Speaker 1: Welcome Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, are you welcome to
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow your Mind? My name is Robert Lamb
Speaker 1: and I'm Joe McCormick, and I want to kick off
Speaker 1: this episode by talking about a piece of art. And
Speaker 1: it's a piece of art that I imagine a lot
Speaker 1: of you have seen. And if you haven't seen it,
Speaker 1: you can, and you're not driving a vehicle or anything
Speaker 1: right now, you can easily look it up and you
Speaker 1: can certainly find it for the landing page for this episode.
Speaker 1: It's Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. It is
Speaker 1: a Japanese print. It is a title the Great Wave
Speaker 1: off Kanagawa, and it's a nineteenth century Edo period would
Speaker 1: block print by Katsushika Hokosai, and it depicts a great
Speaker 1: wave endangering ships off the coast of Kanagawa. And it
Speaker 1: was once thought to depict a tsunami, but now most
Speaker 1: commentators think that it actually depicts a row wave. UM. Now,
Speaker 1: the the artist here, he explored the subject matter many
Speaker 1: times in his career, so if you look at other
Speaker 1: images he created, there are plenty of other waves, but
Speaker 1: this particular print is considered the peak the culmination of
Speaker 1: sixty years in the arts um, and since it's a
Speaker 1: woodblock print and not a painting, you can actually find
Speaker 1: it in numerous museums around the world, thus increasing the
Speaker 1: odds that you have seen this image, if not online
Speaker 1: and perhaps in purpose in person. But I think one
Speaker 1: of the great things about it is that it captures
Speaker 1: a sense of the majesty of a great wave, the
Speaker 1: idea that it's it's there's like a topography of the
Speaker 1: ocean visible, the ocean surface visible in this picture. That
Speaker 1: that reminds us that a wave can be a mountain. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: and the wave in the in the woodblock even what
Speaker 1: do you call it a print or a painting when
Speaker 1: it's the painting whatever it is on this image, uh,
Speaker 1: the wave resembles the mountain in the background, and the
Speaker 1: mountain in the backgrounds has sort of a blue gray
Speaker 1: uh slope, and then the white peak of course covered
Speaker 1: in snow. The waves are much like that with these
Speaker 1: uh the white surging foam at the top. But in
Speaker 1: the painting, the foam has these like hooks that almost
Speaker 1: looked like eagles talents reaching out of the top of
Speaker 1: this wall of water, and there's there's a way that
Speaker 1: I at least often looked to this painting without even
Speaker 1: realizing they were supposed to be boats represented at the bottom. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of easy to miss the boats. They're they're
Speaker 1: swallowed up by what's going on all around. It's a
Speaker 1: beautiful piece of art, and I don't know why, but
Speaker 1: I've always, when I've looked at it before, thought of
Speaker 1: it as somehow calming or like a picture of sort
Speaker 1: of like serene nature, which is hilarious because it's depicting
Speaker 1: a scene of utter chaos and destruction and terror. Right.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's spoken like a true landsman, right when
Speaker 1: clearly like this is a product of of of an
Speaker 1: island culture that it was very you know, very aware
Speaker 1: of the dangers posed by the by the ocean. And
Speaker 1: uh yeah, because I probably am in the same same boat. Uh. No.
Speaker 1: Pun intended with you is that when I've seen the
Speaker 1: image in the past, it was just always like, ah, yeah,
Speaker 1: serene nature. But no, this is a cresting mountain of
Speaker 1: oceanic destruction, or at least potential destruction, uh, in terms
Speaker 1: of human activities on or near the ocean. The mountain
Speaker 1: that flows. So speaking of the dangers of the ocean.
Speaker 1: I mean, there are many of them, and we know
Speaker 1: what many of them are. But we often discuss ancient
Speaker 1: beastiaries and records of monsters and strange creatures from the
Speaker 1: ancient world, and of course some of the best ones,
Speaker 1: even through like the medieval period, are of sea monsters.
