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Speaker 1: Welcome Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of I

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Speaker 1: Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, are you welcome to

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Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow your Mind? My name is Robert Lamb

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Speaker 1: and I'm Joe McCormick, and I want to kick off

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Speaker 1: this episode by talking about a piece of art. And

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Speaker 1: it's a piece of art that I imagine a lot

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Speaker 1: of you have seen. And if you haven't seen it,

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Speaker 1: you can, and you're not driving a vehicle or anything

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Speaker 1: right now, you can easily look it up and you

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Speaker 1: can certainly find it for the landing page for this episode.

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Speaker 1: It's Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. It is

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Speaker 1: a Japanese print. It is a title the Great Wave

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Speaker 1: off Kanagawa, and it's a nineteenth century Edo period would

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Speaker 1: block print by Katsushika Hokosai, and it depicts a great

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Speaker 1: wave endangering ships off the coast of Kanagawa. And it

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Speaker 1: was once thought to depict a tsunami, but now most

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Speaker 1: commentators think that it actually depicts a row wave. UM. Now,

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Speaker 1: the the artist here, he explored the subject matter many

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Speaker 1: times in his career, so if you look at other

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Speaker 1: images he created, there are plenty of other waves, but

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Speaker 1: this particular print is considered the peak the culmination of

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Speaker 1: sixty years in the arts um, and since it's a

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Speaker 1: woodblock print and not a painting, you can actually find

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Speaker 1: it in numerous museums around the world, thus increasing the

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Speaker 1: odds that you have seen this image, if not online

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Speaker 1: and perhaps in purpose in person. But I think one

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Speaker 1: of the great things about it is that it captures

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Speaker 1: a sense of the majesty of a great wave, the

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Speaker 1: idea that it's it's there's like a topography of the

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Speaker 1: ocean visible, the ocean surface visible in this picture. That

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Speaker 1: that reminds us that a wave can be a mountain. Well, yeah,

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Speaker 1: and the wave in the in the woodblock even what

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Speaker 1: do you call it a print or a painting when

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Speaker 1: it's the painting whatever it is on this image, uh,

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Speaker 1: the wave resembles the mountain in the background, and the

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Speaker 1: mountain in the backgrounds has sort of a blue gray

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Speaker 1: uh slope, and then the white peak of course covered

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Speaker 1: in snow. The waves are much like that with these

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Speaker 1: uh the white surging foam at the top. But in

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Speaker 1: the painting, the foam has these like hooks that almost

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Speaker 1: looked like eagles talents reaching out of the top of

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Speaker 1: this wall of water, and there's there's a way that

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Speaker 1: I at least often looked to this painting without even

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Speaker 1: realizing they were supposed to be boats represented at the bottom. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's kind of easy to miss the boats. They're they're

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Speaker 1: swallowed up by what's going on all around. It's a

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Speaker 1: beautiful piece of art, and I don't know why, but

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Speaker 1: I've always, when I've looked at it before, thought of

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Speaker 1: it as somehow calming or like a picture of sort

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Speaker 1: of like serene nature, which is hilarious because it's depicting

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Speaker 1: a scene of utter chaos and destruction and terror. Right.

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Speaker 1: I mean, it's spoken like a true landsman, right when

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Speaker 1: clearly like this is a product of of of an

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Speaker 1: island culture that it was very you know, very aware

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Speaker 1: of the dangers posed by the by the ocean. And

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Speaker 1: uh yeah, because I probably am in the same same boat. Uh. No.

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Speaker 1: Pun intended with you is that when I've seen the

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Speaker 1: image in the past, it was just always like, ah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: serene nature. But no, this is a cresting mountain of

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Speaker 1: oceanic destruction, or at least potential destruction, uh, in terms

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Speaker 1: of human activities on or near the ocean. The mountain

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Speaker 1: that flows. So speaking of the dangers of the ocean.

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Speaker 1: I mean, there are many of them, and we know

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Speaker 1: what many of them are. But we often discuss ancient

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Speaker 1: beastiaries and records of monsters and strange creatures from the

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Speaker 1: ancient world, and of course some of the best ones,

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Speaker 1: even through like the medieval period, are of sea monsters.

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Speaker 1: So you've got these stories about lizards that kill with

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Speaker 1: a gaze, or giant sea monsters that suck entire ships

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Speaker 1: into their mouths, and they can be funny to read

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Speaker 1: about now, especially with the certainty that ancient writers had

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Speaker 1: when they talked about these subjects. But one point I've

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Speaker 1: made before and that I want to echo again is

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Speaker 1: I think it was not at all stupid or irrational

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Speaker 1: for ancient people's to believe in sea monsters. I think

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Speaker 1: it was a perfectly reasonable and rational thing for them

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Speaker 1: to assume. And there are a few reasons for this.

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Speaker 1: We've touched on some of them on the show before.

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Speaker 1: Number one, There actually are sea monsters in a way.

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Speaker 1: We just call them by different names now, Like you

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Speaker 1: know the sperm whale, blue whale, giant squid, the sunfish,

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Speaker 1: the lion's main jellyfish. These are all giant magnificent, all

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Speaker 1: inspiring creatures. But what's changed is that we've fit them

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Speaker 1: into a standard evolutionary taxonomy. We think of them as

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Speaker 1: animals that have common origins with the other animals. But

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Speaker 1: when ancient sailors told stories of these giant beasts out

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Speaker 1: in the ocean, many we're probably telling the truth to

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Speaker 1: the best of their ability. They saw something huge and

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Speaker 1: strange and terrifying, and they're trying to remember and describe

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Speaker 1: what it was. And then on top of that, you're

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Speaker 1: dealing with it with just a culture and a legacy

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Speaker 1: um of of danger upon the sea and beneath the sea. Yes,

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Speaker 1: so there were those two things come together. I mean

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Speaker 1: here there'd be right exactly. And because the sea, you know,

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Speaker 1: a life at sea has long I think been associated

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Speaker 1: with a kind of with a kind of daring and bravado. Right.

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Speaker 1: But also I think there's another reason it was sort

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Speaker 1: of rational to believe in giant krakens that could pull

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Speaker 1: ships down to their doom, And it's that Poseidon is

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Speaker 1: one of the cruelest and most fickle of the gods.

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Speaker 1: That that's not an accident that the Greek myths are

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Speaker 1: like that, it is not at all uncommon for ships

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Speaker 1: to set sail on the high seas and then just vanish,

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Speaker 1: leaving behind no trace at all. Other times you might

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Speaker 1: find a giant, sturdy ship wrecked with no apparent cause,

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Speaker 1: like it's masked and rigging smashed bits, with giant holes

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Speaker 1: blown in its solid hull. And when when you see

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Speaker 1: rex like this. Uh. In fact, some of the rex

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Speaker 1: I was looking at in preparation for this episode, it

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Speaker 1: calls to mind. Uh, I was thinking about that poem

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Speaker 1: we've talked about on the show before, Alfred Lord Tennyson's

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Speaker 1: The Kraken, where you know, there's this beast battening upon

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Speaker 1: huge sea worms in his sleep deep until the latter

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Speaker 1: fire shall heat the deep and he comes up to

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Speaker 1: the surface, and of course in the poem he dies.

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Speaker 1: But what's more likely it's he's actually gonna like punch

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Speaker 1: a hole right in the middle of your ship. Now, obviously,

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Speaker 1: there are many ways for ships to wreck and sync

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Speaker 1: causing them to vanish without a trace. They can hit rocks,

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Speaker 1: they can hit hidden reefs, they can capsize and take

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Speaker 1: on water. But there is one particular phenomenon that sailors

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Speaker 1: have long been telling these dark majestically terrifying stories about

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Speaker 1: and it's something that could explain many sudden disappearances of

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Speaker 1: seagoing vessels if it was anything more than a fantasy.

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Speaker 1: And it's what you mentioned about the woodblock painting earlier.

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Speaker 1: The monster wave, the rogue wave, also known as a

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Speaker 1: freak wave, which I like because it sounds like either

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Speaker 1: a musical subgenre or some sort of like misfit style

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Speaker 1: punk band, you know, freak wave. It's a genre that

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Speaker 1: mixes punk music with carnival music, circus music. No, I

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Speaker 1: you know, I say that, but I bet that's actually

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Speaker 1: as honor us somewhere. Probably at this point all sub

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Speaker 1: genres exist. But so, yeah, the the idea of a

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Speaker 1: rogue wave or a monster wave, so we're not just

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Speaker 1: talking about rough seas in general, but a single gigantic wave,

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Speaker 1: an unbelievably high wall of water that appears as if

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Speaker 1: out of nowhere and crashes over your ship like a

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Speaker 1: hammer of the sea gods and so sailors have talked

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Speaker 1: about this, and we want to ask today, could these

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Speaker 1: tales be true? Do we now know whether they're true?

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Speaker 1: And could they explain many of histories vanished ships and

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Speaker 1: hulls broken like toys. Now at this point, I do

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Speaker 1: want to mention that in our research, I think we'd

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Speaker 1: hope to maybe throw in more like a giant wave myths,

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Speaker 1: more accounts from say ancient histories of of giant waves

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Speaker 1: as opposed to organic sea monsters. And I'm not saying

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Speaker 1: they don't exist. They may very well exist, but I

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Speaker 1: had trouble finding them, and we were discussing whine that

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Speaker 1: might be. I mean, you could go back to what

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Speaker 1: you said earlier, how a ship just piers at sea,

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Speaker 1: perhaps caused by a giant wave, and the story is

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Speaker 1: about a sea monster, or it becomes about an organic

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Speaker 1: sea monster. Yes. Uh. And one point of parallel here

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Speaker 1: is that obviously even the ancient people's knew about the

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Speaker 1: idea that the ship could encounter, say, bad weather while

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Speaker 1: it was out at sea and be wrecked and all that.

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Speaker 1: So it's not like there was no other way for

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Speaker 1: ships to sink. But the way in which a rogue

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Speaker 1: wave as a concept resembles a sea monster is is

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Speaker 1: that it's unexpected, you know that that it reaches up

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Speaker 1: out of the deep, that it's much higher than all

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Speaker 1: the other waves in the in the ocean and it

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Speaker 1: just takes you completely by surprise. And that's key here.

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Speaker 1: It's not a situation of like, oh, suddenly all the

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Speaker 1: waves were enormous. No, suddenly one wave stands vastly m

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Speaker 1: above all the others, much like the mountain of a

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Speaker 1: wave in the print we were discussing at the top

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Speaker 1: of the episode. Now, obviously, lots of ships in history

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Speaker 1: of encountered rough seas, like certain regions of the ocean

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Speaker 1: and certain weather patterns can generate lots of chop and

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Speaker 1: high waves, but ships are usually made to withstand to

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Speaker 1: bad weather. That's part of what ship design is for.

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Speaker 1: You know, you say, okay, might encounter this kind of weather,

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Speaker 1: so we need to make it this amount strong to

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Speaker 1: withstand it. Right, Like, if you know you're going around

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Speaker 1: the cape, you're gonna you're gonna build and sail vessels

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Speaker 1: designed for for rough seas. Yeah, And these wave patterns

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Speaker 1: have long been understood to be predictable within certain parameters.

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Speaker 1: You make a ship strong and she'll hold. But what

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Speaker 1: we're talking about with these monster waves stories is a

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Speaker 1: wave that suddenly appears without warning and is at least

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Speaker 1: twice as high as all the other waves. In the sea.

