WEBVTT

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Hi, my name is Ivona Cetinić. I use
satellites to study invisible creatures

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in the ocean at NASA. I use satellite
called PACE and look at its data to tell

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me something about health of the ocean.
Specifically, what do teeny tiny

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creatures called phytoplankton do in the
ocean and for the ocean? Phytoplankton

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are important because they do three
things for us. They produce oxygen that

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we breathe, they feed the oceanic food
web, and they also control the flow of

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the carbon from the atmosphere into the
ocean. When I was in elementary school,

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I was really lucky because my elementary
school offered many different ways for

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me to explore this scientific drive. So
I had astronomy in middle school and

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even in elementary school we did some
programming things. Being an

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oceanographer that takes me on this like
amazing trips where you are in these

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research vessels for months at a time
studying the ocean doing beautiful

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things but you're also far away from
your family and that was always a

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challenge for me. It especially became a
challenge when I became a mom. I think I

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felt it much more than my son did. But
there was always a thing where you go

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away for a month or two months at a time
doing really cool science and kind of

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like helping to make this world a better
place, but then on the other side you're

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leaving your family. Those are usually
the biggest challenges for me. I was

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once on a research cruise in Pacific. It
was a crazy research cruise because it

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happened in the middle of winter and
being on Pacific in winter, it's very

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bumpy. It's terrible and stuff. But
one thing that we figured out is that

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there was this teeny tiny phytoplankton
that we kept seeing all the time and

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looked like somebody's doing yoga with
like hands up in the air and spread

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legs. And we called the yoga Yoga
Chaetoceros. That's a type of phytoplankton.

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Turns out that that's actually a new
species of phytoplankton that it hasn't

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been described before. So that was
really exciting like finding a new type

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of phytoplankton in the middle of really
really stormy Pacific. Maybe that's the

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reason why nobody's seen it before
because nobody was adventurous enough to

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go there in the middle of the winter. I
really like nature. I like hiking. I

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like diving. I like sailing. Lots of
things in the ocean. I really truly

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believe that our brain is going to grow
if we give it lots of different

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exposures. So, I'm a musician. I play
drums in a band. And I think that's

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really important and that's something
that I had since I was a kid. Trying to

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nurture my scientific side but also my
music side because it makes your

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imagination grow and makes you better
scientists. One cool thing about working

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at NASA, working with the PACE team
that I'm working is just like I'm just

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one of the teeny tiny cogs and just by
working together we make the magic

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happen. That magic is called PACE. So,
I'm really happy and honored every day

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to be working with amazing people from
PACE.