Voyages: AI & The Ocean

Even though we belly crawled from the ocean some 555 years ago, today, over 80% of our oceans - from single celled phytoplankton to giant whales and all the millions of creatures in-between - remain a mystery to us. AI is being put to good use as a tool to understand our oceans. Peter Molnar is founder and expedition leader The Ocean Genome Atlas Project (OGAP) , which aims to collect, classify, sequence and map the genomic information of organisms representing at least 80% of the extant marine species worldwide to develop a public atlas of functional biodiversity of our Blue Planet to scientists worldwide.  He’ll speak about the expeditions he’s been leading with neuroscientists and biologists who believe phytoplankton have a lot of teach us about our neural networks, longevity, biodiversity, and evolution.

The largest animals in the ocean, whales, have whistles, clicks, and calls that are similar to our vowels. They also have huge brains and complex social structures and navigate far distances. By using AI, scientists, researchers and engineers are working to decode the language of animals, particularly whales. A speaker from The Earth Species Project will talk on their work decoding non-human language. Earth Species believes that If we know what the animals are saying, our relationship with nature could drastically strengthen conservation efforts. 

Adrien Segal is an interdisciplinary artist who uses science, data, wood working and technology to bridge the gap between scientific rationality and the emotional nature of human experience. Her work has been commisioned for public installations about water rights, wildfire progression, sea ice, and diatoms (phytoplanktons). She'll talk about her process of taking environmental data collected by scientists and creating large scale art from it. 

 (Note: Ticket price includes dinner but there will be a cash bar) 

Menu:

Portside sourdough bread with scratch made seaweed butter and smoked anchovy butter, and California olive oil with 

Star Route Farms mixed greens with, pickled bladderwrack, shaved radishes, radish blossoms, salt- fermented mulberries, toasted walnuts and stinging nettle dressing. 

Fishermen’s stew with local clams, mussels, squid, and rockfish in a tomato-saffron broth with charred fennel, 3-sided leeks and soft herbs

Vegan option: Morel mushroom and kombu seaweed chowder

Dessert Grazing Platters 

PLEASE NOTE: In order to make these events accessible to people in different financial situations, the prices are tiered. Please consider what you can comfortably pay and please pay that and leave the less expensive tickets to people who work in professions like the arts, education, journalism, non-profits and boot-strapped start ups. Thanks for helping us expand our community of curious people.