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Speaker 1: And of course when you're talking about a wave of

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Speaker 1: water that's twice as high as the other waves around it. Uh,

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Speaker 1: it's something where you know, the power and destructiveness of

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Speaker 1: it doesn't just scale linearly. You know, it becomes a

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Speaker 1: new kind of phenomenon you're dealing with. Now. I want

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Speaker 1: to be I want to be clear here that we're

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Speaker 1: talking about true rogue waves or monster waves, freak waves, etcetera. Here, Uh,

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Speaker 1: that do seem to come out of nowhere, and they're

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Speaker 1: not to be confused with giant waves generate aated by

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Speaker 1: seismic activity like underwater volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, or cascades. That

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Speaker 1: though those can be incredible and I mean, just for

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Speaker 1: an example, um, I was reading about the earthquake generated

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Speaker 1: tsunami in Alaska's LaToya Bay, which, according to Discover magazine,

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Speaker 1: was a four hundred feet taller than the Empire State Building. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: they're they're people have done like illustrations of this online.

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Speaker 1: You can find where it's it's just staggering like it

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Speaker 1: it created this. I think it was supposed to be

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Speaker 1: like seventeen hundred feet roughly. Yeah, according to the University

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Speaker 1: of Alaska Fairbanks. Quote. The earthquake shook loose millions of

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Speaker 1: cubic yards of dirt and rocks from a forty degree

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Speaker 1: slope in the northeast corner of the bay. The rock

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Speaker 1: mass displaced a large body of water, causing both of

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Speaker 1: the splash wave that rose to one thousand, seven hundred

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Speaker 1: forty feet and a gravity wave that was one fifty

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Speaker 1: feet high at the head of the bay. The waves

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Speaker 1: sheared and stripped the bark from thousands of trees, some

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Speaker 1: of them four feet in diameter, just clear cut the

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Speaker 1: land next to the bay. Yeah, and this occurred in

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Speaker 1: night again, but they see seemingly something like it occurred

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Speaker 1: at the same area in thirty six and also in

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Speaker 1: the eighteen fifties and eighteen seventy four as well. So

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Speaker 1: that's just a taste of the destructive possibilities of seismically

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Speaker 1: generated waves in shallow coastal areas. Yeah, And of course,

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Speaker 1: so we've got tsunamis as well. Tsunamis happened when something

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Speaker 1: happens out in the ocean. Uh, there's like an earthquake,

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Speaker 1: you know, shift in the sea floor and eruptions something

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Speaker 1: like that, and then there's a pressure wave that goes

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Speaker 1: throughout the water column towards the shore. As it nears

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Speaker 1: the shore, of course, as it enters the shallow waters,

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Speaker 1: that's when it becomes really destructive because that massive pressure

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Speaker 1: it rises up out of the water and it, you know,

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Speaker 1: keeps coming and flooding against the shore, taking whatever is

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Speaker 1: on the shore along with it. Yeah. And now, obviously

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Speaker 1: atmospheric conditions are complicated, as we've discussed on the show before.

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Speaker 1: The complex systems um a lot of forces conversion together.

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Speaker 1: It becomes very difficult to predict atmospheric conditions and weather

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Speaker 1: conditions increasingly far in the future. And of course we

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Speaker 1: have a very similar situation with the movement of the

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Speaker 1: fluids in the ocean. But uh, but but with these cases,

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Speaker 1: they make a lot more sense to us, right the tsunami,

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Speaker 1: the earthquake generated tsunami, because we can we can easily say, well,

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Speaker 1: this is the thing, this is the great event that

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Speaker 1: caused the great wave. And the idea of a wave

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Speaker 1: just coming out seemingly out of nowhere the sources it

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Speaker 1: is seeming aly little more elusive, like it seems to

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Speaker 1: be emerging from the complex interplay of different storm patterns

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Speaker 1: and occurrents. Yeah, you might be just out in a

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Speaker 1: storm with waves that are pretty regular, certain height, coming

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Speaker 1: and going and going and going and going, and then

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Speaker 1: there's one suddenly the mountain arrives. Or so the stories

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Speaker 1: tell us, right, So the question is wind sailors tell

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Speaker 1: these stories? Are they true? And so I thought maybe

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Speaker 1: we should look at a couple of firsthand accounts. You ready, Robert,

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Speaker 1: let's do it. Who's our first adventure? Well? I thought

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Speaker 1: we should turn to one firstand account from the Antarctic

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Speaker 1: explorer Ernest Shackleton, which came from the famous voyage of

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Speaker 1: the James cared. Now, this voyage was one part of

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Speaker 1: the overall survival journey after the failure of Shackleton's Antarctic

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Speaker 1: expedition in a ship called the Endurance that started in

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Speaker 1: nineteen fourteen. And this is an absolutely astounding survival story

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Speaker 1: that is worth looking up if you've never read it.

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Speaker 1: And this is this is only one part of the story, um,

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Speaker 1: but the short version of the context here was a

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Speaker 1: nineteen fourteen Shackleton and crew set out for Antarctica in

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Speaker 1: this ship, the Endurance, but the ship became trapped in

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Speaker 1: ice in the wet El Sea, and the ship eventually sank.

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Speaker 1: Of course, this was nineteen fourteen or fifteen. You're in

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Speaker 1: Antarctica that you know, your ship sinking is sort of

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Speaker 1: a death sentence. Yeah, I mean even today, it's very

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Speaker 1: bad news. So the crew made their way, you know,

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Speaker 1: they're out there stranded, and the crew made their way

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Speaker 1: to an uninhabited island known as Elephant Island, from after

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Speaker 1: where the ship sank, and Shackleton reasoned that their only

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Speaker 1: hope of survival was seeking help and reinforcement from the

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Speaker 1: island of South Georgia, where he knew that there was

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Speaker 1: a whaling station. So if they got to where the

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Speaker 1: people were at the whaling station there, they could you know,

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Speaker 1: come back for rescue with the bigger ship. But South

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Speaker 1: Georgia was about eight hundred miles or hundred kilometers away

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Speaker 1: over terrible seas, you know, the seas around Antarctica or

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Speaker 1: you know, there's their icy there's rough, bad weather. It's

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Speaker 1: not a place to be sailing in an unreinforced vessel.

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Speaker 1: And the only viable vessel they had for making the voyage,

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Speaker 1: because remember their ships sank. The best thing they had

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Speaker 1: to use was a twenty two foot or about six

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Speaker 1: and a half meter lifeboat called the James Cared, So

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Speaker 1: Shackleton and a few others that they left the rest

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Speaker 1: of the crew sheltered at Elephant Island and they set

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Speaker 1: out on this brutal journey to get a rescue party,

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Speaker 1: during which they encountered ice and bad weather. The story

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Speaker 1: is harrowing and amazing. They talked about how, you know,

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Speaker 1: ice would keep building up on the boat because it's freezing,

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Speaker 1: and they'd be soaked by all these horrible waves that

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Speaker 1: are pounding on them. It's freezing weather, and they'd have

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Speaker 1: to keep constantly chipping the ice off of the boat

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Speaker 1: because the ice would weigh the boat down and start

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Speaker 1: to make it sink um. And you know, this is

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Speaker 1: a this is like a multi week journey. And at

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Speaker 1: one point, while Shackleton was at the tiller of the boat,

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Speaker 1: uh So, there had been very bad weather, of course,

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Speaker 1: and then he's at the tiller one time and he

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Speaker 1: thinks he sees the clouds breaking and a clear sky

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Speaker 1: up ahead. And then I want to quote from Shackleton's

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Speaker 1: own account, quote, I called to the other men that

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Speaker 1: the sky was clearing. And then a moment later I

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Speaker 1: realized that what I had seen was not a rift

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Speaker 1: in the clouds, but the white crest of an enormous wave.

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Speaker 1: During twenty six years experience of the ocean in all

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Speaker 1: its moods, I had not encountered a wave so gigantic.

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Speaker 1: It was a mighty upheaval of the ocean, a thing

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Speaker 1: quite apart from the big, white capped seas that had

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Speaker 1: been our tireless and me's for many days. I shouted,

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Speaker 1: for God's sake, hold on, it's got us. Then came

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Speaker 1: a moment of suspense that seemed drawn out into hours

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Speaker 1: white surge, the foam of the breaking sea around us.

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Speaker 1: We felt our boat lifted and flung forward like a

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Speaker 1: cork and breaking surf. We were in a seething chaos

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Speaker 1: of tortured water, but somehow the boat lived through it,

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Speaker 1: half full of water, sagging to the dead weight and

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Speaker 1: shuddering under the blow. We bailed with the energy of

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Speaker 1: men fighting for life, flinging the water over the sides,

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Speaker 1: with every receptacle that came to our hands, and after

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Speaker 1: ten minutes of uncertainty, we felt the boat renew her

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Speaker 1: life beneath us. So the fact that this giant wave

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Speaker 1: did not sink or just completely smash their tiny boat

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Speaker 1: to pieces. Is one of the many bizarre miracles of

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Speaker 1: this unbelievable journey. Uh. You know, you always have to wonder,

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Speaker 1: like how things like that happened, But apparently it did

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Speaker 1: according to Shackleton's telling, and the crew actually did manage

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Speaker 1: to reach South Georgia. According to an account by Jerry Pearson,

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Speaker 1: though after they got ashore in South Georgia, quote, at

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Speaker 1: two am on the first night ashore, Shackleton woke everyone shouting,

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Speaker 1: look out, boys, hold on, it's going to break on us.

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Speaker 1: It was a nightmare. Shackleton thought that the black snow

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Speaker 1: crested cliff above them was a giant wave. Yeah. That

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Speaker 1: that is an impressive telling. And but yet at the

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Speaker 1: same time, you can easily go either way on it. Right,

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Speaker 1: you can say, well, all right, Shackleton is a trustworthy

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Speaker 1: source of information and this is what he saw. But

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Speaker 1: then on the other hand, we have to say he

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Speaker 1: was in an extreme situation. I mean, we've spoken before

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Speaker 1: in the show about how extreme conditionings can lead to

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Speaker 1: seemingly paranormal encounters. You know, if you've been awake for

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Speaker 1: a long time, if you're fighting for your survival, etcetera.

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Speaker 1: And all of those elements are are here. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: there are problems with the plausibility of the story. I mean,

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Speaker 1: how did this wave not sink and kill them? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: So whatever happened obviously made an impression Like this consummate

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Speaker 1: survivor had nightmares not of monsters in the deep, but

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Speaker 1: of a lone killer wave rolling up out of the

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Speaker 1: ocean as high as a mountain side. Uh. And so

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Speaker 1: one thing about giant waves like this is that if

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Speaker 1: they exist, we shouldn't have necessarily expected to hear eyewitness

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Speaker 1: accounts of them all that often in history because of

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Speaker 1: a couple of things. Number one, of course, if they

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Speaker 1: do exist, for a long time people thought them to

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Speaker 1: be very rare. But on top of that, if sailors

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Speaker 1: in the wooden ships of olden days encountered a wave

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Speaker 1: like this, uh, there was not a good chance of

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Speaker 1: them living to tell about it. Right. The goliath wave

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Speaker 1: would just arise, suddenly, kill everyone, sink the ship, and

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Speaker 1: then melt back into the sea without a trace. How

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Speaker 1: would you how would you even know it had happened? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it would be like asking for eyewitness accounts of the

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Speaker 1: Grim Reaper. Yeah, because if if if the reapers showing up,

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Speaker 1: but then it's probably doing its job. Yeah. But the

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Speaker 1: of course, uh, Shackleton's story is not the only one.

