WEBVTT - From the Vault: Pacific Navigation, Part 3 0:00:05.720 --> 0:00:07.760 Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. This is 0:00:07.840 --> 0:00:10.799 Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday. Time 0:00:10.800 --> 0:00:12.880 to go into the vault. This is part three of 0:00:12.920 --> 0:00:15.840 the series we've been running. This week. There are episodes 0:00:15.880 --> 0:00:20.239 on Pacific island navigation. This episode originally aired on July. 0:00:22.760 --> 0:00:25.639 I remember the series very fondly, so we hope you 0:00:25.760 --> 0:00:31.880 enjoy it. Welcome to stot to Blow Your Mind, production 0:00:31.880 --> 0:00:40.920 of My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow 0:00:40.960 --> 0:00:43.919 Your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, 0:00:43.920 --> 0:00:46.360 and we're back with part three of our series about 0:00:46.440 --> 0:00:50.680 ancient Pacific Island navigation. In the previous couple of episodes, 0:00:50.720 --> 0:00:52.280 of course, if you haven't listened to those, you should 0:00:52.280 --> 0:00:54.360 go back and check those out first so you can 0:00:54.480 --> 0:00:56.560 understand what we're talking about today. But in the last 0:00:56.560 --> 0:00:58.680 couple of episodes, we talked about a lot of these 0:00:58.720 --> 0:01:03.959 fascinating mysteries about the population of the Pacific Islands and 0:01:03.960 --> 0:01:06.760 and how those islands were first colonized by humans, how 0:01:06.800 --> 0:01:09.440 people found them, and then how people traveled between them 0:01:09.440 --> 0:01:12.199 once they knew where all the islands were. Because, of course, 0:01:12.240 --> 0:01:15.600 this is a huge area of the surface of the 0:01:15.640 --> 0:01:18.679 Earth that is covered almost entirely by water and only 0:01:18.760 --> 0:01:21.840 polka dotted with these tiny islands here and there. And 0:01:21.920 --> 0:01:25.399 yet somehow, without charts, without instruments like a like a 0:01:25.440 --> 0:01:29.279 compass um, the navigators of the Pacific Islands were able 0:01:29.360 --> 0:01:32.840 to reach the other islands in in the surrounding areas 0:01:32.880 --> 0:01:35.679 with this amazing level of accuracy. So in the first 0:01:35.680 --> 0:01:39.040 episode we talked about some of the history theories about 0:01:39.040 --> 0:01:41.399 the history of the settlement of these islands, and then 0:01:41.440 --> 0:01:44.160 in the last episode we talked about techniques that have 0:01:44.240 --> 0:01:49.440 been documented that allowed master navigators to locate and and 0:01:49.520 --> 0:01:53.720 sail to islands in this in this vast ocean with 0:01:53.880 --> 0:01:56.640 enough accuracy that they could do so reliably over and 0:01:56.680 --> 0:02:00.320 over again. And what those techniques without charts and modern 0:02:00.360 --> 0:02:03.560 instruments would have been. Yeah, this this whole realm of 0:02:03.720 --> 0:02:07.279 environmental navigation, which I just want to drive home again 0:02:07.560 --> 0:02:09.880 when we're talking about this, we're talking not about some 0:02:09.960 --> 0:02:13.079 sort of innate art or something that is just uh, 0:02:13.120 --> 0:02:15.840 this one acquires by you know, being out in the 0:02:15.840 --> 0:02:18.880 water or being uh, you know, growing up on the ocean, 0:02:18.919 --> 0:02:21.160 that sort of thing. Now, this was this was a 0:02:21.280 --> 0:02:25.560 science that was learned that was passed down from generation 0:02:25.600 --> 0:02:30.160 to generation across these these different Pacific cultures. That's right. 0:02:30.400 --> 0:02:32.519 One of the main sources we've been referring to is 0:02:32.560 --> 0:02:35.200 a very important book in the history of of studying 0:02:35.240 --> 0:02:38.640 these techniques that was by a scholar named David Lewis, 0:02:38.680 --> 0:02:41.760 and it was published with the University of Hawaii Press 0:02:41.760 --> 0:02:44.440 in nineteen seventy two. It's called We the Navigators, The 0:02:44.480 --> 0:02:47.720 Ancient Art of Land Finding in the Pacific. And one 0:02:47.720 --> 0:02:50.200 thing that's really really cool about this book is that 0:02:50.400 --> 0:02:55.000 Lewis sailed well. He he interviewed many master navigators of 0:02:55.000 --> 0:02:58.680 different Pacific islands in Micronesia and Polynesia, but he also 0:02:58.880 --> 0:03:03.679 sailed with several navigators including UH, two very prominent navigators 0:03:03.760 --> 0:03:07.400 named Hippur and Tevik, from whom he learned a whole 0:03:07.400 --> 0:03:10.560 lot about these these techniques firsthand at sea, like they 0:03:10.560 --> 0:03:13.880 were navigating his boat, which was a boat called the 0:03:13.960 --> 0:03:16.919 Ispiorn and UH, and so we got to see these 0:03:16.960 --> 0:03:19.480 techniques firsthand. And so in the last episode we talked 0:03:19.560 --> 0:03:25.240 mostly about techniques for navigation on the open sea. Direction finding, 0:03:25.360 --> 0:03:29.640 so especially using the stars to to orient towards your targets. 0:03:30.200 --> 0:03:32.880 And UH, and then using backup methods as well, such 0:03:32.919 --> 0:03:36.480 as like using the sun during the daytime and navigating 0:03:36.600 --> 0:03:41.360 by directionally reliable c swells, which was especially astounding to me, 0:03:41.480 --> 0:03:43.480 like the idea that you know, you could learn how 0:03:43.480 --> 0:03:47.360 to feel for certain patterns of c swells that reliably 0:03:47.400 --> 0:03:49.720 come from a certain direction and then use that to 0:03:49.800 --> 0:03:53.360 know which way you're heading. Um. And then also, of 0:03:53.360 --> 0:03:56.080 course you would have to pair these direction finding techniques 0:03:56.080 --> 0:03:58.720 on the open sea with the system of dead reckoning, 0:03:58.840 --> 0:04:02.480 which is noing how far you have traveled based on 0:04:02.720 --> 0:04:06.440 your rate of travel, your starting position, and your direction 0:04:06.480 --> 0:04:09.200 of travel and sort. And so that would be a 0:04:09.200 --> 0:04:12.080 way of sort of record keeping your journey mentally as 0:04:12.120 --> 0:04:14.640 you're going along the way, even though you don't necessarily 0:04:14.680 --> 0:04:18.560 have new environmental clues to choose from. But today we 0:04:18.600 --> 0:04:22.200 wanted to get mainly into the question of land finding. 0:04:22.600 --> 0:04:26.760 So a traditional Pacific navigator has used open sea navigation 0:04:26.800 --> 0:04:31.159 techniques like celestial orientation and dead reckoning to get roughly 0:04:31.240 --> 0:04:34.719 to the vicinity of an island. Once you are nearing 0:04:34.760 --> 0:04:38.560 your destination, how do you actually find the land? Yeah, 0:04:38.600 --> 0:04:40.760 because we discussed in the previous episode, you don't want 0:04:40.800 --> 0:04:43.240 to you know, be sailing in the right direction to 0:04:43.320 --> 0:04:45.240 be in the vicinity of the island, and then not 0:04:45.360 --> 0:04:47.919 be able to see it too again again, not be 0:04:48.040 --> 0:04:51.239 close enough to pick up on the very obvious cues 0:04:51.480 --> 0:04:53.360 that you were near the island, and have to pick 0:04:53.440 --> 0:04:56.880 up on those more subtle cues that would require training 0:04:57.000 --> 0:05:00.119 and expertise to notice. Right, I mean, one of the 0:05:00.160 --> 0:05:04.799 biggest dangerous actually for a Pacific Island sailor is missing 0:05:04.839 --> 0:05:07.919 your target, is going past the island you're trying to 0:05:07.920 --> 0:05:11.159 get to without realizing it. Yeah, I mean, in a 0:05:11.360 --> 0:05:15.800 very very loose sense. It's like depending on say, your 0:05:16.400 --> 0:05:20.080 your GPS navigational system, which we refer to previously, you know, 0:05:20.480 --> 0:05:24.200 using that to get to the immediate area, like the 0:05:24.240 --> 0:05:27.720 block where the where the store is that you're trying 0:05:27.760 --> 0:05:29.839 to go a store you've never been to before. But 0:05:29.880 --> 0:05:32.280 then once you're there, the GPS is only gonna help 0:05:32.279 --> 0:05:34.559 you so much. Then you're gonna have to pinpoint the sign, 0:05:34.600 --> 0:05:37.600 figure out which storefront it is, figure out your parking, etcetera. 