Helen Czerski is a professor and oceanographer from University College London, and she has a unique way of picturing the ocean: not just as a body of water, but as an engine powering the Earth.
Czerski has a public lecture at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa as part of the Better Tomorrow Speaker Series.
Her talk, titled “The Blue Machine: How the Ocean Moves” refers to the title of her latest book. Czerski spoke with HPR to share more about the physics behind the deep blue.
Interview Highlights
On the ocean as Earth’s engine
HELEN CZERSKI: When we talk about the ocean, we often talk about the things in it, the ships and the fish and the pollution and of course, all of that's very important. But the water itself? That's the biggest story on Earth. And the water is moving around, and it's moving like an engine. It gets an input of energy, which is almost all heat energy from the sun. … So if you zoom all the way out, you can see that the ocean is this huge engine that's these currents that are moving the water around the whole globe. And if you zoom right in, you can see things like breaking waves and bubbles and the really, really small processes. But this whole thing together, this engine analogy – and it isn't really an analogy. It is taking heat energy and turning it into movement, which is what an engine does. And the reason that matters is that the way water behaves completely defines how planet earth works. And that water is carrying heat, it's carrying nutrients, it's carrying life, it's moving things around.
On her time spent in Hawaiʻi researching her book
CZERSKI: One of the most important things for the book is that I was very fortunate over many years to spend time with Kimokeo Kapahulehua on Maui. He is a mentor to my paddling club in London. We came and paddled with him, and I learned a lot from his view of the world. And that was the point. Speaking with Kimokeo was very important for me, because I had this physical view of the world. I thought about breaking waves and bubbles. That's my academic study. So I came at the physics of it, and then I learned his point of view, and the Hawaiian point of view, which is to look at the same thing and see something different. And I think there's something really important in that because the ocean is not one thing. There's not one way of looking at the ocean. There's all these different ways. It's kind of like looking through lots of different windows at the same thing. So the time I spent here in Hawaiʻi paddling and also doing science has been very important.
On her talk at UH Mānoa
CZERSKI: The talk is going to be stories that illustrate how the ocean works and how the ocean has shaped our world. So I won't tell you all the stories, but it really is like, I think the fun way to do this is to sort of, you need a logical thread of what you're telling but really, one example might be cod in the North Sea. The next example could be a story from ancient Rome…and the story after that is about why Ancient Egypt even had enough water to have an inundation and to build pyramids. And so, that's the fun of it, right? That you can tell a big story by sort of these little windows in on all these fun things.
Czerski’s Better Tomorrow Speaker Series lecture, “The Blue Machine: How the Ocean Moves,” is scheduled for April 23 at 7 p.m. More information and a link to register can be found here.
This story aired on The Conversation on April 23, 2026. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. Jinwook Lee adapted this story for the web.