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Speaker 1: There actually were a lot of stories like this. Many

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Speaker 1: mariners told these tales of a giant kill their wave.

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Speaker 1: In the book Oceanography in the Days of Sale by

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Speaker 1: Ian Jones and Joyce Jones, the authors write about the

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Speaker 1: French naval explorer and scientists Dumont d'Urville and his his

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Speaker 1: disputes with the French scientists Francois Arago about the upper

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Speaker 1: limits of wave height. Quote when the astrolabe and that

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Speaker 1: was Derville's ship. When the Astrolabe in eighteen twenty six

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Speaker 1: was making its way across the southern stretches of the

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Speaker 1: Indian Ocean, it encountered a gale with mountainous seas, in

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Speaker 1: which a man was lost overboard. Dumont d'Urville, in his narrative,

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Speaker 1: expressed the opinion that the waves reached a height of

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Speaker 1: at least eighty to a hundred feet. In an era

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Speaker 1: when opinions were being expressed that no wave would exceed

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Speaker 1: thirty feet, Dumont d'urville's estimations were received. It seemed with

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Speaker 1: some skepticism and France, while Arago rejected and even ridiculed

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Speaker 1: Derville's claim. Basically, you know, this is just a seamen's fancy. Uh.

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Speaker 1: He referred in writing to the quote truly prodigious waves

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Speaker 1: with which the lively imagination of certain navigator's delights in

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Speaker 1: covering the seas. That sounded like a burn. That was

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Speaker 1: a bit of a burn. I think, yeah, I think

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Speaker 1: he was being a bit dismissive here. But maybe we

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Speaker 1: should take a break and then when we come back,

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Speaker 1: we can talk about some physical evidence that actually points

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Speaker 1: to the existence of waves like this. All right, we're back.

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Speaker 1: We've we've discussed accounts anecdotal evidence of giant waves, of

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Speaker 1: freak waves, of rogue waves. But now we're going to

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Speaker 1: get into what the science has to say. What what

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Speaker 1: kind of proof is there, if any, to substantiate these claims, Right,

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Speaker 1: you'd want some kind of physical evidence other than just

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Speaker 1: people saying they saw a giant wave, because people say

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Speaker 1: they saw all sorts of things. But uh, you know,

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Speaker 1: ultimately though, this is why we have science. This is

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Speaker 1: why we have a recording equipment. This is so we

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Speaker 1: can actually validate that that waves of this nature exists. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and so we talked about the French scientists France while

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Speaker 1: Rago being severe really doubting that waves like this existed.

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Speaker 1: And from a scientific point of view, there had long

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Speaker 1: been reason to doubt these accounts of gigantic monster waves,

399
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Speaker 1: not that it was impossible for a giant wave to exist,

400
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Speaker 1: but that monstrous waves of the kind reported by mariners,

401
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Speaker 1: you know, the kind that would cause some of the

402
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Speaker 1: damage attributed to them, they were thought to only come

403
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Speaker 1: about on the scale of maybe once in hundreds or

404
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Speaker 1: thousands of years. You know, it's like the thousand year

405
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Speaker 1: storm kind of thing. So like every thousand years a

406
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Speaker 1: wave like this might occur, but then then just might

407
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Speaker 1: not be people around to see it. Yeah, exactly. So

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Speaker 1: you know you've got this question. We're Shackleton and all

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Speaker 1: these others exaggerating, hallucinating, misremembering was this the was the

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Speaker 1: mountain that flows like a mermaid or something? So, I mean,

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Speaker 1: on one hand, you have that argument, right that maybe

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Speaker 1: they're just not occurring enough for anyone to ever see them.

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Speaker 1: So it doesn't seem right that we have numerous accounts

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Speaker 1: um where where people say they witnessed them. But of

415
00:21:52,800 --> 00:21:54,280
Speaker 1: course we also have to consider that, you know the

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Speaker 1: fact that ships and seamen again have always gone missing

417
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Speaker 1: like this. You look to the uh, the sheer number

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Speaker 1: of ship ACTU, you look to accounts of human activities

419
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Speaker 1: on the sea. Ships have always sunk. Ships have always

420
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Speaker 1: encountered bad weather or various other uh you know, things

421
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Speaker 1: that would cause them to perish. Yeah. And another thing

422
00:22:15,600 --> 00:22:18,560
Speaker 1: we should think about is that ships sink and disappear

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Speaker 1: at a rate that would absolutely set our hair on

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Speaker 1: fire if it was like airplanes or something. You know,

425
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Speaker 1: if there's like one major airline crash, people freak out.

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Speaker 1: But ships go missing or sink all the time. Yeah.

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00:22:31,760 --> 00:22:33,639
Speaker 1: I was looking around for some stats on this and

428
00:22:33,720 --> 00:22:36,880
Speaker 1: today and again, as humans command the sea more than

429
00:22:36,920 --> 00:22:39,239
Speaker 1: ever before, more ships are on the sea than than

430
00:22:39,280 --> 00:22:42,360
Speaker 1: at any point in human history, and we're looking at

431
00:22:42,920 --> 00:22:46,480
Speaker 1: a loss of something like a hundred large vessels every year. Yeah,

432
00:22:46,520 --> 00:22:49,000
Speaker 1: it's about an average. Yeah, Yeah, I've seen it all since.

433
00:22:49,040 --> 00:22:51,600
Speaker 1: The stat also thrown out there that it basically amounts

434
00:22:51,640 --> 00:22:55,160
Speaker 1: to two vessels per week, and that's just large vessels.

435
00:22:55,240 --> 00:22:57,520
Speaker 1: When you add in smaller vessels, it's even more. Yeah.

436
00:22:57,520 --> 00:22:58,760
Speaker 1: And now, and of course some of these are gonna

437
00:22:58,760 --> 00:23:01,159
Speaker 1: be clear cases right where they say, oh, you know

438
00:23:01,240 --> 00:23:04,480
Speaker 1: this was the ships sunk because you know it ran

439
00:23:04,520 --> 00:23:06,560
Speaker 1: aground here, some sort of a collision here, et cetera.

440
00:23:07,160 --> 00:23:09,480
Speaker 1: But in other cases it could inevitably remain a mystery

441
00:23:09,560 --> 00:23:11,879
Speaker 1: is just you know, a case by case scenario. So

442
00:23:11,920 --> 00:23:15,159
Speaker 1: we have to ask these cases of the mysterious cases, uh,

443
00:23:15,240 --> 00:23:17,359
Speaker 1: the very sort of case that may have led to

444
00:23:17,640 --> 00:23:21,560
Speaker 1: various nautical superstitions like the Bermuda triangle uh and and

445
00:23:21,640 --> 00:23:25,760
Speaker 1: an olden times sea monsters. Could these be due to

446
00:23:26,040 --> 00:23:29,000
Speaker 1: some manner of rogue wave? Yeah? Exactly. And so to

447
00:23:29,040 --> 00:23:32,040
Speaker 1: answer that question, I think one good thing, just one

448
00:23:32,040 --> 00:23:34,879
Speaker 1: good place to start, and where people did look for

449
00:23:34,920 --> 00:23:38,760
Speaker 1: a long time was for physical evidence of damage caused

450
00:23:38,800 --> 00:23:41,919
Speaker 1: by rogue waves. Yeah and uh And for the longest

451
00:23:41,920 --> 00:23:44,919
Speaker 1: we simply didn't have any solid evidence. Uh. And we

452
00:23:44,920 --> 00:23:47,119
Speaker 1: didn't have any evidence of them, a solid evidence of

453
00:23:47,160 --> 00:23:50,200
Speaker 1: them occurring. We didn't have footage or anything. Uh. So

454
00:23:50,359 --> 00:23:53,520
Speaker 1: all we still had were just those, um those various

455
00:23:53,560 --> 00:23:57,520
Speaker 1: bits of anecdotal and from anecdotal evidence and then experts

456
00:23:57,880 --> 00:24:00,879
Speaker 1: weighing in on what seemed possible and like. But of course,

457
00:24:00,920 --> 00:24:03,640
Speaker 1: if waves like this were occurring, they should in some

458
00:24:03,680 --> 00:24:06,480
Speaker 1: ways cause damage that we should be able to see

459
00:24:06,520 --> 00:24:11,000
Speaker 1: and detect, because, I mean, what water is amazingly powerful. People,

460
00:24:11,480 --> 00:24:14,240
Speaker 1: we do not have good intuitions about the physical power

461
00:24:14,280 --> 00:24:17,240
Speaker 1: of moving water. Uh. This may come from our experience,

462
00:24:17,320 --> 00:24:20,840
Speaker 1: like swimming for pleasure or splashing in a bathtub. You know,

463
00:24:20,880 --> 00:24:24,720
Speaker 1: we're moving water just glides gently and gracefully around the body,

464
00:24:24,840 --> 00:24:27,720
Speaker 1: causing no harm at all. But our intuitions about water

465
00:24:27,920 --> 00:24:32,760
Speaker 1: really fail when we encounter large masses of fast moving fluids.

466
00:24:32,800 --> 00:24:35,200
Speaker 1: Like the way people behave in flash floods is a

467
00:24:35,280 --> 00:24:37,639
Speaker 1: great example of this. You will a lot of times

468
00:24:37,640 --> 00:24:41,040
Speaker 1: see people who appear to think they can just wade

469
00:24:41,160 --> 00:24:45,280
Speaker 1: through knee high moving floodwaters, only to discover tragically that

470
00:24:45,320 --> 00:24:48,040
Speaker 1: it just washes you away instantly, or in any cases

471
00:24:48,040 --> 00:24:50,600
Speaker 1: they think they can drive through. Oh yeah, and and

472
00:24:50,680 --> 00:24:53,679
Speaker 1: it's tragic, but it it's It reflects the fact that

473
00:24:53,680 --> 00:24:57,040
Speaker 1: our intuitions about the power of moving water are not good.

474
00:24:57,080 --> 00:25:00,440
Speaker 1: We underestimate it. Likewise, with giant wave, you know, we

475
00:25:00,720 --> 00:25:02,639
Speaker 1: may be used to playing in the surf on a

476
00:25:02,640 --> 00:25:05,520
Speaker 1: beach vacation or something where the waves are harmless. They're fun.

477
00:25:05,560 --> 00:25:08,679
Speaker 1: You can glide with pleasure over each peak and trough,

478
00:25:08,800 --> 00:25:12,399
Speaker 1: but sufficiently huge walls of moving water that are moving

479
00:25:12,640 --> 00:25:15,119
Speaker 1: fast can act more or less like huge walls of

480
00:25:15,200 --> 00:25:19,040
Speaker 1: concrete smashing right into you at speed, just like tsunamis

481
00:25:19,080 --> 00:25:21,679
Speaker 1: can you know, tear down solid buildings and trees. A

482
00:25:21,720 --> 00:25:24,280
Speaker 1: giant wave of crashing into a ship or a structure

483
00:25:24,400 --> 00:25:28,000
Speaker 1: can cause devastating physical damage. It hits, it moves, it

484
00:25:28,119 --> 00:25:31,280
Speaker 1: twists the structure. I mean it, It's like a hand

485
00:25:31,320 --> 00:25:34,480
Speaker 1: of a god indeed, and besides a heavy hitter. Yeah.