0:05:37.600 --> 0:05:40.480 There are a whole new set of problems that your 0:05:40.520 --> 0:05:45.080 mirror navigational system, your GPS, is not able to help 0:05:45.080 --> 0:05:48.400 you with. Right, and so one thing that's very interesting 0:05:48.480 --> 0:05:52.080 that David Lewis explores in his book is what he 0:05:52.120 --> 0:05:57.040 calls the idea of expanded target landfall. And what that 0:05:57.080 --> 0:06:00.839 means is that by using a swim wheat of land 0:06:00.920 --> 0:06:06.160 finding techniques, you can essentially extend the radius of land 0:06:06.880 --> 0:06:10.760 a certain reliable distance out into the ocean. And I'll 0:06:10.760 --> 0:06:13.400 talk about the distances as we go on, but there's 0:06:13.440 --> 0:06:16.320 a certain reliable distance out into the ocean that you 0:06:16.360 --> 0:06:19.320 can just expect to be able to detect nearby land, 0:06:19.400 --> 0:06:22.839 even if you can't see it. And if you measure 0:06:23.040 --> 0:06:27.200 land including those radii out into the ocean beyond the 0:06:27.240 --> 0:06:30.680 shore and uh and especially beyond sort of like reefs 0:06:30.680 --> 0:06:34.800 and submerged or or almost submerged a toolls nearby, you 0:06:34.839 --> 0:06:40.560 can actually greatly expand the percent of the Pacific Ocean 0:06:40.640 --> 0:06:44.760 that is taken up by by by land range. Basically, 0:06:45.160 --> 0:06:49.080 so you can expand your target from these tiny islands 0:06:49.080 --> 0:06:53.720 surrounded mostly by water to basically a block of islands 0:06:53.800 --> 0:06:59.400 with mostly or totally overlapping ranges of land detectable water. 0:06:59.560 --> 0:07:05.240 Does that make sense, yes, Yeah, basically increases the the 0:07:05.240 --> 0:07:09.640 the footprint of the island, like the the detectable footprint 0:07:09.680 --> 0:07:13.160 of the island right. So, so, of course the direction 0:07:13.200 --> 0:07:16.880 finding techniques like celestial navigation are extremely important in getting 0:07:16.920 --> 0:07:20.240 you towards your your target, but also the expanded target 0:07:20.360 --> 0:07:23.360 landfall is just as important, if not more important. I mean, 0:07:23.400 --> 0:07:25.160 I guess you can't really have one without the other. 0:07:25.440 --> 0:07:29.720 It is also extremely important because you know, there's only 0:07:29.920 --> 0:07:33.040 so accurate you can get with steering by stars. You 0:07:33.080 --> 0:07:35.960 still need to be able to correct course and find 0:07:36.000 --> 0:07:39.600 the land once you're close enough. And so, how far 0:07:39.680 --> 0:07:42.480 exactly can you expect to find land from out in 0:07:42.520 --> 0:07:45.280 the ocean. Well, it does very a lot, depending on 0:07:45.360 --> 0:07:49.040 local conditions. But Lewis cites a scholar named Frankel who 0:07:49.160 --> 0:07:53.080 estimates that on average, land can usually be detected from 0:07:53.120 --> 0:07:57.400 about thirty miles in any direction, and Louis essentially agrees 0:07:57.440 --> 0:08:00.600 with this number. Uh, And then he writes the US quote, 0:08:00.880 --> 0:08:04.360 if we draw circles with thirty miles RADII around each 0:08:04.480 --> 0:08:09.000 Pacific island, we find that the circles overlap over vast areas, 0:08:09.120 --> 0:08:13.600 giving rise to solid blocks i e. Islands separated by 0:08:13.680 --> 0:08:17.640 not more than sixty miles passing between which a canoe 0:08:17.720 --> 0:08:21.240 could not be more than thirty miles offshore. So with 0:08:21.280 --> 0:08:25.480 these expanded target landfall techniques, the problem of finding these 0:08:25.480 --> 0:08:30.240 tiny islands in the vast ocean actually is much more manageable. 0:08:30.280 --> 0:08:34.920 It's reducible more to finding these blocks or screens of 0:08:35.000 --> 0:08:38.680 islands within a certain angle, you know, a certain angle 0:08:38.760 --> 0:08:42.440 of direction from your starting position. So it means that 0:08:42.520 --> 0:08:45.480 what would otherwise be a sprinkle of islands becomes a 0:08:45.480 --> 0:08:49.160 clump of islands, yes, which there's some there. You actually 0:08:49.200 --> 0:08:52.200 shared a wonderful map here that that that demonstrates this, 0:08:52.320 --> 0:08:55.559 and it's really it's really quite impressive, okay, because you 0:08:55.600 --> 0:08:58.040 can see it making a huge amount of difference, uh, 0:08:58.640 --> 0:09:01.920 is you're traveling, you know, between these these islands, uh, 0:09:01.920 --> 0:09:06.840 potentially even charting some of these these more distant journeys. 0:09:06.880 --> 0:09:08.560 That's right. So if you're looking at it from a 0:09:08.600 --> 0:09:12.360 map that includes expanded target landfall, is sort of a 0:09:12.400 --> 0:09:14.960 black circle around the island. What would have been a 0:09:15.040 --> 0:09:18.840 smattering of of little tiny dots instead turns into a 0:09:18.880 --> 0:09:23.679 big clump of black circles that they're all overlapping each other. 0:09:24.440 --> 0:09:26.320 So this really does help with the problem. But of 0:09:26.360 --> 0:09:30.160 course you could easily once again pass between these islands 0:09:30.200 --> 0:09:33.720 without actually being able to see them visually. So you 0:09:33.760 --> 0:09:35.760 need to be able to know what to look for. 0:09:36.360 --> 0:09:38.840 And again one of the things that stressed, especially in 0:09:38.880 --> 0:09:42.880 we the navigators, is that the degree of what they 0:09:42.920 --> 0:09:47.640 call screening the screening of islands rather than individual island targets. 0:09:47.679 --> 0:09:50.160 So you would aim for a screen like a line 0:09:50.200 --> 0:09:54.240 of islands that are all overlapping within land finding range 0:09:54.280 --> 0:09:58.400 of one another. That the the degree of screening of 0:09:58.520 --> 0:10:01.960 an island or island group target was the number one 0:10:02.040 --> 0:10:05.800 safety concern when making a journey there, So more screening 0:10:05.840 --> 0:10:09.920 more overlapping of the expanded targets is safer, and less 0:10:09.920 --> 0:10:13.320 screening where there are gaps between the expanded targets is 0:10:13.400 --> 0:10:17.160 much more dangerous because again of the danger of unknowingly 0:10:17.240 --> 0:10:19.840 passing your target. But I guess we should talk about 0:10:19.920 --> 0:10:23.319 what are the actual landfall signs? What are the environmental 0:10:23.440 --> 0:10:26.240 signs that can be used to detect a land from 0:10:26.240 --> 0:10:29.400 a long distance away. I guess we should start with 0:10:29.440 --> 0:10:31.679 the one that is the most obvious. Maybe this one 0:10:31.760 --> 0:10:33.559 doesn't actually need to be said, but there are a 0:10:33.600 --> 0:10:35.960 couple of things about it that are worth sorting out. Actually, 0:10:36.240 --> 0:10:39.600 So the most obvious one is high ground right. In 0:10:39.640 --> 0:10:42.560 some cases your target island is very tall and it 0:10:42.600 --> 0:10:45.240 can be seen from very far away. So for example, 0:10:45.280 --> 0:10:49.280 Tahiti reaches elevations of something like seventy feet, and for 0:10:49.320 --> 0:10:52.559 this reason, the land itself can sometimes be seen from 0:10:52.559 --> 0:10:55.040 as far as eighty miles away. That that's a real 0:10:55.120 --> 0:10:58.679 good distance. And likewise Hawaii that can be seen from 0:10:58.679 --> 0:11:02.400 extremely far away. It can volcanoes and rising land masks 0:11:02.400 --> 0:11:05.720 that sometimes up up to like thirteen thousand feet. But 0:11:06.120 --> 0:11:09.319 not every island is tall like this. Many Pacific islands 0:11:09.360 --> 0:11:12.880 lie more or less at sea level, with nothing much 0:11:12.920 --> 0:11:15.080 taller than the height of a palm tree, and you 0:11:15.120 --> 0:11:19.360 can easily miss these. Standard navigational lore holds that on 0:11:19.480 --> 0:11:23.440 these low islands, visibility is about ten miles given the 0:11:23.440 --> 0:11:27.200 presence of coconut palms, which grow to about seventy five 0:11:27.200 --> 0:11:29.480 ft high, so at about ten miles you should be 0:11:29.480 --> 0:11:33.080 able to see the tallest of the coconut palms. It's 0:11:33.080 --> 0:11:36.160 interesting I was reading about about this and it reminded 0:11:36.160 --> 0:11:38.160 me of our episode on on the font of Morgana, 0:11:38.200 --> 0:11:40.640 where we talked about mirages and about how in some 0:11:40.720 --> 0:11:43.880 cases there were islands that we even put on maps 0:11:44.520 --> 0:11:46.640 that turned out to not be real. They were based 0:11:46.679 --> 0:11:51.599 on on mirrages, and the reverse of that is also true. 0:11:51.640 --> 0:11:56.559 There are islands that um certainly as as European powers 0:11:56.559 --> 0:11:58.400 were coming into play and trying to map everything out, 0:11:58.679 --> 0:12:02.160 there were islands that were that were known to be 0:12:02.440 --> 0:12:08.120 to exist by by the natives, but various Europeans would 0:12:08.120 --> 0:12:10.120 would have would decide why this was probably a mirage. 