Speaker 1: So you've got these stories about lizards that kill with
Speaker 1: a gaze, or giant sea monsters that suck entire ships
Speaker 1: into their mouths, and they can be funny to read
Speaker 1: about now, especially with the certainty that ancient writers had
Speaker 1: when they talked about these subjects. But one point I've
Speaker 1: made before and that I want to echo again is
Speaker 1: I think it was not at all stupid or irrational
Speaker 1: for ancient people's to believe in sea monsters. I think
Speaker 1: it was a perfectly reasonable and rational thing for them
Speaker 1: to assume. And there are a few reasons for this.
Speaker 1: We've touched on some of them on the show before.
Speaker 1: Number one, There actually are sea monsters in a way.
Speaker 1: We just call them by different names now, Like you
Speaker 1: know the sperm whale, blue whale, giant squid, the sunfish,
Speaker 1: the lion's main jellyfish. These are all giant magnificent, all
Speaker 1: inspiring creatures. But what's changed is that we've fit them
Speaker 1: into a standard evolutionary taxonomy. We think of them as
Speaker 1: animals that have common origins with the other animals. But
Speaker 1: when ancient sailors told stories of these giant beasts out
Speaker 1: in the ocean, many we're probably telling the truth to
Speaker 1: the best of their ability. They saw something huge and
Speaker 1: strange and terrifying, and they're trying to remember and describe
Speaker 1: what it was. And then on top of that, you're
Speaker 1: dealing with it with just a culture and a legacy
Speaker 1: um of of danger upon the sea and beneath the sea. Yes,
Speaker 1: so there were those two things come together. I mean
Speaker 1: here there'd be right exactly. And because the sea, you know,
Speaker 1: a life at sea has long I think been associated
Speaker 1: with a kind of with a kind of daring and bravado. Right.
Speaker 1: But also I think there's another reason it was sort
Speaker 1: of rational to believe in giant krakens that could pull
Speaker 1: ships down to their doom, And it's that Poseidon is
Speaker 1: one of the cruelest and most fickle of the gods.
Speaker 1: That that's not an accident that the Greek myths are
Speaker 1: like that, it is not at all uncommon for ships
Speaker 1: to set sail on the high seas and then just vanish,
Speaker 1: leaving behind no trace at all. Other times you might
Speaker 1: find a giant, sturdy ship wrecked with no apparent cause,
Speaker 1: like it's masked and rigging smashed bits, with giant holes
Speaker 1: blown in its solid hull. And when when you see
Speaker 1: rex like this. Uh. In fact, some of the rex
Speaker 1: I was looking at in preparation for this episode, it
Speaker 1: calls to mind. Uh, I was thinking about that poem
Speaker 1: we've talked about on the show before, Alfred Lord Tennyson's
Speaker 1: The Kraken, where you know, there's this beast battening upon
Speaker 1: huge sea worms in his sleep deep until the latter
Speaker 1: fire shall heat the deep and he comes up to
Speaker 1: the surface, and of course in the poem he dies.
Speaker 1: But what's more likely it's he's actually gonna like punch
Speaker 1: a hole right in the middle of your ship. Now, obviously,
Speaker 1: there are many ways for ships to wreck and sync
Speaker 1: causing them to vanish without a trace. They can hit rocks,
Speaker 1: they can hit hidden reefs, they can capsize and take
Speaker 1: on water. But there is one particular phenomenon that sailors
Speaker 1: have long been telling these dark majestically terrifying stories about
Speaker 1: and it's something that could explain many sudden disappearances of
Speaker 1: seagoing vessels if it was anything more than a fantasy.
Speaker 1: And it's what you mentioned about the woodblock painting earlier.
Speaker 1: The monster wave, the rogue wave, also known as a
Speaker 1: freak wave, which I like because it sounds like either
Speaker 1: a musical subgenre or some sort of like misfit style
Speaker 1: punk band, you know, freak wave. It's a genre that
Speaker 1: mixes punk music with carnival music, circus music. No, I
Speaker 1: you know, I say that, but I bet that's actually
Speaker 1: as honor us somewhere. Probably at this point all sub
Speaker 1: genres exist. But so, yeah, the the idea of a
Speaker 1: rogue wave or a monster wave, so we're not just
Speaker 1: talking about rough seas in general, but a single gigantic wave,
Speaker 1: an unbelievably high wall of water that appears as if
Speaker 1: out of nowhere and crashes over your ship like a
Speaker 1: hammer of the sea gods and so sailors have talked
Speaker 1: about this, and we want to ask today, could these
Speaker 1: tales be true? Do we now know whether they're true?