486
00:25:34,800 --> 00:25:37,080
Speaker 1: So if you ask, was there ever physical damage that

487
00:25:37,119 --> 00:25:40,719
Speaker 1: would indicate the existence of seemingly impossible rogue waves like

488
00:25:41,400 --> 00:25:44,680
Speaker 1: before we had direct records of one, I think the

489
00:25:44,720 --> 00:25:47,000
Speaker 1: answer is yes, there were. There were some very chilling

490
00:25:47,080 --> 00:25:51,000
Speaker 1: and mysterious clues left in the wreckage of battered ships

491
00:25:51,040 --> 00:25:54,000
Speaker 1: and structures in or near the water. Uh. There there

492
00:25:54,040 --> 00:25:57,840
Speaker 1: are stories going way back to like waves crashing against

493
00:25:58,080 --> 00:26:01,280
Speaker 1: lighthouses that that are so far up off the water

494
00:26:01,640 --> 00:26:04,600
Speaker 1: it seems impossible that like a wave could have damaged them.

495
00:26:04,640 --> 00:26:07,440
Speaker 1: You know, lighthouses more than a hundred feet up off

496
00:26:07,480 --> 00:26:11,359
Speaker 1: the normal waterline, with windows smashed out and and stuff

497
00:26:11,400 --> 00:26:13,359
Speaker 1: like that, And you'd be like how did that happen?

498
00:26:13,920 --> 00:26:19,320
Speaker 1: In Nineto, the mobile offshore drilling platform, the Ocean Ranger,

499
00:26:19,480 --> 00:26:22,440
Speaker 1: was apparently damaged by a giant wave off the coast

500
00:26:22,480 --> 00:26:25,800
Speaker 1: of Canada. It sustained damage to its ballast control room,

501
00:26:26,359 --> 00:26:28,520
Speaker 1: which only could have happened if there was an extremely

502
00:26:28,600 --> 00:26:30,760
Speaker 1: high wave, and this led to a chain reaction of

503
00:26:30,800 --> 00:26:34,120
Speaker 1: events that caused the platform to sink, and tragically, all

504
00:26:34,280 --> 00:26:37,119
Speaker 1: eighty four crew members died. Everyone aboard died when this

505
00:26:37,200 --> 00:26:39,439
Speaker 1: thing sank. But there were also there there have been

506
00:26:39,480 --> 00:26:42,720
Speaker 1: stories all throughout the twentieth century of like ocean liners

507
00:26:42,760 --> 00:26:46,440
Speaker 1: about you know, passenger vessels and cargo vessels and naval

508
00:26:46,480 --> 00:26:50,280
Speaker 1: vessels that would report being suddenly hit by a giant

509
00:26:50,280 --> 00:26:53,040
Speaker 1: wave that the just ricked havoc upon the ship. You know,

510
00:26:53,040 --> 00:26:55,240
Speaker 1: it would damage the bridge, it would rip off the

511
00:26:55,280 --> 00:26:58,679
Speaker 1: mast and rigging. Sometimes it would rip away lifeboats that

512
00:26:58,760 --> 00:27:01,800
Speaker 1: were like you know, had deal bolts holding them in place.

513
00:27:02,200 --> 00:27:04,320
Speaker 1: Things that wouldn't make sense if it was just rocking

514
00:27:04,359 --> 00:27:07,280
Speaker 1: in normal bad weather. But even with all this physical

515
00:27:07,320 --> 00:27:12,720
Speaker 1: evidence of structures and ships being hit by these powerful events,

516
00:27:12,520 --> 00:27:15,320
Speaker 1: it will still be hard to missure and confirm the

517
00:27:15,359 --> 00:27:18,920
Speaker 1: existence of these giant rogue waves firsthand, because number one,

518
00:27:19,240 --> 00:27:21,960
Speaker 1: you can't predict in advance when one will appear, Like

519
00:27:22,000 --> 00:27:25,160
Speaker 1: there are obviously better places and times to look for them,

520
00:27:25,960 --> 00:27:28,440
Speaker 1: but you can't know when one's going to happen or where.

521
00:27:28,880 --> 00:27:31,800
Speaker 1: And then if when one does show up, you suddenly

522
00:27:31,800 --> 00:27:35,000
Speaker 1: have a number of priorities yeah, exactly ahead of perhaps

523
00:27:35,080 --> 00:27:37,560
Speaker 1: recording it. And that being said, we are increasingly in

524
00:27:38,160 --> 00:27:41,160
Speaker 1: an age of just ubiquitous recording equipment. So who knows

525
00:27:41,240 --> 00:27:43,919
Speaker 1: what the very near future will bring. Yeah, And so

526
00:27:44,000 --> 00:27:46,560
Speaker 1: when one does appear that there's generally not time to

527
00:27:46,640 --> 00:27:48,760
Speaker 1: react and track and observe it, like you're saying, it's

528
00:27:48,800 --> 00:27:51,680
Speaker 1: just there, and then within a few seconds you will

529
00:27:51,800 --> 00:27:54,760
Speaker 1: very possibly be dead. So the key here really is

530
00:27:54,800 --> 00:27:58,560
Speaker 1: to to not, of course, not just depend on eyewitness accounts,

531
00:27:58,600 --> 00:28:01,920
Speaker 1: which we already had, and so there's an inherent problem there, uh,

532
00:28:01,920 --> 00:28:04,840
Speaker 1: And we can't go looking for them, uh per se

533
00:28:04,960 --> 00:28:10,200
Speaker 1: because their difficulties there. What you need are essentially machine recordings,

534
00:28:10,560 --> 00:28:14,440
Speaker 1: passive detections to some sort of detection system that that

535
00:28:14,520 --> 00:28:16,920
Speaker 1: will say, it will tell you like what what sort

536
00:28:16,960 --> 00:28:19,919
Speaker 1: of wave activity is occurring near a given vessel or

537
00:28:20,000 --> 00:28:23,359
Speaker 1: a near a given offshore platform? Yeah, and one that

538
00:28:23,520 --> 00:28:26,600
Speaker 1: is lucky or unlucky enough to catch one in the act.

539
00:28:26,920 --> 00:28:29,320
Speaker 1: And so the history of rogue wave science I think

540
00:28:29,400 --> 00:28:33,320
Speaker 1: really changed in nine right, because that's when we finally

541
00:28:33,440 --> 00:28:36,000
Speaker 1: did get this this sort of evidence. So it was

542
00:28:36,119 --> 00:28:41,440
Speaker 1: January one in the North Sea, uh, the North Sea

543
00:28:41,920 --> 00:28:46,240
Speaker 1: platform drop Ner, which is a gas platform. This is

544
00:28:46,280 --> 00:28:49,120
Speaker 1: built in nineteen eighty four and it consists of seven

545
00:28:49,240 --> 00:28:51,680
Speaker 1: risers and even today it's an important complex in the

546
00:28:51,680 --> 00:28:54,720
Speaker 1: Norwegian oil industry. So this would be situated like in

547
00:28:54,760 --> 00:28:58,640
Speaker 1: the North Sea between Norway and Scotland. Basically, yeah, so

548
00:28:58,760 --> 00:29:00,920
Speaker 1: what's your you know, this is like these are rough seas,

549
00:29:02,360 --> 00:29:05,959
Speaker 1: but on this particular day, equipment aboard the platform, namely

550
00:29:06,000 --> 00:29:10,840
Speaker 1: a downward looking laser recorded a monster of a wave,

551
00:29:11,360 --> 00:29:14,959
Speaker 1: so significant wave height in the area. This is just

552
00:29:15,000 --> 00:29:17,520
Speaker 1: like the average sort of wave height that was occurring

553
00:29:18,000 --> 00:29:21,800
Speaker 1: was already twelve meters or thirty nine point thirty seven feet, Okay,

554
00:29:21,840 --> 00:29:25,440
Speaker 1: so everything was already like really, that's that sounds horrible.

555
00:29:25,480 --> 00:29:27,680
Speaker 1: I would not I wouldn't want to be anywhere near that.

556
00:29:27,720 --> 00:29:29,440
Speaker 1: You know, you don't want to take your James Carrot

557
00:29:29,440 --> 00:29:33,320
Speaker 1: out on that, right. But then according to the data,

558
00:29:33,640 --> 00:29:36,560
Speaker 1: a wave rolled in that was twenty five point six

559
00:29:36,600 --> 00:29:41,360
Speaker 1: meters high or eight three point nine feet. Now it,

560
00:29:42,040 --> 00:29:44,560
Speaker 1: as is often the case, you you might just hear

561
00:29:44,640 --> 00:29:47,040
Speaker 1: a number and it might not mean anything to you,

562
00:29:47,360 --> 00:29:49,800
Speaker 1: but do your best to stop for a second here

563
00:29:49,880 --> 00:29:53,520
Speaker 1: and picture it. Yeah, we're talking a seven story building

564
00:29:53,560 --> 00:29:57,360
Speaker 1: of a wave and uh and it's coming at the platform.

565
00:29:57,480 --> 00:30:02,080
Speaker 1: And indeed the platform sustained h minor damage, luckily, but

566
00:30:02,360 --> 00:30:05,600
Speaker 1: that damage was enough to to verify the reality of

567
00:30:05,640 --> 00:30:07,520
Speaker 1: the waves. So, in other words, showing that this wasn't

568
00:30:07,560 --> 00:30:11,240
Speaker 1: just a recording anomaly where you know, the laser went

569
00:30:11,360 --> 00:30:15,000
Speaker 1: wonky or something a seagull flew unwritten or whatever would

570
00:30:15,040 --> 00:30:18,400
Speaker 1: cause it to to to produce some sort of an anomaly.

571
00:30:18,800 --> 00:30:20,640
Speaker 1: Uh No, we also have the physical damage to the

572
00:30:20,680 --> 00:30:23,160
Speaker 1: structure to back up what happened. Yeah, so they've got

573
00:30:23,240 --> 00:30:26,720
Speaker 1: the they've got the accurate scientific reading from this instrument,

574
00:30:26,840 --> 00:30:30,160
Speaker 1: and they've got corroborating evidence. So it wasn't just a

575
00:30:30,200 --> 00:30:32,720
Speaker 1: freak measurement. It was in fact a freak wave, a

576
00:30:32,840 --> 00:30:37,240
Speaker 1: rogue wave. And so in really the first day of

577
00:30:37,240 --> 00:30:40,200
Speaker 1: the new year, we entered an era in which the

578
00:30:40,280 --> 00:30:43,520
Speaker 1: rogue wave was no longer purely a myth, it was

579
00:30:43,600 --> 00:30:47,160
Speaker 1: a reality, and from there we enter the decades of

580
00:30:47,760 --> 00:30:51,160
Speaker 1: figuring out, well, what's the frequency, what's the cause, and

581
00:30:51,280 --> 00:30:54,480
Speaker 1: ultimately what is the risk. Yeah, now, so you might

582
00:30:54,480 --> 00:30:57,600
Speaker 1: ask the question, Okay, we've just been talking about big waves.

583
00:30:57,760 --> 00:31:00,480
Speaker 1: What is a rogue wave? Technically I think alluded to

584
00:31:00,480 --> 00:31:04,240
Speaker 1: this earlier, But a rogue wave is defined in relative terms, right,

585
00:31:04,280 --> 00:31:07,760
Speaker 1: So it's a wave that's greater than twice the size

586
00:31:08,280 --> 00:31:10,640
Speaker 1: of all the other waves in the same area at

587
00:31:10,680 --> 00:31:13,800
Speaker 1: the same time. Uh. And yes, so rogue waves do

588
00:31:13,960 --> 00:31:17,880
Speaker 1: occur even in the context of very powerful regular wave patterns.