0:12:10.400 --> 0:12:12.520 We don't have yet, we don't know exactly where it is, 0:12:12.760 --> 0:12:14.920 but it would turn out it was actually there. Yeah, 0:12:15.400 --> 0:12:17.240 and it's funny you should bring up the fed Amorghana 0:12:17.320 --> 0:12:21.560 episode because this land finding technique is way down the 0:12:21.600 --> 0:12:25.600 list in terms of of how commonly it was used 0:12:25.600 --> 0:12:28.600 in the level of priority it's given. But one of 0:12:28.600 --> 0:12:31.320 the things mentioned in this book is that land loom 0:12:31.640 --> 0:12:34.679 the optical illusion of being able to see the land 0:12:34.760 --> 0:12:38.760 in a in a superior mirage projected up above the horizon, 0:12:39.360 --> 0:12:41.880 even though the land is not visible itself from where 0:12:41.960 --> 0:12:45.640 you are. This actually was sometimes used by some Pacific 0:12:45.679 --> 0:12:50.079 Island navigators, specifically Lewis Sites navigators from the Gilbert's using 0:12:50.080 --> 0:12:53.439 this one. But coming back to the idea of vantage 0:12:53.440 --> 0:12:57.040 points and high ground, there is actually a pretty reliable 0:12:57.120 --> 0:13:01.160 mathematical equation you can use for determining the visibility of 0:13:01.200 --> 0:13:04.360 an object over the horizon at sea. Uh and and 0:13:04.400 --> 0:13:07.760 it goes like this, So you take the square root 0:13:07.880 --> 0:13:10.400 of the height of the object you're looking for in 0:13:10.520 --> 0:13:13.760 feet and and so this is this method will be 0:13:14.040 --> 0:13:16.280 unit dependent. But the square root of the height of 0:13:16.280 --> 0:13:18.719 the object in feet. So that could be a you know, 0:13:18.760 --> 0:13:21.080 a seventy five ft tall palm tree, or it could 0:13:21.080 --> 0:13:24.280 be a mountaintop or a lighthouse, whatever that is. And 0:13:24.320 --> 0:13:27.360 then you add that to the square root of the 0:13:27.440 --> 0:13:30.280 observer's height, so that would also be in feet. If 0:13:30.320 --> 0:13:32.360 you're you know, if your eyes are five feet above 0:13:32.400 --> 0:13:35.000 the water, that's five feet, or if you're sitting down 0:13:35.000 --> 0:13:37.840 in a low canoe, it's probably even lower. And then 0:13:37.920 --> 0:13:40.560 you you add those together and then you multiply by 0:13:41.080 --> 0:13:45.000 I've seen different numbers. Actually I found a navigational website 0:13:45.040 --> 0:13:48.520 that suggested multiplying that number by one point one seven. 0:13:48.679 --> 0:13:52.120 Lewis gives gives the idea to multiply by one point 0:13:52.120 --> 0:13:55.040 one five. But whichever way you do, you'll probably get 0:13:55.160 --> 0:13:58.480 pretty close to the same answer. And this will give 0:13:58.520 --> 0:14:01.880 you the distance away in miles that an object can 0:14:02.000 --> 0:14:05.520 usually be seen over the horizon. But that made me 0:14:05.559 --> 0:14:08.320 think about the height of the observer, which makes me 0:14:08.400 --> 0:14:13.760 wonder about the land finding virtues of different watercraft, right, 0:14:13.800 --> 0:14:16.440 because they're obviously different kinds of watercraft. People make these 0:14:16.480 --> 0:14:19.800 journeys and sometimes there and they could be an outrigger canoes, 0:14:19.960 --> 0:14:24.040 or they could be in a double hulled traditional navigational 0:14:24.120 --> 0:14:27.080 vessel that would have a much more raised platform in 0:14:27.120 --> 0:14:29.080 the middle with even a cabin that I guess you 0:14:29.120 --> 0:14:31.800 could technically get on top of. I don't know how. 0:14:32.120 --> 0:14:34.680 I don't know what all of the techniques with with 0:14:34.760 --> 0:14:37.640 ancient Pacific watercraft would be for getting higher up as 0:14:37.640 --> 0:14:39.840 a vantage point, but that seems like that that could 0:14:39.920 --> 0:14:43.000 give you an advantage as well, right, because of course 0:14:43.040 --> 0:14:45.680 they would not have the advantage that that you would 0:14:45.720 --> 0:14:50.080 have with again a crow's nest lookout in a western 0:14:50.440 --> 0:14:54.840 sailing vessel, like you know, a large scale ocean voyaging ship. 0:14:55.280 --> 0:14:59.600 That's right, but uh, fortunately, these these specific navigators had 0:15:00.120 --> 0:15:03.520 lots of other environmental cues they could look for. And 0:15:03.560 --> 0:15:06.680 these cues are very important because even with taller islands, 0:15:06.680 --> 0:15:08.200 so even if you're trying to get you know, to 0:15:08.240 --> 0:15:09.880 a place that's mountain. As you're trying to get to 0:15:10.000 --> 0:15:14.920 Tahiti or Hawaii or something, environmental conditions can render these 0:15:15.040 --> 0:15:19.000 less visible. So Louis gives the example of mountains the 0:15:19.040 --> 0:15:23.480 mountains of Mangareva and Truck, which should be visible based 0:15:23.480 --> 0:15:26.520 on their height from like forty five miles away, but 0:15:26.600 --> 0:15:29.120 he says that in his case, when he was once 0:15:29.280 --> 0:15:32.520 approaching in in the boat, they were unable to see 0:15:32.560 --> 0:15:35.800 the peaks of these islands because of overcast, and so 0:15:35.840 --> 0:15:38.800 their first visual sighting was actually of the surrounding barrier 0:15:38.920 --> 0:15:42.120 reef rather than of the island itself. Now, as we 0:15:42.200 --> 0:15:44.680 go on to discuss more of these land finding techniques, 0:15:44.760 --> 0:15:48.400 it's important to note that they vary in both directions, 0:15:48.440 --> 0:15:51.880 meaning that the land finding techniques very in preference of 0:15:52.040 --> 0:15:57.520 individual navigators and navigator cultures and in availability at target. 0:15:57.720 --> 0:16:00.920 So there are some like, uh, there some traditions of 0:16:01.000 --> 0:16:04.440 land finding lore that place more emphasis on one or 0:16:04.480 --> 0:16:07.000 the other. But also you need to have the backup 0:16:07.040 --> 0:16:09.440 knowledge because you're not always going to be able to 0:16:09.480 --> 0:16:12.040 find all of these when you look for them. Yeah, again, 0:16:12.080 --> 0:16:13.880 this is a suite of tools that one that a 0:16:13.960 --> 0:16:16.720 navigator would use. This is a toolbox of different techniques, 0:16:17.200 --> 0:16:19.240 and you're not gonna want to depend on just one 0:16:19.280 --> 0:16:21.680 of them. Now you're gonna use several of them, and 0:16:21.720 --> 0:16:23.400 some of them are gonna better than others. But when 0:16:23.560 --> 0:16:27.600 used in congress, UH, you can get the train navigator 0:16:27.680 --> 0:16:30.640 can get really positive results. Now there's one thing that 0:16:30.920 --> 0:16:33.080 Lewis mentions in this book which I thought was interesting, 0:16:33.120 --> 0:16:36.560 which is a sort of counter example to uh, the 0:16:36.560 --> 0:16:38.640 thing we've talked about a couple a couple of times, 0:16:38.640 --> 0:16:40.280 which is that he says, you know, none of the 0:16:40.360 --> 0:16:44.520 navigators he spoke to or traveled with ever ever appealed 0:16:44.560 --> 0:16:46.920 to the idea of a sixth sense. Right, you were 0:16:46.960 --> 0:16:50.600 mentioning this earlier. It's not just intuition about being at sea. 0:16:50.680 --> 0:16:54.080 When they were making navigational decisions, they could always point 0:16:54.120 --> 0:16:57.840 to specific markers. They could say the reason I'm going 0:16:57.880 --> 0:17:00.360 this way is because of this. It's something that was 0:17:00.400 --> 0:17:03.640 in the environment that could be pointed out and understood. 0:17:03.680 --> 0:17:06.760 So it wasn't just a gut feeling. But one place 0:17:06.760 --> 0:17:09.280 in which he does say intuition seemed to come in 0:17:09.720 --> 0:17:13.240 was in the calculus of how much to wait different 0:17:13.320 --> 0:17:18.600 types of observations of land finding signs so navigators might 0:17:18.640 --> 0:17:21.160 get close to an island and you'd see one kind 0:17:21.160 --> 0:17:24.119 of sign and then another one, and they'd be trying 0:17:24.119 --> 0:17:27.480 to decide which way to go based on maybe different 0:17:27.520 --> 0:17:31.400 conflicting signals, or or what what the sort of sum 0:17:31.400 --> 0:17:34.360 total or average of the evidence was. And that did 0:17:34.400 --> 0:17:36.840 seem to be more based on a gut feeling after 0:17:37.000 --> 0:17:39.800 surveying all the evidence available to them. So I thought 0:17:39.840 --> 0:17:48.600 that was an interesting counterpoint. Thank thank thank so. The 0:17:48.640 --> 0:17:52.760 first big sign to mension, I think would be birds. Uh. 0:17:52.800 --> 0:17:55.879 There's actually a part where where Lewis cites a navigator 0:17:55.960 --> 0:17:59.920 named Tita who says that who is quoted at length 0:18:00.000 --> 0:18:03.320 on this He says birds are the navigator's very best friends. 0:18:03.760 --> 0:18:06.359 Birds are useful up to twice the site range of 0:18:06.359 --> 0:18:09.480 an island from a canoe. And he also says the 0:18:09.520 --> 0:18:12.159 site range of land is about ten miles and that 0:18:12.240 --> 0:18:15.679 of birds twenty. The birds which are the most significant 0:18:15.720 --> 0:18:19.680 are turns and naughties. Yeah, I've read that. You know, 0:18:19.720 --> 0:18:22.080 a lot of it comes down to familiarity with bird species. 