CHAUTAUQUA –On-world and off-world issues were on display inside Chautauqua Institution in week three of its season.

Chautauqua partnered with National Geographic for its third week of the 2019 season. The partnership brought scientists, journalists and lecturers from all over the world to discuss ongoing dangers the planet is facing today. Some of those issues included animal rights, pollution, rising sea levels and even the search for alien life beyond Earth’s atmosphere.

Keeping in line with the weekly theme of “A Planet In Balance: A Week Partnership With National Geographic Society,” many of the lectures dealt with environmental concerns, different biologies and cultures, and stories that are typically seen on the pages of the “National Geographic Magazine.”

Throughout the week, Chautauqua residents and visitors were able to attend lectures in the amphitheater and the Hall of Philosophy, among other locations. For example, Steve Winter, National Geographic photojournalist, brought videos and photos to Tuesday’s audience inside the amphitheater. Corey Jaskolski, a conservationist and engineer, and Rae Wynn-Grant, a conservation scientist, gave lectures in association with the National Geographic sponsored week.

Friday’s amphitheater lecture and one of Thursday’s lecture in the Hall of Philosophy both dealt with increased concerns within the ocean.

Heather J. Koldewey and Lillygol Sedaghat discussed pollution in the global bodies of waters, specifically plastic pollution. Elizabeth Rush, author of “Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore,” kept her focus on the water as well, but focused on climate change and its impact on rising sea levels.

For Sedaghat, who presented in tandem with Koldeway on Friday, caring about pollution and acting on reforms how plastic is distributed and disposed of come from within each individual and “from the heart.”

The duo, who have worked together previously, showed examples where efforts have been made to clean up the oceans around the globe, and also areas where there is still a lot of work to complete.

Sedaghat is a National Geographic Explorer and multimedia storyteller. She primarily covers science, systems and people, and how they intertwine. She has documented Taiwan’s waste management system, plastics recycling and economic initiatives.

She was named by “China Hands” magazine as one of “5 Under 25: Leaders in U.S.-China Relations.”

She uses visual art to raise awareness on environmental education. During her lecture, she emphasized each individual’s choice and his impact on the plastic and garbage pollution problem.

Koldewey is a 2018 National Geographic fellow and scientific co-lead on research on the overall impact of the current state of plastic pollution in waterways. She also serves as the senior technical advisor for the Zoological Society of London.

Koldeway co-founded Project Seahorse in 1996, a topic she introduced to the audience Friday. With an image of a seahorse wrapped around a plastic straw, she conveyed her displeasure with the sheer amount of plastic pollution throughout the ocean.

She is currently working to make London the first capital city to ban single-use plastic bottles. She is optimistic that her work will help influence governments on how to reduce the use of plastic.

Rush told stories during Thursday’s presentation of people included in her book to convey her concerns with the impacts of climate change on hurricanes and increased sea levels. But for her, the way in which rising sea levels were being reported had become uninteresting.

Rush began writing about sea level rise in 2011. She has written about impacted areas from the Gulf Coast in Mexico to New York City. Rush’s book and her lecture emphasized the hazards of rising sea level and the implications on plants, animals and humans that have been or will be impacted by the trend.

Her book uses testimonials from communities on the Isle de Jean Charles, Pensacola, Fla., and other locations to detail the ongoing change.

Rush is also the author of “Still Lifes from a Vanishing City: Essays and Photograph from Yangon, Myanmar.” Prior to becoming an author, Rush has had articles published in The New York Times, The Guardian, and The Washington Post.

But through her coverage of rising sea levels, she realized that the typical, redundant reporting may have been underselling the real danger.

She feared the common vocabulary and reporting of the issue may have been “boring readers.”

“I started to get really bored with the language,” Rush said. “I had to keep coming back with the same type of phrasing.”

Rush was optimistic that telling stories in order to detail the rising issue would be a more effective method of guaging readers.

Thursday’s amphitheater lecture changed directions from looking at Earth’s environmental problems.

Kevin Hand, a planetary scientist and astrobiologist, discussed efforts to find alien life, specifically on one of Jupiter’s moons, Europa.

He was a 2011 National Geographic Emerging Explorer. He has worked with filmmaker James Cameron on underwater expeditions within the Mariana Trench.

Hand currently works at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, or JPL. He discussed in his lecture the potential of exploring Europa, a moon that has a sub-surface ocean. Hand was optimistic that alien life could exist in such harsh living conditions as similar to life at the bottom of Mariana Trench.

Hand studies extreme conditions to better understand similar conditions on alien planets or moons that may be inhabited by lifeforms.

He posed the question, “Does the science of us work beyond Earth?”

Hand, and his team, are currently planning a mission to Europa in order to get a closer look at the sub-surface ocean to answer his question.

For Hand, if his team can prove Earth’s biology is true on other planets, as physics and other scientific principles are, then they can begin to “bring the universe to life.”