589
00:31:17,880 --> 00:31:20,560
Speaker 1: So even in places where the waves are unusually high

590
00:31:20,600 --> 00:31:22,880
Speaker 1: and choppy, you can get these things that stand out

591
00:31:22,880 --> 00:31:25,400
Speaker 1: that are more than twice as tall as the other

592
00:31:25,400 --> 00:31:28,320
Speaker 1: waves around them. Because again this North Sea example, like

593
00:31:28,320 --> 00:31:31,200
Speaker 1: those were some pretty tall waves. I mean, weren't we

594
00:31:31,240 --> 00:31:35,040
Speaker 1: talking earlier about um in about earlier experts thinking that

595
00:31:35,160 --> 00:31:37,360
Speaker 1: like thirty feet was more or less the limit. Yeah,

596
00:31:37,360 --> 00:31:40,440
Speaker 1: that that was long believed to be about where waves

597
00:31:40,480 --> 00:31:42,480
Speaker 1: capped off, at least in the kind of conditions you'd

598
00:31:42,480 --> 00:31:44,920
Speaker 1: expect every year. Right, And so the the just the

599
00:31:44,960 --> 00:31:48,280
Speaker 1: ambient wave height in the in the area was already uh.

600
00:31:48,400 --> 00:31:50,680
Speaker 1: In excess of that, now, I guess maybe we should

601
00:31:50,680 --> 00:31:55,440
Speaker 1: talk about how rogue waves exactly cause damage to ships, right,

602
00:31:56,080 --> 00:31:58,800
Speaker 1: because there there are multiple waves that being hit by

603
00:31:58,840 --> 00:32:02,560
Speaker 1: this flowing mountain, this giant wall of water can sink

604
00:32:02,640 --> 00:32:06,240
Speaker 1: you and destroy you. Of course, anytime a ship is

605
00:32:06,320 --> 00:32:09,000
Speaker 1: hit by a giant wave, its physical structure can just

606
00:32:09,040 --> 00:32:12,000
Speaker 1: be directly damaged by like the force of the impact.

607
00:32:12,600 --> 00:32:15,920
Speaker 1: And this is this is especially relevant to the superstructure

608
00:32:15,920 --> 00:32:18,520
Speaker 1: of a ship. Superstructure is what you call all that

609
00:32:18,680 --> 00:32:21,240
Speaker 1: stuff that's sticking up off the top of the hull,

610
00:32:21,600 --> 00:32:25,520
Speaker 1: like the mast, the rigging, the bridge, the lifeboat's uh,

611
00:32:25,600 --> 00:32:28,040
Speaker 1: it can all be smashed two bits or ripped apart.

612
00:32:28,400 --> 00:32:30,640
Speaker 1: And of course a lake's worth of water is going

613
00:32:30,720 --> 00:32:32,920
Speaker 1: to wash over the top of the vessel, and if

614
00:32:32,920 --> 00:32:35,200
Speaker 1: there's a way for the vessel to take this water on,

615
00:32:35,400 --> 00:32:38,479
Speaker 1: it very well can do that. So that's your first problem,

616
00:32:38,720 --> 00:32:41,000
Speaker 1: and I think that's an easy one to miss because again,

617
00:32:41,040 --> 00:32:42,920
Speaker 1: like you said, we we just we often don't think

618
00:32:42,960 --> 00:32:46,120
Speaker 1: about just the sheer punch of that water, especially when

619
00:32:46,160 --> 00:32:49,320
Speaker 1: it is like a fist the size of a lay

620
00:32:49,400 --> 00:32:52,240
Speaker 1: of of lakes worth of water. Yeah, well, just imagine

621
00:32:52,280 --> 00:32:54,360
Speaker 1: you are standing in the bridge of the ship, and

622
00:32:54,480 --> 00:32:57,240
Speaker 1: this wall of water comes across you. So it washes

623
00:32:57,400 --> 00:33:00,280
Speaker 1: over the hull, it washes over the deck, and it

624
00:33:00,400 --> 00:33:02,880
Speaker 1: smashes into the bridge. And what what very well could

625
00:33:02,920 --> 00:33:04,920
Speaker 1: happen there is if you know, if the bridge is

626
00:33:04,920 --> 00:33:07,560
Speaker 1: not in some significant way destroyed, it may well smash

627
00:33:07,640 --> 00:33:10,040
Speaker 1: through all the windows and throw all that glass at

628
00:33:10,120 --> 00:33:13,240
Speaker 1: you and wash into the bridge. But so if it

629
00:33:13,280 --> 00:33:15,920
Speaker 1: hits a ship laterally, like hits a ship on the side,

630
00:33:16,280 --> 00:33:18,480
Speaker 1: the ship can be capsized to buy a rogue wave,

631
00:33:18,800 --> 00:33:21,200
Speaker 1: flipped over on its side or upside down, which of

632
00:33:21,240 --> 00:33:23,800
Speaker 1: course can lead to foundering. You don't want your ship sideways,

633
00:33:24,360 --> 00:33:26,760
Speaker 1: um if it gets If a ship gets hit head

634
00:33:26,840 --> 00:33:30,080
Speaker 1: on by a rogue wave, this can also harm it

635
00:33:30,120 --> 00:33:32,880
Speaker 1: caused major problems. It can lead to the bow or

636
00:33:32,920 --> 00:33:36,000
Speaker 1: the stern or the ship being lifted in an angle

637
00:33:36,200 --> 00:33:38,200
Speaker 1: up out of the water. And if it's a large ship,

638
00:33:38,280 --> 00:33:41,200
Speaker 1: this can be really dangerous because Robert, you remember that

639
00:33:41,240 --> 00:33:44,240
Speaker 1: scene in Titanic, you know where the ship starts sinking

640
00:33:44,320 --> 00:33:47,760
Speaker 1: from the bow wind and the stern of the boat

641
00:33:47,880 --> 00:33:51,000
Speaker 1: is lifted up at an angle in the air. Ship

642
00:33:51,040 --> 00:33:55,200
Speaker 1: holes are extremely heavy and they're not designed to withstand

643
00:33:55,320 --> 00:33:58,640
Speaker 1: sheer stresses on the hull of that immensity, like the

644
00:33:58,680 --> 00:34:01,760
Speaker 1: structure can't support half of the way to the ship

645
00:34:01,880 --> 00:34:04,760
Speaker 1: hanging up in the air. So the Titanic, of course

646
00:34:04,840 --> 00:34:07,360
Speaker 1: kind of cracked like a celery stalk. We we I

647
00:34:07,400 --> 00:34:10,560
Speaker 1: think I was reading that. The main theory now is

648
00:34:10,600 --> 00:34:12,560
Speaker 1: that the crack started at the bottom at a weak

649
00:34:12,640 --> 00:34:15,000
Speaker 1: point along the base of the ship, and then it

650
00:34:15,120 --> 00:34:17,480
Speaker 1: just cracked off, and then the bow sank, and then

651
00:34:17,520 --> 00:34:19,920
Speaker 1: the stern bobbed for a bit and then sank as well.

652
00:34:20,320 --> 00:34:23,760
Speaker 1: But of course giant waves can cause other large ships

653
00:34:23,800 --> 00:34:26,440
Speaker 1: to do the same. So if the wave washes over you,

654
00:34:26,440 --> 00:34:28,640
Speaker 1: you can end up with one end of the ship

655
00:34:28,719 --> 00:34:31,279
Speaker 1: sort of lifted, poking up out of the water as

656
00:34:31,320 --> 00:34:34,800
Speaker 1: it comes out of this wave motion, and that stress

657
00:34:34,880 --> 00:34:38,200
Speaker 1: can crack or or otherwise significantly damaged the hull, which

658
00:34:38,239 --> 00:34:40,480
Speaker 1: of course again can make you sink. So there there

659
00:34:40,480 --> 00:34:43,000
Speaker 1: are a lot of ways that a giant wave can

660
00:34:43,040 --> 00:34:45,000
Speaker 1: mess you up. You just don't want them at all.

661
00:34:45,280 --> 00:34:47,080
Speaker 1: All Right, we're gonna take one more break. When we

662
00:34:47,120 --> 00:34:49,440
Speaker 1: come back, we're gonna discuss some of the causes for

663
00:34:49,520 --> 00:34:53,840
Speaker 1: rogue waves, and also a very recent paper that explored

664
00:34:54,200 --> 00:34:56,520
Speaker 1: the question just how often are these occurring and how

665
00:34:56,560 --> 00:35:01,040
Speaker 1: powerful are they? Thank thank all, we're back. So we're

666
00:35:01,040 --> 00:35:04,320
Speaker 1: looking at the question first of what causes rogue waves.

667
00:35:04,320 --> 00:35:06,680
Speaker 1: And this is not a fully settled question. I think

668
00:35:06,680 --> 00:35:10,320
Speaker 1: that there are some, uh some competing and not necessarily

669
00:35:10,400 --> 00:35:14,520
Speaker 1: mutually exclusive hypotheses here, right, So first let's go back

670
00:35:14,520 --> 00:35:17,120
Speaker 1: to the dropping or wave for a moment. According to

671
00:35:17,160 --> 00:35:21,200
Speaker 1: the European Center for Medium Range Weather Forecasts high resolution

672
00:35:21,360 --> 00:35:26,600
Speaker 1: retrospective forecast forecasts that he's going backwards in time retrocasts

673
00:35:27,200 --> 00:35:32,120
Speaker 1: um quote suggests that waves driven by a southward moving

674
00:35:32,160 --> 00:35:36,640
Speaker 1: polar low interacted with a substantial local wind generated wave

675
00:35:36,760 --> 00:35:40,560
Speaker 1: system to produce the conditions conducive to the observed large

676
00:35:40,719 --> 00:35:45,240
Speaker 1: rogue wave. And that's from work by Bitlow at all. Okay,

677
00:35:45,239 --> 00:35:48,560
Speaker 1: so that's saying that there are there were conflicting wave

678
00:35:48,640 --> 00:35:51,839
Speaker 1: patterns that that came together in a way that they

679
00:35:51,880 --> 00:35:54,840
Speaker 1: think created this massive wave. It was something about the

680
00:35:54,840 --> 00:35:57,879
Speaker 1: way that these two different patterns interacted when they when

681
00:35:57,880 --> 00:36:01,640
Speaker 1: they crashed together. Right. And you know, again, storm systems,

682
00:36:02,239 --> 00:36:04,720
Speaker 1: weather and the movements of the ocean. These are complex

683
00:36:04,719 --> 00:36:06,840
Speaker 1: systems that are often difficult for us to understand. But

684
00:36:06,920 --> 00:36:11,200
Speaker 1: I think we can all understand the power of convergence,

685
00:36:11,440 --> 00:36:14,080
Speaker 1: you know, when you have have I mean, we see

686
00:36:14,440 --> 00:36:16,759
Speaker 1: this is something that's understandable about whether, right, we have

687
00:36:16,800 --> 00:36:19,560
Speaker 1: two fronts coming together. Um, you know, we realize that

688
00:36:19,560 --> 00:36:22,279
Speaker 1: that can be bad news. Um and uh, and so

689
00:36:22,400 --> 00:36:26,279
Speaker 1: it seemingly we've had a similar situation here. Um, there's

690
00:36:26,280 --> 00:36:30,560
Speaker 1: two energetic systems coming together, and it creates conditions that

691
00:36:30,600 --> 00:36:33,560
Speaker 1: are optimal for this extra large wave to rise up