0:18:22.119 --> 0:18:25.240 It's not just of course birds in general, but specific 0:18:25.320 --> 0:18:28.400 knowledge of how far out to see a particular bird 0:18:28.440 --> 0:18:31.840 species will typically go. So if it's a If it's 0:18:31.840 --> 0:18:34.679 a sea bird, for instance, the distance could be somewhere 0:18:34.680 --> 0:18:37.720 in the neighborhood of a hundred kilometers, which is about 0:18:37.960 --> 0:18:43.160 sixty two point one miles um. You know, again, it's 0:18:43.160 --> 0:18:47.440 just going to depend on the exact variety of bird uh, 0:18:47.680 --> 0:18:49.760 while other varieties of birds are going to stay much 0:18:49.800 --> 0:18:52.680 closer to land. That's right. So yeah, you need to 0:18:52.720 --> 0:18:55.879 look not just for birds in general, but for specific 0:18:56.000 --> 0:18:59.880 species of birds, because there are, as you mentioned, pelagic 0:19:00.000 --> 0:19:03.560 species like petrolls and sheer waters that will just not 0:19:03.720 --> 0:19:06.560 lead you to land with any reliability. If you follow them, 0:19:06.640 --> 0:19:09.080 you may end up cruising out into the deep and 0:19:09.160 --> 0:19:12.479 not coming back. But once you get within about thirty 0:19:12.560 --> 0:19:16.119 to fifty miles of shore, you will start to see 0:19:16.160 --> 0:19:19.600 some familiar species that are somewhat reliable. So first of all, 0:19:19.640 --> 0:19:24.200 you'll see booby birds uh and sometimes predatory frigate birds. 0:19:24.240 --> 0:19:27.200 At this distance of thirty to fifty miles, and then 0:19:27.280 --> 0:19:30.480 even closer, within about twenty to twenty five miles of 0:19:30.520 --> 0:19:33.920 the nearest atoll, you will get what what Louis says 0:19:33.960 --> 0:19:38.159 are quote mixed flocks of white turns and naddies that 0:19:38.200 --> 0:19:41.679 will be encountered busily searching for fish, and once again 0:19:41.800 --> 0:19:44.719 they show no more interest in directing the wayfarer than 0:19:44.760 --> 0:19:48.560 a busy New York policeman. Uh So, so there's some 0:19:48.800 --> 0:19:50.679 further deduction you have to do. It's not just like 0:19:50.720 --> 0:19:53.159 you see the birds and then you immediately know what's up. 0:19:53.520 --> 0:19:56.640 If you see booby birds, frigate birds, turns and naughties, 0:19:56.720 --> 0:19:59.560 you know you're close. But you can't really use their 0:19:59.560 --> 0:20:03.240 flight paths and behavior throughout the daytime to know which 0:20:03.280 --> 0:20:06.119 direction land lies. So what do you do? We have 0:20:06.200 --> 0:20:10.560 to use time of day. These species roost on land 0:20:10.640 --> 0:20:13.639 and they have to return to solid ground daily, and 0:20:13.680 --> 0:20:15.479 so the time of day tells you a lot. They 0:20:15.520 --> 0:20:18.680 typically fly out to their fishing shoals from land in 0:20:18.720 --> 0:20:21.520 the early morning, and then they return to land in 0:20:21.560 --> 0:20:25.040 the evening. So to read a passage from from Lewis 0:20:25.080 --> 0:20:28.760 here he writes quote towards evening, the frigate birds, for example, 0:20:28.800 --> 0:20:32.840 will be seen to abandon their leisurely patrolling, climb even higher, 0:20:32.880 --> 0:20:35.920 and set off in one direction, probably homing by sight. 0:20:36.520 --> 0:20:39.120 About the same time, the boobies will tire of their 0:20:39.160 --> 0:20:43.200 inquisitive inspections and fly low and arrows straight for the horizon. 0:20:43.800 --> 0:20:46.840 As the noddies depart, they will weave slightly in and 0:20:46.880 --> 0:20:50.040 out between the crests of larger waves, while the turns 0:20:50.040 --> 0:20:52.600 will be flying a little above them, but all will 0:20:52.640 --> 0:20:56.440 be following a very exact path towards their home island. 0:20:56.960 --> 0:20:59.080 So once you are within range of land, and you've 0:20:59.080 --> 0:21:02.160 gotten there again by the process of of of open 0:21:02.200 --> 0:21:05.240 sea navigation, often by the stars and uh and then 0:21:05.280 --> 0:21:08.520 these backup methods together with dead reckoning, you get within 0:21:08.680 --> 0:21:10.840 range of the island, you start to see certain bird 0:21:10.920 --> 0:21:14.160 species and you know which species to look for and 0:21:14.320 --> 0:21:17.240 what time of day to follow them. And if you 0:21:17.320 --> 0:21:20.679 see the birds all trending in the same direction around sundown, 0:21:20.760 --> 0:21:23.520 then you know. There are also a few stories here 0:21:23.520 --> 0:21:26.480 and there about islands where some sea going birds have 0:21:26.600 --> 0:21:29.800 been domesticated, you know, like fed and trained. But these 0:21:29.800 --> 0:21:32.840 stories seemed kind of vague and uncertain, but it is 0:21:32.880 --> 0:21:36.200 at least an interesting possibility to consider whether there's much 0:21:36.200 --> 0:21:38.639 to it or not. Like, what if an island culture 0:21:38.640 --> 0:21:42.120 could essentially train frigate birds to be the walmart graters 0:21:42.160 --> 0:21:46.879 of the island. Yeah, yeah, and almost like living lighthouses 0:21:47.040 --> 0:21:50.359 in some respects. Yeah, because the behavior of birds can 0:21:50.400 --> 0:21:53.080 factor and apart from just uh you know, flying back 0:21:53.119 --> 0:21:56.000 like booby, birds are considered useful in that they will 0:21:56.400 --> 0:21:58.760 not only fly towards land at the close of day, 0:21:58.880 --> 0:22:02.120 they will often take an active interest in approaching boats 0:22:02.160 --> 0:22:04.480 and they will try to land on them, like land 0:22:04.480 --> 0:22:07.200 on the rigging or something, before eventually flying off towards 0:22:07.240 --> 0:22:09.280 home in the evening. Now, I know a lot of 0:22:09.320 --> 0:22:12.280 you out there probably watched The Simpsons or watched The 0:22:12.280 --> 0:22:14.760 Simpsons in the past, and you're probably thinking about the 0:22:14.800 --> 0:22:19.560 scene in the episode Boy Scouts in the Hood. Uh uh, 0:22:19.600 --> 0:22:22.600 this is the the episode and well, let's see, I'm 0:22:22.600 --> 0:22:24.240 trying to remember exactly how it went. Did they get 0:22:24.280 --> 0:22:26.800 lost at sea? Well, first they get lost at river, 0:22:27.040 --> 0:22:29.919 which then results in them being lost at sea, and 0:22:29.920 --> 0:22:32.879 they're trying to get back to land and then what 0:22:32.920 --> 0:22:34.680 do they see in the sky? They see a seagull. 0:22:34.920 --> 0:22:36.760 Is this the one that starts with Bart wanting a 0:22:36.880 --> 0:22:39.239 knife but to get the knife? Yeah, and he has 0:22:40.600 --> 0:22:43.000 to read the book don't do what Donny Don't does. 0:22:43.720 --> 0:22:45.440 But yeah, it ends up with them doing a boy 0:22:45.440 --> 0:22:47.840 Scout river race and so they're lost at sea and 0:22:47.840 --> 0:22:50.480 what I don't remember what happens with the seagull. I 0:22:50.520 --> 0:22:53.840 think Ned declare Ned is with them, and Ned looks 0:22:53.920 --> 0:22:55.480 up and he sees that there's a seagull, and he 0:22:55.520 --> 0:22:59.520 declares that they're saved. Um. But then it is it 0:22:59.640 --> 0:23:01.760 is it is brought up that seagulls only go out 0:23:01.800 --> 0:23:04.080 to sea to die, and then the seagull die, so 0:23:04.119 --> 0:23:07.280 they're still lost. Uh. Now, I was thinking about this 0:23:07.440 --> 0:23:10.480 in connection with with with some of these islands, particularly 0:23:10.480 --> 0:23:13.240 with the Hawaiian Islands. And this is a fun fun 0:23:13.320 --> 0:23:17.200 fact of the various species of seagulls out there, and 0:23:17.240 --> 0:23:20.680 there are many. Seagulls are not one species, they're multiple. 0:23:21.119 --> 0:23:23.919 You'll find some of them in the Hawaiian Islands. But 0:23:24.000 --> 0:23:27.879 a great mini goals cannot survive in Hawaii because the 0:23:27.960 --> 0:23:32.080 islands lack the sort of shallow coastal scavenging waters that 0:23:32.160 --> 0:23:35.639 one finds in continental settings. Some of these goals do 0:23:35.800 --> 0:23:38.560 wind up in Hawaii, but only to starve to death 0:23:38.600 --> 0:23:40.680 because they do not have the environment and they need 0:23:40.720 --> 0:23:43.520 to survive. Well. That actually ties into the next thing 0:23:43.520 --> 0:23:45.720 I wanted to mention, which is that everything we've talked 0:23:45.720 --> 0:23:49.520 about so far is in the context of land finding 0:23:49.600 --> 0:23:52.760 by way of local birds in a near radius to 0:23:52.880 --> 0:23:55.600 an island, you know they live on the island, and 0:23:55.760 --> 0:23:57.879 once you see them, you know you're near the island. 0:23:57.960 --> 0:24:00.760 You can follow them home. But there's another use of 0:24:00.800 --> 0:24:05.280 bird navigation entirely, which is the possibility that some ancient 0:24:05.320 --> 0:24:10.640 Pacific islanders deduced the presence of previously unknown islands by 0:24:10.640 --> 0:24:15.159 observing the migratory patterns of land birds. Stories like this 0:24:15.240 --> 0:24:18.000 exist in some island sailor lore, So it seems quite 0:24:18.000 --> 0:24:21.720 reasonable to assume that that some islands were indeed discovered 0:24:21.720 --> 0:24:24.919 this way. But ultimately it's it's historical speculation and we 0:24:24.920 --> 0:24:27.040 don't know for sure, but that that does seem like 0:24:27.160 --> 0:24:30.920 a very plausible guess as to how some of these 0:24:30.960 --> 0:24:33.439 islands were found when they had never been seen by 0:24:33.520 --> 0:24:36.600 humans before. I should also add that, above the various 0:24:36.640 --> 0:24:39.200 birds you could site that would give you an indication 0:24:39.200 --> 0:24:42.000 that you were near land, the dodo the absolute best. 0:24:42.359 --> 0:24:45.120 Once you've once you've spotted the dodo, you're good to go. 0:24:45.760 --> 0:24:49.479 But by the way, if you find yourself in Hawaii, 0:24:49.480 --> 0:24:51.679 if you find yourself on the island of Oahu, I 0:24:51.840 --> 0:24:55.720 highly recommend going to the Bishop Museum there. Um it 0:24:55.880 --> 0:24:59.119 is it is a wonderful museum that covers so much 0:24:59.240 --> 0:25:03.840 about Alnesian culture and uh in Hawaiian history, and it 0:25:03.920 --> 0:25:05.840 covers some of what we're talking about here there there 0:25:05.960 --> 0:25:10.240 there's stuff about the canoes that were used, the navigational 0:25:10.280 --> 0:25:14.400 techniques that were used, and and so forth. So I'm 0:25:14.480 --> 0:25:16.680 sure the Bishop Museum will come up again, but I 0:25:16.920 --> 0:25:18.960 highly recommend it that you if you, if you visit 0:25:19.000 --> 0:25:21.840 the islands, you you kind of owe it to yourself 0:25:22.359 --> 0:25:24.960 to go to the Bishop Museum. All right, so we've 0:25:24.960 --> 0:25:29.639 talked about high ground, we've talked about birds. What's next. Okay? 0:25:29.640 --> 0:25:32.680 The next one is is fascinating to me and and 0:25:32.800 --> 0:25:36.439 it is the use of clouds to find nearby land. 0:25:36.920 --> 0:25:38.480 So you might think, well, how could you use that? 0:25:38.520 --> 0:25:40.680 I mean, there are clouds over the open ocean. What 0:25:40.680 --> 0:25:44.119 what would clouds tell you? But it turns out they 0:25:44.119 --> 0:25:46.720 can tell you quite a lot. There. There is this 0:25:46.920 --> 0:25:51.200 tradition among Pacific navigators of looking for your target by 0:25:51.200 --> 0:25:55.679 what's known as land clouds, patterns of cloud formations that 0:25:55.760 --> 0:25:59.520 are consistent with the presence of land rather than open water. 0:26:00.160 --> 0:26:04.000 So how would clouds appearing over an island be any 0:26:04.040 --> 0:26:07.919 different than clouds appearing anywhere else. Well, well, they're actually 0:26:07.920 --> 0:26:10.600 a number of signs that are used. So navigators claim 0:26:10.680 --> 0:26:13.760 first of all that clouds move more quickly over open 0:26:13.840 --> 0:26:17.240 water and more slowly over land, almost as if they 0:26:17.520 --> 0:26:20.480 appear to become stuck over islands that are hidden beyond 0:26:20.560 --> 0:26:24.400 the horizon. But there are also a number of difficult 0:26:24.440 --> 0:26:28.480 to describe characteristics that these navigators look for having to 0:26:28.520 --> 0:26:31.920 do with the formation, appearance, and behavior of clouds over 0:26:32.000 --> 0:26:36.240 dry land, And one example is the the telltale shapes, 0:26:36.600 --> 0:26:40.760 specifically the eyebrows and the V shape. Both of these 0:26:40.800 --> 0:26:43.760 are referred to, for example, by a navigator named Aberra, 0:26:44.000 --> 0:26:47.800 that is that was extensively interviewed by by David Lewis 0:26:47.840 --> 0:26:51.400 in his book. And so according to the navigational lore 0:26:51.480 --> 0:26:55.399 of Aberra, uh the eyebrows meaning these I mean, I 0:26:55.440 --> 0:26:57.560 guess I can't describe them any better than that clouds 0:26:57.600 --> 0:27:01.160 that look like eyebrows appear in the sky over where 0:27:01.160 --> 0:27:03.520 an island would be. So if they are eyebrows, you'd 0:27:03.520 --> 0:27:05.920 imagine the island down below the horizon is sort of 0:27:05.920 --> 0:27:08.320 where the noses or maybe where the lips are, so 0:27:08.359 --> 0:27:12.400 it's between the two eyebrows and these eyebrow looking clouds 0:27:12.400 --> 0:27:14.880 are more common when the weather is calm and there 0:27:14.880 --> 0:27:18.840 are no other clouds, whereas a different formation known as 0:27:18.920 --> 0:27:22.760 the V shape, the V shaped column is present over 0:27:22.880 --> 0:27:26.159 islands when there is wind and when there are other clouds, 0:27:26.160 --> 0:27:29.159 and the V shape basically the vertex of it at 0:27:29.200 --> 0:27:32.439 the bottom points down to where the island is. But 0:27:32.680 --> 0:27:35.639 even more fascinating than that to me is that experience 0:27:35.760 --> 0:27:39.399 navigators mentioned that there are cues rooted in the color 0:27:39.720 --> 0:27:43.760 of clouds. Clouds hovering over an island below the horizon, 0:27:44.040 --> 0:27:47.080 we will tend to have different colors and levels of 0:27:47.200 --> 0:27:51.240 brightness than clouds floating over the ocean, And apparently a 0:27:51.280 --> 0:27:54.200 lot of this has to do with the actual reflection 0:27:54.560 --> 0:27:58.320 of the colors of the land lying below the cloud. 0:27:58.800 --> 0:28:01.480 It's amazing. Yeah, yeah, this is really neat. I was 0:28:01.520 --> 0:28:06.720 reading about this specifically as it concerns lagoons. Lagoons being 0:28:06.840 --> 0:28:11.399 shallow bodies of water, uh, the open ocean being deep water, 0:28:11.840 --> 0:28:15.919 and therefore the lagoon water as reflected in the cloud 0:28:15.960 --> 0:28:20.120 will be a lighter shade of blue. Um. So yeah, 0:28:20.160 --> 0:28:21.959 that's so, you know, it's not like a mirror. You're 0:28:21.960 --> 0:28:23.199 not gonna be like, oh look, I can see the 0:28:23.200 --> 0:28:25.840 reflection of the entire island to which we are going. No, 0:28:25.960 --> 0:28:28.159 but to the trained I you would be able to 0:28:28.160 --> 0:28:30.720 see the difference in the color, like there's a lighter 0:28:30.760 --> 0:28:33.560 blue reflected in the clouds, that that must be the 0:28:33.560 --> 0:28:36.000 blue of the lagoons on the island. Though I should, 0:28:36.040 --> 0:28:37.720 of course also stressed this, like a lot of the 0:28:37.760 --> 0:28:40.800 things we're discussing here, we should add the caveat under 0:28:40.840 --> 0:28:44.000 the right conditions exactly so none of these signs we're 0:28:44.000 --> 0:28:47.880 talking about are always observable. Uh and and Lewis stresses 0:28:47.920 --> 0:28:51.520 this a lot, that it requires consistent, focused attention in 0:28:51.640 --> 0:28:54.760 looking for all of the available cues that you know about. 0:28:55.280 --> 0:28:57.760 So looking for a few minutes you are quite likely 0:28:57.840 --> 0:29:00.800 to see nothing to get no cues. But if an 0:29:00.800 --> 0:29:05.240 experience navigator pays close attention for several hours, usually at 0:29:05.280 --> 0:29:09.320 least one type of land sign will manifest. And just 0:29:09.360 --> 0:29:12.000 to get a sense of what the the the effects 0:29:12.000 --> 0:29:14.880 of reflected color from land on the clouds would be, like, 0:29:14.960 --> 0:29:16.760 I want to read a section from Lewis here where 0:29:16.760 --> 0:29:20.560 he describes some examples. So he says, quote, the colors 0:29:20.600 --> 0:29:23.160 that begin to appear closer to land very with the 0:29:23.240 --> 0:29:26.280 makeup of the island. There are three kinds of island 0:29:26.280 --> 0:29:31.240 with corresponding clouds. Tita says, above lagoon islands, the cloud 0:29:31.520 --> 0:29:35.360 roof tends to be greenish. Over extensive areas of white 0:29:35.480 --> 0:29:38.400 sand or surf, the cloud or a portion of it 0:29:38.440 --> 0:29:41.920 will be brighter, more white than the rest. The clouds 0:29:41.920 --> 0:29:45.400 above a wooded green island will be darker than their neighbors. 0:29:45.840 --> 0:29:49.520 Abera referred to a pink tinge over reefs and green 0:29:49.640 --> 0:29:54.880 above lagoons. Re We likewise said that lagoon islands reflect green, 0:29:55.400 --> 0:29:59.760 and ones without lagoons a reddish color. Islands with no lagoons, 0:29:59.840 --> 0:30:03.920 like Kuria said Yo Tibata, reflect a dark color that 0:30:04.000 --> 0:30:07.560 must be distinguished from rain cloud, which appears very similar. 0:30:08.000 --> 0:30:11.720 Islands with big stretches of dry reef or mangroves have 0:30:11.920 --> 0:30:15.080 bright colored clouds above them. And then he mentions that 0:30:15.320 --> 0:30:17.400 given the fact that all of the stuff he's just 0:30:17.440 --> 0:30:21.160 been saying comes from different interviews with different navigators from 0:30:21.240 --> 0:30:26.360 different islands, and with four separate interpreters transcribing what they 0:30:26.400 --> 0:30:29.720 were saying, uh, the fact that they're so consistent in 0:30:29.760 --> 0:30:32.160 what they say about the colors reflected in the clouds 0:30:32.240 --> 0:30:36.160 is pretty amazing. Now there's another very important thing that 0:30:36.400 --> 0:30:37.800 I'm not going to spend a lot of time on, 0:30:37.880 --> 0:30:40.920 just because we discussed it somewhat in our previous episode 0:30:40.960 --> 0:30:43.160 and now in the last episode we talked about feeling 0:30:43.240 --> 0:30:46.160 for swells in the sea as a way of direction finding, 0:30:46.600 --> 0:30:50.680 but also a navigator can feel for the reflection, refraction 0:30:50.760 --> 0:30:54.880 and interference with swells with no notion swells to detect 0:30:54.960 --> 0:30:58.200 that land is nearby. And Lewis goes into deep detail 0:30:58.240 --> 0:31:01.760 on this practice in his book. But essentially it's it's 0:31:02.240 --> 0:31:05.120 a similar to feeling to direction finding with the help 0:31:05.160 --> 0:31:09.360 of swells, except feeling for interruptions and swells and reflections 0:31:09.400 --> 0:31:13.360 of swells from known land masses. But there's one last 0:31:13.400 --> 0:31:15.880 thing I wanted to talk about here that is really 0:31:15.920 --> 0:31:18.920 interesting and almost kind of creepy, especially because it is 0:31:18.960 --> 0:31:22.600 to some degree still mysterious, though there there's some ideas 0:31:22.640 --> 0:31:26.000 about what it might be. Uh. So we've talked, you know, 0:31:26.360 --> 0:31:29.320 at length before about bioluminescence in the ocean, you know, 0:31:29.440 --> 0:31:32.440 kind of that is a regular profuse light in the 0:31:32.440 --> 0:31:38.200 water from organisms like bioluminescent plankton and uh and Lewis 0:31:38.240 --> 0:31:41.960 recounts in the book that some navigators say that bioluminescence 0:31:41.960 --> 0:31:44.600 in the water just doesn't tell you much useful. Other 0:31:44.680 --> 0:31:48.160 sources seem to think it increases when near near land 0:31:48.280 --> 0:31:51.240 or a reef. But in any case, it's important to 0:31:51.320 --> 0:31:56.600 distinguish regular bioluminescence in the water from this next land sign, 0:31:56.640 --> 0:32:01.320 which is fascinating. And it's what David Lewis calls d phosphorescence. 0:32:01.520 --> 0:32:04.960 But it is also known as ta lapa spelled t 0:32:05.160 --> 0:32:09.440 E space l A p A. The navigator Tevak calls this, 0:32:09.840 --> 0:32:13.920 calls it underwater lightning. It's also described by another navigator 0:32:13.960 --> 0:32:17.000 as ulo a tahi or the glory of the seas. 0:32:17.520 --> 0:32:20.440 And so I wanna read Lewis describing what this is. 0:32:20.800 --> 0:32:23.920 He's just picking up after tek has has called it 0:32:24.040 --> 0:32:27.360 underwater lightning, which he thinks is an excellent analogy, and 0:32:27.440 --> 0:32:32.960 Lewis writes quote, it comprises streaks, flashes, and momentarily glowing 0:32:33.160 --> 0:32:37.920 plaques of light, all well beneath the surface, exactly like lightning. 0:32:37.960 --> 0:32:41.360 It flickers and darts and is in constant motion. It 0:32:41.400 --> 0:32:44.960 occurs a good deal deeper down than common luminescence, at 0:32:45.000 --> 0:32:47.760 anything from a foot or two to more than a fathom, 0:32:48.160 --> 0:32:50.960 all right, So that's already strange because you know, otherwise 0:32:51.000 --> 0:32:53.800 I'd never heard of anything like that anymore, flashes of 0:32:53.920 --> 0:32:56.720 light from deep under the water, almost like lightning. But 0:32:56.800 --> 0:33:02.320 it gets even weirder. Apparently, tailapa seems to flash from 0:33:02.440 --> 0:33:05.840 the direction of an island or a reef. You can 0:33:05.880 --> 0:33:08.320 see it well into the deep sea when you're eighty 0:33:08.400 --> 0:33:11.240 two a hundred miles away from land, but as you 0:33:11.280 --> 0:33:13.960 approach the island, the flashes of light become more and 0:33:14.000 --> 0:33:16.960 more rare, and then they disappear entirely as you get 0:33:16.960 --> 0:33:20.800 really close. The distance from land or from reefs also 0:33:20.840 --> 0:33:24.960 seems to affect how the light moves. They're slow flashes 0:33:24.960 --> 0:33:27.160 of light far out at sea, but then about ten 0:33:27.200 --> 0:33:30.120 to twenty miles from land it starts to take on 0:33:30.160 --> 0:33:34.240 a rapid, whipping back and forth movement. And uh and 0:33:34.320 --> 0:33:37.720 it's also generally understood that tai lapa coming from reefs 0:33:37.800 --> 0:33:41.720 is slower moving than tai lapa coming from islands. So 0:33:41.760 --> 0:33:43.600 this was amazing to me because I had never heard 0:33:43.640 --> 0:33:46.440 of anything like this before. Yeah, yeah, this was definitely 0:33:46.440 --> 0:33:49.400 new to me as well. Um, and it is mysterious 0:33:49.400 --> 0:33:53.520 sound and the idea of underwater bioluminescent lightning being some 0:33:53.560 --> 0:33:56.160 sort of guide again, like all of these things, not 0:33:56.240 --> 0:34:00.600 the primary guide, but some additional tool that you could 0:34:00.600 --> 0:34:03.480 turn to. Right. Well, one thing I want to note 0:34:03.880 --> 0:34:07.360 what you said, it's the tailapa is bioluminescent, which it 0:34:07.400 --> 0:34:09.600 may well might be, but it might be some other 0:34:09.680 --> 0:34:12.799 kind of luminescence as well. It's still there's still some 0:34:12.880 --> 0:34:15.200 question about what causes it, and we'll discuss that more 0:34:15.200 --> 0:34:17.239 in a minute. But uh, but yeah, I think it's 0:34:17.239 --> 0:34:21.080 not a given that it's necessarily bioluminescent, like the you know, 0:34:21.200 --> 0:34:24.520 the like the general sort of ambient glow that you 0:34:24.520 --> 0:34:26.719 see in the upper area of the sea that's known 0:34:26.760 --> 0:34:29.960 to be bioluminescent. But it's important that what you say 0:34:30.200 --> 0:34:32.600 that this is very much a backup method and it's 0:34:32.640 --> 0:34:37.160 not known to everyone. So Lewis documented references to it 0:34:37.239 --> 0:34:41.000 in the navigational lore from two Polynesian areas and one 0:34:41.160 --> 0:34:45.359 Micronesian area, but there were plenty of other navigators who 0:34:45.360 --> 0:34:47.680 didn't seem to know anything about te Lapa, like they've 0:34:47.719 --> 0:34:51.160 never even heard of this concept. Yeah. One of the people, 0:34:51.320 --> 0:34:53.960 the more recent people that we were looking at concerning 0:34:54.000 --> 0:34:55.759 this topic, is a Harvard physicist by the name of 0:34:55.840 --> 0:34:59.719 John huth Um and uh, and he points out that, yeah, 0:34:59.760 --> 0:35:02.120 and cultures you just see no mention of it, the 0:35:02.120 --> 0:35:06.279 Marshall Islands being one that he specifically mentions where they 0:35:06.560 --> 0:35:09.600 just didn't didn't have the concept. And and it's unknown 0:35:09.600 --> 0:35:13.560 exactly why is it an environmental reason, like whatever this 0:35:13.560 --> 0:35:16.880 phenomena is, it's not it wasn't present, uh, you know 0:35:16.920 --> 0:35:19.600 around the Marshall Islands or islands that were of interest 0:35:19.640 --> 0:35:23.719 to these navigators, or is it a situation where for 0:35:23.760 --> 0:35:26.920 this particular culture they found that this was not a 0:35:26.960 --> 0:35:30.720 reliable navigational tool and it just wasn't worth keeping around, 0:35:31.400 --> 0:35:33.880 Like it's not one you could lean heavily on and 0:35:34.520 --> 0:35:37.520 it would always be just kind of like a second 0:35:37.560 --> 0:35:42.160 or third tier backup. Anyway, it remains a mystery. Yeah, yeah, 0:35:42.280 --> 0:35:46.240 So some islanders explained that as this backup method of navigation, 0:35:46.280 --> 0:35:50.240 they could use t LAPA to steer on dark, rainy nights. 0:35:50.320 --> 0:35:53.440 So maybe you can't see the stars, you can perhaps 0:35:53.480 --> 0:35:57.800 see these flashes of underwater lightning. And Lewis actually documents 0:35:57.840 --> 0:36:00.879 that he himself observed it. That was one night when 0:36:00.920 --> 0:36:02.640 it was late at night and it was dark and 0:36:02.680 --> 0:36:05.360 he was sailing with Tevak. This was on the thirty 0:36:05.400 --> 0:36:10.040 one December, he writes, quote Land Lapa was seen to 0:36:10.040 --> 0:36:13.479 be darting to and fro along two distinct bearings, which 0:36:13.480 --> 0:36:15.920 were both plain enough for me to see despite the 0:36:15.960 --> 0:36:19.600 clear night and the comparative nearness of the islands. One 0:36:19.600 --> 0:36:22.880 series kept flashing from a direction which tevk averred was 0:36:23.000 --> 0:36:26.600 that of the volcano Tina Coula. The other, he said 0:36:26.920 --> 0:36:31.040 was from the island of Nadeni. Morning revealed the high 0:36:31.080 --> 0:36:34.800 islands of Tina Coola and Nadini, each about twenty miles 0:36:34.840 --> 0:36:38.880 away and respectively west and south of our position. These 0:36:38.920 --> 0:36:42.319 were the directions that the old navigator had indicated. So 0:36:42.400 --> 0:36:45.440 in this experience, he says, yep I saw it. Tek 0:36:45.600 --> 0:36:47.440 told me it was there. I looked and I saw it, 0:36:47.520 --> 0:36:50.239 and it was in the directions of the islands, just 0:36:50.280 --> 0:36:52.879 like he said it would be. And so Louis did 0:36:52.880 --> 0:36:56.239 believe he was the first person to document this navigational 0:36:56.320 --> 0:36:58.440 sign in print. Of course, it was known before him 0:36:58.640 --> 0:37:00.560 to to the people who possessed to a part of 0:37:00.560 --> 0:37:04.319 their navigational lore. But he believed that this phenomenon had 0:37:04.400 --> 0:37:09.040 no European definition and uh. And of course, again not 0:37:09.120 --> 0:37:12.120 all navigators in the Pacific Islands were aware of Talapa, 0:37:12.200 --> 0:37:15.040 but some were from at least three distinct regions that 0:37:15.160 --> 0:37:19.040 he that he interviewed navigators from, and it was interpreted 0:37:19.080 --> 0:37:23.240 and it turned out to provide accurate information. So what 0:37:23.320 --> 0:37:26.520 was it? What's causing these flashes of light underneath the 0:37:26.520 --> 0:37:30.440 water from the direction of islands or reefs, Lewis ultimately 0:37:30.480 --> 0:37:32.200 says in the book. And then again, this was in 0:37:32.320 --> 0:37:35.239 seventy two, so we may have developed some knowledge since then. 0:37:35.239 --> 0:37:37.120 But Louis said he really didn't know what it was, 0:37:37.200 --> 0:37:39.360 and he guessed that it may have had something to 0:37:39.400 --> 0:37:42.759 do with deep swell movement, maybe a kind of deep 0:37:42.800 --> 0:37:47.080 reflection of waves from islands or reefs. But that leaves 0:37:47.120 --> 0:37:50.840 a lot of lingering questions. Why why if it's bouncing 0:37:50.840 --> 0:37:53.120 off of these islands or reefs, why could it be 0:37:53.239 --> 0:37:57.640 seen at such great distances from land, albeit moving more slowly. 0:37:58.239 --> 0:38:00.319 And one thing that I that I found so I 0:38:00.360 --> 0:38:03.480 was reading a Harvard Gazette article about the work of 0:38:03.520 --> 0:38:06.239 that physicist you mentioned, John Huth, who had done some 0:38:06.280 --> 0:38:09.960 follow up work on this, and Uh. This Gazette article 0:38:09.960 --> 0:38:14.320 mentioned that many scholars disputed Lewis's reports of the Tailapa quote. 0:38:14.680 --> 0:38:18.200 The lights were initially dismissed as fantasy when other researchers 0:38:18.280 --> 0:38:21.480 reported that they were unable to see them. Some critics 0:38:21.480 --> 0:38:25.080 who said thought that pursuing quote underwater lightning was akin 0:38:25.160 --> 0:38:30.200 to chasing the abominable snowman. Yeah. John Huth seems to 0:38:30.280 --> 0:38:33.799 have done a fair amount of work dealing with with 0:38:34.040 --> 0:38:37.239 Ti Lapa. And one when the source that I was 0:38:37.440 --> 0:38:41.520 reading was the article conclusions a cross disciplinary Journey through 0:38:41.520 --> 0:38:44.759 Spatial Orientation by who, published in the journal Structure and 0:38:44.800 --> 0:38:48.799 Dynamics in sixteen and this he points out that there 0:38:48.880 --> 0:38:52.800 is still no definitive explanation for the origin of Ti Lapa. 0:38:53.520 --> 0:38:56.719 But one possibility that that he seems so like, is 0:38:56.960 --> 0:38:59.360 that it's a byproduct of fish darting in a patch 0:38:59.400 --> 0:39:03.200 of sea rich with uh dino of flageolets, which emit 0:39:03.400 --> 0:39:07.120 light in response to the stimuli of pressure waves. But 0:39:07.400 --> 0:39:09.600 even if that is the case, he says, then it 0:39:09.719 --> 0:39:12.160 still leaves a mystery of the directionality of the fish 0:39:12.239 --> 0:39:15.560 movements themselves. You know why, and how can we navigate 0:39:15.680 --> 0:39:19.640 by this information? Right? What if that's the explanation why 0:39:19.680 --> 0:39:23.000 would it point to islands in a reliable way? Right? 0:39:23.719 --> 0:39:27.040 And Uh, one of the challenges and researching is hoothpoints 0:39:27.040 --> 0:39:30.000 out is that the just the difficulty of rooper reproducing sightings, 0:39:30.440 --> 0:39:34.040 we need further studies which require both sensitive equipment and 0:39:34.360 --> 0:39:38.840 dependable sightings of the phenomena. Um and and again he 0:39:38.920 --> 0:39:41.040 pointed to the fact that you don't actually see it 0:39:41.080 --> 0:39:44.040 as a navigational aid in some cultures, uh, such as 0:39:44.040 --> 0:39:47.080 the Marshall Islands, raising questions of you know, is this cultural? 0:39:47.160 --> 0:39:52.080 Is it environmental? And it's simply unknown. Um. Uh so yeah, 0:39:52.120 --> 0:39:56.560 it's it's it's really fascinating. And again it it it. 0:39:56.840 --> 0:39:59.279 I think it serves to just remindersels, Yeah, we're dealing 0:39:59.280 --> 0:40:03.480 with the suite of different navigational techniques and and if 0:40:03.760 --> 0:40:07.440 this is among the tools at your disposal, then you know, 0:40:07.600 --> 0:40:12.240 perhaps it is useful in in deciding like fine tuning 0:40:12.760 --> 0:40:17.400 your your your directional approach. But perhaps for some of 0:40:17.560 --> 0:40:20.279 some cultures they abandon it because it did not seem 0:40:20.400 --> 0:40:22.600 useful enough. We just don't know. I mean, I'm pretty 0:40:22.600 --> 0:40:25.520 convinced that people are actually observing this, that it's not 0:40:25.560 --> 0:40:28.120 just a fantasy. And I mean not only because it 0:40:28.480 --> 0:40:30.680 is part of the navigational lore and seems to have 0:40:30.719 --> 0:40:33.680 been used as this backup method of direction finding. But 0:40:33.840 --> 0:40:38.040 also because I mean, there are additional modern reports of 0:40:38.040 --> 0:40:40.120 people saying, yeah, I actually did see it, even if 0:40:40.120 --> 0:40:42.520 I was not able to photograph it. For example, I 0:40:42.520 --> 0:40:46.600 found an article by a scholar named Marianne George who 0:40:46.760 --> 0:40:50.600 is a cultural anthropologist who uh talks about this in 0:40:50.640 --> 0:40:54.440 an article called Polynesian Navigation and Ta Lapa the Flashing 0:40:54.800 --> 0:40:58.239 published in Time and Mind, the Journal of Archaeology, Consciousness, 0:40:58.239 --> 0:41:01.640 and Culture from twelve and she also talks about having 0:41:01.719 --> 0:41:05.320 been able to eventually witness it herself out on the ocean. 0:41:05.800 --> 0:41:07.440 But I don't think you can find video of it. 0:41:07.480 --> 0:41:09.560 I don't think anybody has ever captured it like that, 0:41:10.400 --> 0:41:19.040 So it's still a very interesting question. Than now, one 0:41:19.080 --> 0:41:22.760 of the really interesting things concerning all of this again 0:41:23.080 --> 0:41:26.360 is the idea that in modern times, reacher researchers have 0:41:26.400 --> 0:41:28.560 had to fit a lot of this back together, you know, 0:41:28.640 --> 0:41:33.239 depending on genetics and linguistics and oral histories, etcetera, all 0:41:33.280 --> 0:41:38.160 these various disciplines and as discussed in multiple places, but 0:41:38.400 --> 0:41:41.839 specifically you see this discussed at the Bishop Museum both 0:41:41.960 --> 0:41:44.680 the physical museum and the online presence. You also see 0:41:44.680 --> 0:41:49.279 a discussed at at the website for Hokulea. UH. That's 0:41:49.280 --> 0:41:52.960 how that's um Ata dot com. That is h O 0:41:53.120 --> 0:41:56.400 k U l E H plus v. A is that 0:41:56.480 --> 0:42:00.160 you saw something rather interesting concerning deep sea voyages in 0:42:00.200 --> 0:42:02.200 Hawaiian culture. And I believe I mentioned this is one 0:42:02.200 --> 0:42:04.560 of the previous episodes, and that is that deep sea 0:42:04.600 --> 0:42:08.520 voyages in Hawaii had been extinct for several hundred years. Uh. 0:42:08.680 --> 0:42:12.080 This was before contact with Europeans. The period of long 0:42:12.160 --> 0:42:15.800 voyages ended along with all contact with other Polynesian islands, 0:42:15.960 --> 0:42:19.359 and they lived in near complete isolation until seventeen seventy eight. 