[O-05] How to become a scientist? What can they do?

[O05-03] From Organic Chemistry, Coral Study to Ocean Policy, My Journey through Carbon

★Invited Papers

*Nobuko Nakamura^1,2 (1.The Ocean Policy Research Institute of The Sasakawa Peace Foundation, 2.Keio Univ.)

I am currently looking at the world of "ocean policy". Around me there are various people who know about coral reefs and mangrove ecosystems, people who have conducted research on the ecology of sea turtles and whales by attaching sensors to them, people who have observed the Arctic Ocean, and experts in ocean climatology modeling and underwater noise. There are not only researchers in natural science and fisheries. There are professor of maritime culture and ethnology, people who have worked in maritime affairs such as transporting, ships, and ports, researchers in law and economics, experts in international relations and security, and people who have worked for the United Nations. It was like a cross-cultural exchange, a very unique place. I was reminded that the oceans, which I had seen in the natural sciences, were really a place of human activity. And I understand that if humans are to use the ocean, there must be rules. Strangely enough, however, there are not many experts in "ocean policy". It's a field where people with various backgrounds come together to think and build. I used to think that policy was in a different dimension for me, but I don't know how I ended up looking into this world . . . Let me tell you a little about the path I have taken so far. The starting point was studying chemistry at university. I was interested in pharmaceuticals, so I studied synthetic organic chemistry. Organic reagents and organic solvents are petroleum products. At that time, while using a lot of solvents such as hexane, I vaguely wondered how much more oil could be drilled. Next, I taught science in junior high and high school. The "science" part of the teaching license was relentless, and I was required to take physics, chemistry, biology, and geology. However, at that time, I was not familiar with the planetary space-time scale, and it was difficult for me to understand the subject and communicate it in my own words. I had always been interested in field science, so I dove into the world of earth science. There I encountered the science of coral reefs and the study of reconstruction of paleoclimate and paleoenvironment using coral annual rings. Annual rings are a visible measure of time. I was shocked to learn that the annual rings of calcium carbonate coral skeletons record information on seawater temperature and salinity, the flow of materials from the land through rivers, and even traces of human activity and waste. From the Kenyan coral rings I reconstructed the climatic mode of the Indian Ocean over the past 115 years, and clearly showed the rise in sea temperature in the Indian Ocean. The coral rings of Tuvalu in the South Pacific, which is threatened by sea level rise, have been showing black contamination since the 1990s. From the annual rings, we were able to elucidate the process by which the increase in domestic wastewater due to population growth affected the coral reef ecosystem. Through these jobs, I came to have a closer look at the issues of climate change and global warming related to increasing CO₂, and environmental changes. Looking around at Earth science, I became familiar with its spatio-temporal scale, and came to see my own position in the 4.6 billion years of planetary evolution.
And now, besides science, what else can I do? . . The journey continues.