692
00:36:33,600 --> 00:36:35,360
Speaker 1: out of the sea. And I'll talk more about stuff

693
00:36:35,360 --> 00:36:38,279
Speaker 1: like that in just a minute. They also point to

694
00:36:38,320 --> 00:36:42,879
Speaker 1: the work of cavalry at all from six and they

695
00:36:42,880 --> 00:36:45,080
Speaker 1: point out that also that we shouldn't think of rogue

696
00:36:45,080 --> 00:36:49,880
Speaker 1: waves as ultrawere altra rare once a generation occurrences. Rather quote,

697
00:36:50,000 --> 00:36:52,520
Speaker 1: such waves are a regular part of large storms, and

698
00:36:52,600 --> 00:36:55,600
Speaker 1: coming across them is just a matter of probability, depending

699
00:36:55,600 --> 00:36:58,840
Speaker 1: on the spatial and temporal scales considered. So the dropping

700
00:36:58,840 --> 00:37:01,960
Speaker 1: your wave was probably a result of these two crossing

701
00:37:02,040 --> 00:37:06,080
Speaker 1: low frequency wave systems, and it's it's, it's and it

702
00:37:06,120 --> 00:37:09,239
Speaker 1: may be more common than we initially thought, especially with

703
00:37:09,360 --> 00:37:12,920
Speaker 1: fast moving storms. Yeah, So what exactly is like the

704
00:37:12,960 --> 00:37:16,560
Speaker 1: physical mechanism that causes them in these situations. Well that's

705
00:37:16,560 --> 00:37:19,080
Speaker 1: still being investigated. But there do appear to be several

706
00:37:19,160 --> 00:37:22,160
Speaker 1: potential causes and explanations. Like I said, I think these

707
00:37:22,160 --> 00:37:25,560
Speaker 1: are not mutually exclusive, like some might explain some rogue

708
00:37:25,600 --> 00:37:28,920
Speaker 1: waves and others might explain others. According to the n

709
00:37:28,920 --> 00:37:31,120
Speaker 1: o A, A picks out a couple of main ones

710
00:37:31,160 --> 00:37:34,960
Speaker 1: that it identifies as as the primary candidates. One is

711
00:37:35,080 --> 00:37:38,960
Speaker 1: wave interference. So when you study the propagation of waves,

712
00:37:38,960 --> 00:37:40,840
Speaker 1: and this is not just waves in water, this is

713
00:37:40,840 --> 00:37:45,080
Speaker 1: waves of all kinds, like electromagnetic radiation waves, sound waves,

714
00:37:45,120 --> 00:37:48,560
Speaker 1: waves through matter like like you see in water. When

715
00:37:48,560 --> 00:37:51,279
Speaker 1: you see these, uh, when you look at the propagation

716
00:37:51,320 --> 00:37:52,960
Speaker 1: of these types of waves, you begin to see that

717
00:37:53,000 --> 00:37:56,200
Speaker 1: when patterns of waves come into contact with one another,

718
00:37:56,480 --> 00:38:01,120
Speaker 1: they create an interference pattern. And this means that waves can,

719
00:38:01,200 --> 00:38:03,960
Speaker 1: for example, sort of cancel each other out. This is

720
00:38:04,200 --> 00:38:07,919
Speaker 1: also known as destructive interference. Uh. You might have seen

721
00:38:07,960 --> 00:38:10,439
Speaker 1: a demonstration of this with like speakers. If you take

722
00:38:10,480 --> 00:38:13,640
Speaker 1: like sound speakers and you place them at just the

723
00:38:13,840 --> 00:38:17,919
Speaker 1: perfect distance apart away from you, the sound waves can

724
00:38:17,920 --> 00:38:20,840
Speaker 1: actually cancel each other out, and suddenly you're not hearing

725
00:38:20,880 --> 00:38:24,160
Speaker 1: the sound they're making anymore. But if you turn off

726
00:38:24,239 --> 00:38:26,400
Speaker 1: one of the speakers, then you can hear it again

727
00:38:26,920 --> 00:38:29,839
Speaker 1: because they're not canceling each other out anymore. So that's

728
00:38:29,920 --> 00:38:32,640
Speaker 1: destructive interference when the peaks and the tropics are um

729
00:38:33,080 --> 00:38:37,000
Speaker 1: are alternating canceling each other out. But peaks and tropics

730
00:38:37,040 --> 00:38:40,920
Speaker 1: can also line up to multiply one another into giant waves,

731
00:38:40,920 --> 00:38:45,120
Speaker 1: and this is known as constructive interference. Ironically, it's the

732
00:38:45,200 --> 00:38:49,280
Speaker 1: constructive interference that is destructive to our stuff, our ships,

733
00:38:49,280 --> 00:38:52,080
Speaker 1: and our structures. Uh. So that's one thing, just the

734
00:38:52,120 --> 00:38:57,040
Speaker 1: normal kinds of wave wave interference patterns. Another thing sounds

735
00:38:57,040 --> 00:38:59,520
Speaker 1: like it taps into the explanation we were just discussing,

736
00:38:59,760 --> 00:39:03,360
Speaker 1: and is the interaction of water currents with wave patterns

737
00:39:03,400 --> 00:39:07,160
Speaker 1: created by storms. Essentially, when the current is flowing one

738
00:39:07,200 --> 00:39:11,839
Speaker 1: way and storm winds are pushing surface waves the opposite way,

739
00:39:11,920 --> 00:39:15,800
Speaker 1: this can cause an interaction that shortens the frequency of waves,

740
00:39:16,040 --> 00:39:18,920
Speaker 1: and this sometimes leads to waves joining together and forming

741
00:39:18,920 --> 00:39:23,279
Speaker 1: these gigantic rogue waves. But there's one other major proposed

742
00:39:23,320 --> 00:39:27,279
Speaker 1: mechanism or proposed explanation I was reading about two uh,

743
00:39:27,280 --> 00:39:30,840
Speaker 1: and this is a hypothesis that deals with nonlinear effects

744
00:39:30,880 --> 00:39:33,600
Speaker 1: so the details of this are far over my head,

745
00:39:33,640 --> 00:39:37,000
Speaker 1: but I'll do my best. Basically, some research shows that

746
00:39:37,040 --> 00:39:41,080
Speaker 1: you can actually predict the formation of rogue waves if

747
00:39:41,120 --> 00:39:44,719
Speaker 1: you model ocean waves with reference to to a nonlinear

748
00:39:44,880 --> 00:39:48,160
Speaker 1: version of the Shreddinger equation, which of course we normally

749
00:39:48,160 --> 00:39:50,520
Speaker 1: would use to model the behavior of objects at the

750
00:39:50,600 --> 00:39:54,360
Speaker 1: quantum scale, such as individual atoms. But the the interesting

751
00:39:54,480 --> 00:39:58,000
Speaker 1: thing about matter about objects at the quantum scale, like

752
00:39:58,080 --> 00:40:01,560
Speaker 1: atoms or electrons or photons, is that in many ways

753
00:40:01,600 --> 00:40:04,440
Speaker 1: they seem to behave like waves. You know. That's one

754
00:40:04,440 --> 00:40:07,160
Speaker 1: of the great paradoxes of quantum mechanics is, well, how

755
00:40:07,200 --> 00:40:11,080
Speaker 1: can a particle behave like a wave pattern? But the

756
00:40:11,160 --> 00:40:14,560
Speaker 1: Shreddinger equation, and it's highly predictive, it tells us yes,

757
00:40:14,600 --> 00:40:17,040
Speaker 1: they do in fact behave like a wave pattern, and

758
00:40:17,120 --> 00:40:19,320
Speaker 1: you need to model them like a wave pattern or

759
00:40:19,360 --> 00:40:21,920
Speaker 1: you can't predict what they're gonna do. So the shredding

760
00:40:21,920 --> 00:40:24,680
Speaker 1: your equation is is useful at modeling and predicting these

761
00:40:25,040 --> 00:40:29,279
Speaker 1: behavior of these wave patterns. But but also apparently the

762
00:40:29,600 --> 00:40:32,520
Speaker 1: non linear version of it is relevant to predicting the

763
00:40:32,520 --> 00:40:35,160
Speaker 1: behavior of waves at large scale, like waves in the

764
00:40:35,200 --> 00:40:39,120
Speaker 1: ocean and the mathematical functions underlying this explanation. Like I said,

765
00:40:39,120 --> 00:40:41,120
Speaker 1: they're way over my head. But essentially it's a model

766
00:40:41,160 --> 00:40:45,120
Speaker 1: that shows how normal interacting wave patterns, just you know,

767
00:40:45,200 --> 00:40:48,359
Speaker 1: standard waves going back and forth in the ocean can

768
00:40:48,480 --> 00:40:53,239
Speaker 1: sometimes become unstable and result in one wave, one wave

769
00:40:53,400 --> 00:40:58,160
Speaker 1: peak leaching or sucking energy from the surrounding wave peaks,

770
00:40:58,200 --> 00:41:01,840
Speaker 1: reducing the surrounding waves and this one wave of becoming

771
00:41:01,920 --> 00:41:05,160
Speaker 1: huge in the process. So that that's another proposed explanation.

772
00:41:05,760 --> 00:41:08,520
Speaker 1: So where are we currently are in our understanding of

773
00:41:08,600 --> 00:41:11,680
Speaker 1: rogue waves. That's probably the next logical question to get to,

774
00:41:12,000 --> 00:41:14,480
Speaker 1: because if we've discussed already, it's like we we've we

775
00:41:14,640 --> 00:41:17,120
Speaker 1: we haven't known for sure they exist for too terribly

776
00:41:17,120 --> 00:41:22,759
Speaker 1: long and we're still we're still competing or multiple scenarios

777
00:41:22,800 --> 00:41:26,480
Speaker 1: that may explain how they're occurring. Well, I looked to

778
00:41:26,600 --> 00:41:29,960
Speaker 1: a two thousand nineteen research paper from the University of

779
00:41:30,000 --> 00:41:33,000
Speaker 1: Southampton in the UK, and basically what they did is

780
00:41:33,000 --> 00:41:35,520
Speaker 1: they looked at that they decided to take instead of

781
00:41:35,880 --> 00:41:38,520
Speaker 1: like a global look at the data, they tried to

782
00:41:38,719 --> 00:41:42,960
Speaker 1: isolate it. Uh. They looked to fifteen different buoys on

783
00:41:43,040 --> 00:41:46,560
Speaker 1: the US Western Cboard and they looked at a twenty

784
00:41:46,640 --> 00:41:50,160
Speaker 1: year window, so we're looking at ninety four through as

785
00:41:50,239 --> 00:41:52,440
Speaker 1: being the window of data that they were looking at,

786
00:41:52,880 --> 00:41:57,600
Speaker 1: isolated to this this region, and uh, this study revealed

787
00:41:57,600 --> 00:42:00,400
Speaker 1: the following. So, first of all, rogue waves vary greatly

788
00:42:00,520 --> 00:42:02,880
Speaker 1: depending on the area of sea and the time period

789
00:42:02,920 --> 00:42:05,439
Speaker 1: focused on the first part of that I think makes

790
00:42:05,440 --> 00:42:07,520
Speaker 1: sense because we discuss it just needs to be twice

791
00:42:07,800 --> 00:42:09,920
Speaker 1: as big as the as the waves in the area.