0:42:20.239 --> 0:42:23.279 Now there remained memories of the the age of long 0:42:23.400 --> 0:42:26.400 voyages and stories of their origins, of of the the 0:42:26.400 --> 0:42:29.319 origin of the Hawaiian people um and their waves of 0:42:29.360 --> 0:42:33.480 migration from Tahiti, which is two thousand, five hundred miles away. 0:42:33.680 --> 0:42:36.560 But again, the exact art of deep sea voyages had 0:42:36.600 --> 0:42:41.120 not been practiced for quite some time. Meanwhile, some Europeans 0:42:41.160 --> 0:42:43.520 formed their own ideas about how humans could have possibly 0:42:43.560 --> 0:42:45.560 made it out to such far flung islands. We mentioned 0:42:45.560 --> 0:42:47.560 this uh in passing. You know the idea that it 0:42:47.600 --> 0:42:51.719 was surely, surely by accident that these ancient sailors made 0:42:51.760 --> 0:42:54.480 their way to these various islands, right, the idea that 0:42:54.880 --> 0:42:58.520 new islands would have always been discovered and initially colonized 0:42:58.560 --> 0:43:01.000 by people who got lost, were you know, blown away 0:43:01.040 --> 0:43:05.000 in storms, random drifts basically, and again, modern scholarships has 0:43:05.000 --> 0:43:07.319 turned away from that idea that, of course there would 0:43:07.320 --> 0:43:10.280 probably be some cases of islands being discovered by accident, 0:43:10.360 --> 0:43:14.000 but also a lot of cases of deliberate exploratory ventures. 0:43:14.840 --> 0:43:17.080 Now there are also some outliers such as thor hair 0:43:17.200 --> 0:43:21.160 dolls hypothesis that South American sailors made the voyage. He 0:43:21.200 --> 0:43:24.360 famously tried and failed to prove this. But yeah, the 0:43:24.360 --> 0:43:27.240 predominant theory for a long time with the Polynesian sailors 0:43:27.280 --> 0:43:29.120 just simply didn't have the skill to make the journey 0:43:29.320 --> 0:43:31.879 and they either rode the wind currents and or were 0:43:31.880 --> 0:43:35.560 blown off course and arrived at the Hawaiian islands by accident. 0:43:35.960 --> 0:43:39.560 But then in nineteen seventy three, the Polynesian Voyaging Society 0:43:39.640 --> 0:43:43.880 formed to challenge this theory. Uh Dr Ben of Finny 0:43:44.400 --> 0:43:48.360 Herb Collinui Kane and Tommy Holmes aimed to put together 0:43:48.400 --> 0:43:51.560 a team to build a traditional deep sea voyaging Hawaiian 0:43:51.560 --> 0:43:55.960 canoe and sail it from the Hawaiian Islands to Tahiti. Now, 0:43:56.200 --> 0:43:58.160 one of the challenging parts in all this was simply 0:43:58.200 --> 0:44:01.680 finding a traditional sailing mass. Again, especially when you're dealing 0:44:01.719 --> 0:44:04.080 with Hawaiian culture, this is this is something of a 0:44:04.120 --> 0:44:07.600 forgotten science at the uh so it had not been 0:44:07.600 --> 0:44:10.080 practiced in a while. So they ended up going with 0:44:10.360 --> 0:44:14.080 a particular individual by the name of of maut Paie 0:44:14.200 --> 0:44:18.480 long Um who lived nineteen thirty two through two thousand ten, 0:44:18.560 --> 0:44:22.560 a man from the Micronesian island of Sodawall. He'd been 0:44:22.560 --> 0:44:25.560 trained from an early age and the traditional techniques of 0:44:25.560 --> 0:44:29.160 of navigation environmental navigation, and he proved an essential part 0:44:29.560 --> 0:44:32.040 of this whole experiment and is still remembered as a 0:44:32.080 --> 0:44:36.640 major figure both in the academic exploration of of Hawaiian history, 0:44:36.640 --> 0:44:40.680 Polynesian history, uh and and Oceanic culture, but also just 0:44:40.719 --> 0:44:42.640 a sort of something of a cultural hero as well. 0:44:43.080 --> 0:44:45.680 So the story of of Hoka is really fascinating and 0:44:45.680 --> 0:44:48.280 they've been whole documentaries about it. They have a wonderful website, 0:44:48.280 --> 0:44:51.480 But essentially they build a sixty two ft long, nineteen 0:44:51.520 --> 0:44:56.919 foot wide double holed canoe or waakula and they called 0:44:56.960 --> 0:45:01.040 it um. They called the vessel um hokule uh named 0:45:01.080 --> 0:45:04.440 for an important navigational star. It's the star of Gladness, 0:45:04.520 --> 0:45:07.239 also known as our Tourists and the brightest star in 0:45:07.239 --> 0:45:10.799 the Boaties constellation. While the ship's construction also made use 0:45:10.800 --> 0:45:14.839 of plywood, fiberglass and resin UH and it was accompanied 0:45:14.840 --> 0:45:20.320 by a modern vessel, um Klea itself was completely unpowered, 0:45:20.320 --> 0:45:24.200 and even more importantly, navigation was attempted without the use 0:45:24.200 --> 0:45:27.080 of any technology or devices, at least on the way 0:45:27.160 --> 0:45:30.040 to Tahiti. Um for the return trip, they did use 0:45:30.080 --> 0:45:33.319 some instruments, uh, but they just yeah, they depended on 0:45:33.440 --> 0:45:37.359 the traditional navigation practices that maultpie Loon brought with him. 0:45:37.600 --> 0:45:40.799 And so on May one six they set out from 0:45:41.080 --> 0:45:45.160 Honolulu Bay on Maui and traveled thirty three days UH 0:45:45.200 --> 0:45:48.680 to Papa Atta Harbor in Tahiti. And they also brought 0:45:48.719 --> 0:45:51.319 along with them livestock to study how these could be 0:45:51.360 --> 0:45:54.360 cared for at sea, because as we mentioned, you know, 0:45:54.400 --> 0:45:57.080 canoe species were a key part of the equation. It's 0:45:57.080 --> 0:45:59.919 not just could you could you voyage to this eye 0:46:00.040 --> 0:46:02.840 land or these islands, but could you bring the species 0:46:02.880 --> 0:46:06.400 with you that you needed to survive? Yeah, and and 0:46:06.400 --> 0:46:09.040 it was a success. Again, they did use instruments on 0:46:09.080 --> 0:46:10.960 the return trip, but at that point they had already 0:46:11.040 --> 0:46:15.000 proved what was possible, and multiple voyages have been completed 0:46:15.040 --> 0:46:18.160 since then to further prove all of this out. Now, 0:46:18.200 --> 0:46:20.719 an interesting wrinkle in all of this um is that 0:46:20.800 --> 0:46:23.839 during the ninety nineties, the Bishop Museums Native Hawaiian Arts 0:46:23.840 --> 0:46:26.360 and Culture Program, they set out to create an authentic 0:46:26.480 --> 0:46:29.360 version of this sort of vessel using only traditional and 0:46:29.480 --> 0:46:32.080 native material. So again you know, not the fiberglass and 0:46:32.120 --> 0:46:35.040 so forth. But they said, let's build one like would 0:46:35.040 --> 0:46:38.400 have been built um historically. And they found that the 0:46:38.520 --> 0:46:42.600 native CoA trees of the islands were too small due 0:46:42.640 --> 0:46:46.120 to human activities, so they ultimately that they had to 0:46:46.239 --> 0:46:47.920 they had to go beyond the islands in order to 0:46:47.920 --> 0:46:50.400 get the wood to build the canoe. They were ultimately 0:46:50.440 --> 0:46:53.840 gifted four hundred year old spruce logs from a tribe 0:46:53.960 --> 0:46:58.879 in southeast Alaska and use those to construct the vessel. Yeah. 0:46:58.920 --> 0:47:03.120 So anyway, I I I highly recommend looking into the 0:47:03.320 --> 0:47:07.480 Hocal Layout project. Their website, various documentaries about what they 0:47:07.520 --> 0:47:09.840 did and and and continue to do. I thought it 0:47:09.960 --> 0:47:13.279 is my understanding that the vessel was still functional, still operational, 0:47:13.280 --> 0:47:15.680 and they still uh they still take it out. This 0:47:15.680 --> 0:47:18.680 whole series has been one of those uh episodes on 0:47:18.719 --> 0:47:21.440 the show where I'm just amazed because I, uh, this 0:47:21.520 --> 0:47:24.520 is something I knew absolutely nothing about to start with. 0:47:24.600 --> 0:47:27.800 I would not have known the very first thing about 0:47:27.840 --> 0:47:31.080 like how you navigate on the open sea without instruments. 0:47:31.120 --> 0:47:32.440 I mean to be honest, I don't know how you 0:47:32.480 --> 0:47:36.200 do it with instruments either, but but uh, but yeah, 0:47:36.680 --> 0:47:40.319 this is this has been so eye opening, uh, just 0:47:40.400 --> 0:47:43.480 thinking about like how much information you can get from 0:47:43.520 --> 0:47:46.720 the environment if you know, if you've when you build 0:47:46.719 --> 0:47:50.239 on the knowledge accumulated over generations and you have the 0:47:50.640 --> 0:47:53.719 discipline and the attention to pay attention to your surroundings 0:47:53.719 --> 0:47:56.640 with this level of care. Yeah, as certainly as as 0:47:56.680 --> 0:47:59.719 a landsman, as Hermon and Melville would put it. And 0:47:59.760 --> 0:48:01.560 then is by all this, but but I think it's 0:48:01.560 --> 0:48:03.560 also worth with pointing out that you know, we've touched 0:48:03.600 --> 0:48:06.280 on experienced sailors who have been very into this topic 0:48:06.280 --> 0:48:08.560 as well, have been amazed by it as well so, 0:48:09.000 --> 0:48:10.960 uh yeah, there's there's a lot to marvel at here. 0:48:11.520 --> 0:48:13.239 All right. Well, there you have it. We hope you 0:48:13.280 --> 0:48:17.239 have enjoyed this journey if we've enjoyed a researching and 0:48:17.520 --> 0:48:19.839 discussing it. If you would like to listen to other 0:48:19.840 --> 0:48:22.000 episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind, you can find 0:48:22.160 --> 0:48:24.080 them in the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed 0:48:24.080 --> 0:48:26.640 which you're good wherever you get your podcast. 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