorca.org
Music that makes you (and your heart) sing: Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah.
Places you travelled to that left a mark on you: Fiji - where I got to explore a coral reef when I was 11 years old. It’s what made me decide to become a marine biologist.
Global Regenerative Voices you recommend us to follow:
Claire Nouvian
Trends in Regeneration we should keep an eye on:
Mixed culture agriculture making farms more resilient to climate change, havens for wildlife and less polluting.
Best places for business networking (online or offline): Meet and greet after giving a talk.
Events we should attend: TED or TEDx events.
Associations, business clubs, tribes you belong to – and why: My book club, a fantastic group of women who cheer and replenish me.
Sustainable Development or Regeneration courses, trainings, or certifications that really teach us how to have an impact: Train to be a citizen scientist!
Reasons to feel optimistic about our future in 2030: Artificial Intelligence
Reasons to feel pessimistic about our future in 2030: Artificial Intelligence
Regenerative Leadership qualities much needed today: Ability to communicate the urgency of our environmental challenges in a way that doesn’t cause people to lose hope and tune out.
The #inspirator you are endorsing for a future edition of the newsletter is:
Claire Nouvian (2018 Goldman Environmental Prize Winner).
Quote that inspires you:
"Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less."
(Marie Curie)
Your own quote that will inspire us:
