Malin Pinsky had the first of two lightbulb moments while standing on the bridge of a research ship crossing the churning Drake Passage, which separates the tip of South America and Antarctica. It was 2003, and Pinsky was five months out of his undergraduate studies in biology and environmental science. He was scanning the sky for seabirds, part of his duties as a research technician on the cruise. But his eyes kept straying to the vast, mysterious ocean below, slate blue in every direction.
As the ship entered the nutrient-rich Antarctic waters, the water temperature gauges on the bridge abruptly dropped. The ship was suddenly surrounded by whales. “It was stunning,” says Pinsky, 38, now a marine ecologist at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J. “That moment helped me realize that, yes, the ocean looks featureless from the top, but there’s so much going on underneath.”
His second lightbulb moment came several months later, in a far less captivating locale. Pinsky, an intern for the Washington, D.C.–based conservation group Oceana, was making photocopies. A lot of photocopies.