792
00:42:10,560 --> 00:42:13,239
Speaker 1: And also this is very key. Across to the two

793
00:42:13,320 --> 00:42:18,040
Speaker 1: decade windows studied, instances of rogue waves fell slightly while

794
00:42:18,040 --> 00:42:22,040
Speaker 1: the size of the individual waves increased. Okay, so there's

795
00:42:22,160 --> 00:42:24,480
Speaker 1: less of them, but they're more powerful when you do

796
00:42:24,520 --> 00:42:28,680
Speaker 1: get them right. Kind of a good news bad news situation, right. Uh.

797
00:42:28,719 --> 00:42:30,640
Speaker 1: They also found found that you know, rogue waves are

798
00:42:30,680 --> 00:42:34,320
Speaker 1: more prevalent, prevalent and uh and severe in winter months,

799
00:42:34,960 --> 00:42:39,120
Speaker 1: and they're they're happening with increasing of frequency within calmer

800
00:42:39,160 --> 00:42:43,200
Speaker 1: background seas. Oh that's interesting. Now we know from previous

801
00:42:43,200 --> 00:42:47,040
Speaker 1: just first of all, from anecdotes, you know, common sailors knowledge,

802
00:42:47,320 --> 00:42:49,880
Speaker 1: but also I think for more recent research that there

803
00:42:49,920 --> 00:42:53,120
Speaker 1: are rogue wave hot spots in the world where there's

804
00:42:53,160 --> 00:42:57,760
Speaker 1: particularly dangerous sorts of interaction between ocean currents and weather.

805
00:42:58,280 --> 00:43:00,239
Speaker 1: I know, for example, one place that's you have to

806
00:43:00,239 --> 00:43:02,200
Speaker 1: be a rogue wave of hot spot is like the

807
00:43:02,560 --> 00:43:05,200
Speaker 1: southern Cape of Africa. You know, if you're you're going

808
00:43:05,239 --> 00:43:07,920
Speaker 1: around the Cape of Good Hope. It's long been understood

809
00:43:07,960 --> 00:43:11,359
Speaker 1: as treacherous waters. Yeah, you know, it long believed to

810
00:43:11,400 --> 00:43:13,960
Speaker 1: be a place of bad weather, but also apparently a

811
00:43:13,960 --> 00:43:18,120
Speaker 1: place of rogue waves. So everyone's probably wondering, well, how

812
00:43:18,160 --> 00:43:21,120
Speaker 1: often are these things occurring? Again, there was once this

813
00:43:21,160 --> 00:43:24,200
Speaker 1: idea that these were once in a lifetime events that

814
00:43:24,280 --> 00:43:25,960
Speaker 1: it was it was like seeing a unicorn on the

815
00:43:26,040 --> 00:43:30,040
Speaker 1: high seas. But it looks like now we're talking many

816
00:43:30,120 --> 00:43:33,400
Speaker 1: times per day in the global ocean um and then

817
00:43:33,440 --> 00:43:35,280
Speaker 1: you know, that's a ship that's a concern for ships

818
00:43:35,280 --> 00:43:38,120
Speaker 1: at sea, not only you know, the global shipping industry,

819
00:43:38,160 --> 00:43:41,400
Speaker 1: but other vessels as well. A two thousand four study

820
00:43:41,680 --> 00:43:45,279
Speaker 1: identified more than ten giant waves above the twenty five

821
00:43:45,360 --> 00:43:50,240
Speaker 1: meter or eighty two footmark during a mere three week window.

822
00:43:53,600 --> 00:43:55,600
Speaker 1: It's one of those things that makes you thankful that

823
00:43:55,640 --> 00:43:57,759
Speaker 1: the ocean is big and we're not on most of

824
00:43:57,800 --> 00:43:59,920
Speaker 1: it most of the time. But there's a lot of

825
00:44:00,040 --> 00:44:01,680
Speaker 1: us out there and a lot of our stuff out

826
00:44:01,719 --> 00:44:04,400
Speaker 1: there at any given time. Also, again, yeah we're there.

827
00:44:04,400 --> 00:44:08,040
Speaker 1: There's more human activity on the oceans than ever before. Uh,

828
00:44:08,400 --> 00:44:10,160
Speaker 1: just to give everyone a taste of just that the

829
00:44:10,160 --> 00:44:13,120
Speaker 1: shipping industry alone, because because the shipping industry is huge,

830
00:44:13,560 --> 00:44:15,759
Speaker 1: it's easy to take for granted, but it is how

831
00:44:15,880 --> 00:44:18,279
Speaker 1: Uh most of the goods make their way around the world.

832
00:44:18,320 --> 00:44:22,440
Speaker 1: They're not traveling by airplane, they're traveling via ships. Uh.

833
00:44:22,560 --> 00:44:24,840
Speaker 1: Coin I found some good stats on this from the

834
00:44:24,880 --> 00:44:28,520
Speaker 1: International Chamber of Shipping. So first of all, the international

835
00:44:28,520 --> 00:44:31,640
Speaker 1: shipping industry is responsible for the carriage of around nine

836
00:44:32,360 --> 00:44:36,120
Speaker 1: of world trade and a given ships shipping vessel, we're

837
00:44:36,120 --> 00:44:39,080
Speaker 1: talking of a two hundred million dollar investment. Like that's

838
00:44:39,080 --> 00:44:40,960
Speaker 1: the when when you see these ships that are laden

839
00:44:41,040 --> 00:44:44,160
Speaker 1: with shipping containers, Uh, that's a two hundred million dollar vessel.

840
00:44:44,200 --> 00:44:47,759
Speaker 1: You're probably looking at the operation of merchant ships generates

841
00:44:47,880 --> 00:44:51,200
Speaker 1: an estimated annual income of over half a trillion US

842
00:44:51,280 --> 00:44:55,240
Speaker 1: dollars and freight rates. They're over fifty thousand merchant ships

843
00:44:55,239 --> 00:44:59,040
Speaker 1: trading internationally, transporting every kind of cargo, and the world

844
00:44:59,080 --> 00:45:02,799
Speaker 1: fleet and shipping is it's in over a hundred and

845
00:45:02,800 --> 00:45:06,319
Speaker 1: fifty nations and manned by over a million seafarers of

846
00:45:06,400 --> 00:45:11,239
Speaker 1: virtually every nationality. So it's it's immense and there's more

847
00:45:11,280 --> 00:45:13,560
Speaker 1: of it than ever before. And then we have these

848
00:45:13,600 --> 00:45:17,400
Speaker 1: waves out there. Yeah, and so the idea that these

849
00:45:17,640 --> 00:45:21,319
Speaker 1: waves could be increasing in intensity or becoming more dangerous,

850
00:45:22,080 --> 00:45:24,960
Speaker 1: that's pretty scary because it doesn't just mean like it's

851
00:45:25,000 --> 00:45:27,399
Speaker 1: scarier for people who physically go out on the water.

852
00:45:27,480 --> 00:45:30,160
Speaker 1: Of course, it certainly is, but it also represents a

853
00:45:30,280 --> 00:45:34,120
Speaker 1: threat to UH, to the world economy, you know, the

854
00:45:34,160 --> 00:45:38,120
Speaker 1: economics of goods moving back and forth. Um. And then

855
00:45:38,360 --> 00:45:40,880
Speaker 1: just some more data from this particular paper, the University

856
00:45:40,920 --> 00:45:44,520
Speaker 1: of Southampton paper, UH just considering the u s. West Coast,

857
00:45:44,520 --> 00:45:46,880
Speaker 1: which was the focus of his study. They say that

858
00:45:46,920 --> 00:45:51,840
Speaker 1: here you have of total US containerized trade and that

859
00:45:51,960 --> 00:45:54,560
Speaker 1: this is the largest u AS gateway for container vessels.

860
00:45:55,239 --> 00:45:58,000
Speaker 1: And even when ships are not sunk or capsized by

861
00:45:58,040 --> 00:46:00,440
Speaker 1: a wave like this, there's a still the risk of

862
00:46:00,680 --> 00:46:04,440
Speaker 1: rogue wave induced collisions. So you know, that's another thing

863
00:46:04,480 --> 00:46:07,000
Speaker 1: to consider. If you have two boats that are near

864
00:46:07,000 --> 00:46:10,240
Speaker 1: each other, UH, and you have an enormous wave disrupting

865
00:46:10,239 --> 00:46:12,799
Speaker 1: the waters, then there's a possibility that things could uh

866
00:46:12,800 --> 00:46:15,759
Speaker 1: slam together, which they're certainly not designed to do. Then,

867
00:46:15,840 --> 00:46:17,680
Speaker 1: on top of that, this is a region where there's

868
00:46:17,680 --> 00:46:20,759
Speaker 1: just a high volume of tanker, bolt carrier, roll on,

869
00:46:20,920 --> 00:46:25,760
Speaker 1: roll off, passenger fishing ships, um, you know, all focused

870
00:46:25,760 --> 00:46:28,080
Speaker 1: around the ports in the region. And then of course

871
00:46:28,080 --> 00:46:30,240
Speaker 1: you have a fair amount of activity just to service

872
00:46:30,520 --> 00:46:33,640
Speaker 1: offshore structures in the oil and gas industry. Coming back

873
00:46:33,680 --> 00:46:37,560
Speaker 1: to in our examples with oil platforms earlier, rogue waves

874
00:46:37,560 --> 00:46:39,840
Speaker 1: have also swept people out to sea in California and

875
00:46:39,880 --> 00:46:44,440
Speaker 1: Oregon and uh. And then one other point, the researchers

876
00:46:44,480 --> 00:46:49,080
Speaker 1: indicated the global climate change isn't necessarily a factor in

877
00:46:49,120 --> 00:46:51,759
Speaker 1: all of this. Um. Part of this is that there's

878
00:46:51,760 --> 00:46:54,680
Speaker 1: just a great deal of oscillation with the with with

879
00:46:54,800 --> 00:46:57,120
Speaker 1: the size of these waves, and we're dealing with such

880
00:46:57,160 --> 00:46:59,920
Speaker 1: a complex system and we have only two decades of

881
00:47:00,080 --> 00:47:02,799
Speaker 1: rogue wave data to deal with. You. But at the

882
00:47:02,840 --> 00:47:05,879
Speaker 1: same time, they don't seem to be ruling it out. Yeah,

883
00:47:06,000 --> 00:47:09,359
Speaker 1: I mean because of increasing energy, right if the sea

884
00:47:09,440 --> 00:47:11,600
Speaker 1: levels arising in the oceans are getting warmer and you're

885
00:47:11,600 --> 00:47:15,239
Speaker 1: getting more intense weather patterns. Yeah, So basically they're not

886
00:47:15,320 --> 00:47:17,920
Speaker 1: saying it's not the cause. They're just saying we were

887
00:47:17,920 --> 00:47:20,959
Speaker 1: not presenting that with this data. Ultimately, they again only

888
00:47:21,000 --> 00:47:23,399
Speaker 1: two decades worth of data to go on. Here, I

889
00:47:23,440 --> 00:47:26,239
Speaker 1: was reading an interview from back in two thousand and

890
00:47:26,280 --> 00:47:28,839
Speaker 1: ten with the author Susan Casey, who wrote a book

891
00:47:28,840 --> 00:47:30,960
Speaker 1: that I read a few years ago and I absolutely loved.

