We spent 100 million years crawling out of the water to walk on land. With that amount of effort, it’s no wonder why most of us choose to stay and make things where it’s nice and warm and dry. But Eric Stackpole is an old-fashioned type with big goals who likes doing things the hard way. This explains why he helped design OpenROV, now Sofar Ocean, along with David Lang. And in this talk at the historic Mare Island shipyard, he shares the highlights of working with National Geographic OceanXplorers. Find out what it was like having the coolest job on the ship and using futuristic technology to explore our cold, ancient homeland.

Eric Stackpole is a Co-Founder and the original designer of OpenROV, now SoFar Ocean, which connects the world’s oceans to power a more sustainable future. Prior to OpenROV, he worked part-time for NASA at the Ames Research Center and studied mechatronics at Santa Clara University. An Exploration Technology Innovator, he is co-stars on the National Geographic show OceanXplorers.

This isn’t the first time makers have explored remote reaches of Earth.