892
00:47:30,960 --> 00:47:33,239
Speaker 1: It's sort of a half memoir, half science book about

893
00:47:33,280 --> 00:47:36,680
Speaker 1: the Fara Lawn islands off the off sort of around

894
00:47:36,680 --> 00:47:40,240
Speaker 1: where San Francisco is um and and about great white sharks,

895
00:47:40,239 --> 00:47:42,080
Speaker 1: and that that book was called The Devil's Teeth. But

896
00:47:42,160 --> 00:47:45,120
Speaker 1: this interview was about another book she wrote, apparently a

897
00:47:45,120 --> 00:47:48,080
Speaker 1: book about giant waves called The Wave, published in two

898
00:47:48,080 --> 00:47:51,040
Speaker 1: thousand ten, And in the interview she talks about how

899
00:47:51,160 --> 00:47:55,760
Speaker 1: companies that write insurance policies for maritime voyages are concerned

900
00:47:55,800 --> 00:47:58,360
Speaker 1: about increasing risk, and part of this risk seems to

901
00:47:58,360 --> 00:48:02,520
Speaker 1: be concerned about rogue waves. She says, quote Lloyd's of London.

902
00:48:02,680 --> 00:48:06,360
Speaker 1: Of course, you know, big maritime insurer Lloyd's of London

903
00:48:06,680 --> 00:48:09,640
Speaker 1: is actually quite concerned about cruise ships. One of the

904
00:48:09,680 --> 00:48:12,279
Speaker 1: guys said to me, this is a high concentration of risk.

905
00:48:12,360 --> 00:48:14,879
Speaker 1: You've got five thousand people on boats that are getting

906
00:48:14,920 --> 00:48:17,360
Speaker 1: bigger and bigger, and they're going into gnarly or and

907
00:48:17,400 --> 00:48:21,040
Speaker 1: gnarly or places. They're all over Antarctica now. For example,

908
00:48:21,680 --> 00:48:24,120
Speaker 1: recently one of the hardier cruise ships got hit by

909
00:48:24,160 --> 00:48:27,080
Speaker 1: a hundred foot rogue wave and all of its navigation

910
00:48:27,120 --> 00:48:30,120
Speaker 1: equipment got knocked out and the windows got broken. During

911
00:48:30,160 --> 00:48:33,120
Speaker 1: another recent cruise in Antarctica, all all the people ended

912
00:48:33,200 --> 00:48:35,839
Speaker 1: up in the water, which isn't a good situation. By

913
00:48:35,840 --> 00:48:38,480
Speaker 1: the grace of God, there was another boat nearby. Now

914
00:48:38,480 --> 00:48:40,919
Speaker 1: we're talking about big picture risk here. I just want

915
00:48:40,920 --> 00:48:43,960
Speaker 1: to stress that we're not trure more in this episode.

916
00:48:43,960 --> 00:48:46,040
Speaker 1: We're not attempting to scare you out of your next

917
00:48:46,680 --> 00:48:49,920
Speaker 1: oceanic voyage cruise or anything of that nature. Though I

918
00:48:49,920 --> 00:48:51,440
Speaker 1: think if that were our goal, we could do a

919
00:48:51,520 --> 00:48:55,319
Speaker 1: very good job of it. But well, no, that is

920
00:48:55,400 --> 00:48:57,680
Speaker 1: not our goal. I mean, but yeah, there are obviously,

921
00:48:58,320 --> 00:49:02,880
Speaker 1: um going to be huge risks to ocean ocean voyages

922
00:49:02,920 --> 00:49:05,000
Speaker 1: of all kinds, and one of the biggest impacts that

923
00:49:05,000 --> 00:49:07,560
Speaker 1: would be there would obviously be trade. I do think

924
00:49:07,600 --> 00:49:13,919
Speaker 1: it's interesting that there are still uh such mysterious, unresolved

925
00:49:14,000 --> 00:49:17,680
Speaker 1: questions about the behavior of waves of waves in the ocean.

926
00:49:17,719 --> 00:49:19,799
Speaker 1: I mean, this seems like something that people have been

927
00:49:19,800 --> 00:49:22,279
Speaker 1: aware of for a very long time, been studying for

928
00:49:22,320 --> 00:49:24,239
Speaker 1: a very long time. But it's one of those kind

929
00:49:24,239 --> 00:49:27,720
Speaker 1: of chaotic and complex things that maybe we don't often

930
00:49:27,760 --> 00:49:31,319
Speaker 1: stop to to appreciate the mystery and majesty of what's

931
00:49:31,320 --> 00:49:34,560
Speaker 1: easy to just watch wave activity in the ocean, I said,

932
00:49:34,600 --> 00:49:36,880
Speaker 1: on the beach or on the deck of a ship,

933
00:49:36,920 --> 00:49:39,359
Speaker 1: and and watch the waves. And it's calming, and it's

934
00:49:39,719 --> 00:49:42,080
Speaker 1: it's rhythmic. There seems to be a I mean, there

935
00:49:42,120 --> 00:49:44,040
Speaker 1: is an order to it, but it seems to there

936
00:49:44,040 --> 00:49:46,839
Speaker 1: seems to be an order that we can grasp, that

937
00:49:46,920 --> 00:49:49,880
Speaker 1: we can that we can understand from a human perspective,

938
00:49:50,160 --> 00:49:53,520
Speaker 1: And of course, really it's it's ultimately more the domain

939
00:49:53,760 --> 00:49:59,279
Speaker 1: of of increasingly complex um computer simulation programs, if not

940
00:49:59,520 --> 00:50:02,960
Speaker 1: the machinations of some sort of vengeful sea god. Well,

941
00:50:03,000 --> 00:50:04,960
Speaker 1: I think one of the reasons we're so tempted to

942
00:50:06,080 --> 00:50:08,840
Speaker 1: wish to think of the waves as regular as because

943
00:50:09,080 --> 00:50:11,680
Speaker 1: we can listen to them is because it's auditory. Because

944
00:50:11,719 --> 00:50:15,600
Speaker 1: it's auditory information instead of just being visual information, it

945
00:50:15,640 --> 00:50:18,720
Speaker 1: assumes a kind of background rhythm whenever we're by the ocean,

946
00:50:18,840 --> 00:50:21,080
Speaker 1: or we hear something recorded by the ocean, or we're

947
00:50:21,080 --> 00:50:23,880
Speaker 1: on the ocean. Uh. You know, the wave of activity

948
00:50:23,960 --> 00:50:29,200
Speaker 1: becomes the the steady, reliable percussion of our lives. And

949
00:50:29,239 --> 00:50:31,840
Speaker 1: then the idea that one of these waves could suddenly

950
00:50:31,920 --> 00:50:34,239
Speaker 1: reach out and be not like the others, be this

951
00:50:34,320 --> 00:50:37,160
Speaker 1: angry hand of God feels like a violation of what

952
00:50:37,280 --> 00:50:40,440
Speaker 1: nature has asked us to expect. Yeah, the white noise

953
00:50:40,480 --> 00:50:42,839
Speaker 1: app that I used to sleep every night never gives

954
00:50:42,840 --> 00:50:46,400
Speaker 1: me a rogue way. This is always just consistent, calming

955
00:50:46,920 --> 00:50:50,040
Speaker 1: oceanic activity. What if it just suddenly screamed your name?

956
00:50:51,520 --> 00:50:53,319
Speaker 1: All right, Well, there you have it, you know, as

957
00:50:53,400 --> 00:50:56,319
Speaker 1: as we've mentioned before. You know, we were both landsmen here,

958
00:50:56,880 --> 00:50:58,759
Speaker 1: so we would love to hear from the sea folk

959
00:50:58,840 --> 00:51:01,680
Speaker 1: out there. Uh, if you have any anything to add

960
00:51:01,719 --> 00:51:05,440
Speaker 1: on this, Have you encountered uh sizeable waves or even

961
00:51:05,560 --> 00:51:08,759
Speaker 1: if you have, you witnessed or seeing the handiwork of

962
00:51:08,800 --> 00:51:11,400
Speaker 1: something that could be classified as a rogue wave, We

963
00:51:11,400 --> 00:51:14,719
Speaker 1: would love to hear from you. Absolutely. Yeah, please get

964
00:51:14,719 --> 00:51:17,160
Speaker 1: in touch. In the meantime, if you want to listen

965
00:51:17,160 --> 00:51:18,960
Speaker 1: to this episode or more episodes of Stuff to Blow

966
00:51:18,960 --> 00:51:20,279
Speaker 1: Your Mind, head on over to Stuff to Blow Your

967
00:51:20,320 --> 00:51:22,200
Speaker 1: mind dot com. That's where you'll find the landing page

968
00:51:22,239 --> 00:51:25,120
Speaker 1: for this episode. Uh, and that also features the the

969
00:51:25,239 --> 00:51:28,080
Speaker 1: artwork the great Wave off kind of God what. You

970
00:51:28,120 --> 00:51:30,319
Speaker 1: can see this image in case you you're not sure

971
00:51:30,360 --> 00:51:33,120
Speaker 1: you've seen it before, and if you want to interact

972
00:51:33,200 --> 00:51:35,759
Speaker 1: with other listeners, be sure to head on over to

973
00:51:36,320 --> 00:51:38,480
Speaker 1: the discussion module. It's called Stuff to Blow your Mind

974
00:51:38,520 --> 00:51:41,319
Speaker 1: discussion Module. It is a Facebook group, uh it is.

975
00:51:41,520 --> 00:51:44,839
Speaker 1: It's a pretty decent place as far as social media goes. Uh.

976
00:51:45,200 --> 00:51:48,680
Speaker 1: One of my more one of my few preferred social

977
00:51:48,719 --> 00:51:51,799
Speaker 1: media destinations these days. Literally the only reason I still

978
00:51:51,800 --> 00:51:55,440
Speaker 1: have a Facebook account, So make it your reason as well,

979
00:51:55,719 --> 00:51:57,640
Speaker 1: and as always too if you want to. If you

980
00:51:57,640 --> 00:51:59,879
Speaker 1: want to support our show, you know you can buy

981
00:52:00,000 --> 00:52:03,279
Speaker 1: and merchandise through our T shirt store. That's always appreciated.

982
00:52:03,640 --> 00:52:05,719
Speaker 1: But the best thing you can do is just rate

983
00:52:05,760 --> 00:52:07,680
Speaker 1: and review the show wherever you have the power to

984
00:52:07,760 --> 00:52:10,279
Speaker 1: do so, and tell a friend if an episode really

985
00:52:10,280 --> 00:52:13,400
Speaker 1: resonated with you, share it with someone else. I mean, really,

986
00:52:13,440 --> 00:52:16,720
Speaker 1: that's the That's the bread and butter of this show's appeal.

987
00:52:16,920 --> 00:52:19,680
Speaker 1: Big thank you as always to our excellent audio producer,

988
00:52:19,760 --> 00:52:22,239
Speaker 1: Tory Harrison. If you would like to get in touch

989
00:52:22,280 --> 00:52:24,680
Speaker 1: with us with feedback about this episode or any other,

990
00:52:24,840 --> 00:52:27,080
Speaker 1: to suggest a topic for the future, or just to

991
00:52:27,080 --> 00:52:30,239
Speaker 1: say hello. Tell us about rogue waves, tell us about

992
00:52:30,239 --> 00:52:33,240
Speaker 1: waves in general, tell us your stories of the high seas.

993
00:52:33,320 --> 00:52:36,759
Speaker 1: You can email us at contact at stuff to Blow

994
00:52:36,840 --> 00:52:48,520
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is

995
00:52:48,560 --> 00:52:50,880
Speaker 1: a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more

996
00:52:50,920 --> 00:52:53,319
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997
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998
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Speaker 1: that the foot po