Speaker 1: And could they explain many of histories vanished ships and
Speaker 1: hulls broken like toys. Now at this point, I do
Speaker 1: want to mention that in our research, I think we'd
Speaker 1: hope to maybe throw in more like a giant wave myths,
Speaker 1: more accounts from say ancient histories of of giant waves
Speaker 1: as opposed to organic sea monsters. And I'm not saying
Speaker 1: they don't exist. They may very well exist, but I
Speaker 1: had trouble finding them, and we were discussing whine that
Speaker 1: might be. I mean, you could go back to what
Speaker 1: you said earlier, how a ship just piers at sea,
Speaker 1: perhaps caused by a giant wave, and the story is
Speaker 1: about a sea monster, or it becomes about an organic
Speaker 1: sea monster. Yes. Uh. And one point of parallel here
Speaker 1: is that obviously even the ancient people's knew about the
Speaker 1: idea that the ship could encounter, say, bad weather while
Speaker 1: it was out at sea and be wrecked and all that.
Speaker 1: So it's not like there was no other way for
Speaker 1: ships to sink. But the way in which a rogue
Speaker 1: wave as a concept resembles a sea monster is is
Speaker 1: that it's unexpected, you know that that it reaches up
Speaker 1: out of the deep, that it's much higher than all
Speaker 1: the other waves in the in the ocean and it
Speaker 1: just takes you completely by surprise. And that's key here.
Speaker 1: It's not a situation of like, oh, suddenly all the
Speaker 1: waves were enormous. No, suddenly one wave stands vastly m
Speaker 1: above all the others, much like the mountain of a
Speaker 1: wave in the print we were discussing at the top
Speaker 1: of the episode. Now, obviously, lots of ships in history
Speaker 1: of encountered rough seas, like certain regions of the ocean
Speaker 1: and certain weather patterns can generate lots of chop and
Speaker 1: high waves, but ships are usually made to withstand to
Speaker 1: bad weather. That's part of what ship design is for.
Speaker 1: You know, you say, okay, might encounter this kind of weather,
Speaker 1: so we need to make it this amount strong to
Speaker 1: withstand it. Right, Like, if you know you're going around
Speaker 1: the cape, you're gonna you're gonna build and sail vessels
Speaker 1: designed for for rough seas. Yeah, And these wave patterns
Speaker 1: have long been understood to be predictable within certain parameters.
Speaker 1: You make a ship strong and she'll hold. But what
Speaker 1: we're talking about with these monster waves stories is a
Speaker 1: wave that suddenly appears without warning and is at least
Speaker 1: twice as high as all the other waves. In the sea.
Speaker 1: And of course when you're talking about a wave of
Speaker 1: water that's twice as high as the other waves around it. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's something where you know, the power and destructiveness of
Speaker 1: it doesn't just scale linearly. You know, it becomes a
Speaker 1: new kind of phenomenon you're dealing with. Now. I want
Speaker 1: to be I want to be clear here that we're
Speaker 1: talking about true rogue waves or monster waves, freak waves, etcetera. Here, Uh,
Speaker 1: that do seem to come out of nowhere, and they're
Speaker 1: not to be confused with giant waves generate aated by
Speaker 1: seismic activity like underwater volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, or cascades. That
Speaker 1: though those can be incredible and I mean, just for
Speaker 1: an example, um, I was reading about the earthquake generated
Speaker 1: tsunami in Alaska's LaToya Bay, which, according to Discover magazine,
Speaker 1: was a four hundred feet taller than the Empire State Building. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're they're people have done like illustrations of this online.
Speaker 1: You can find where it's it's just staggering like it
Speaker 1: it created this. I think it was supposed to be
Speaker 1: like seventeen hundred feet roughly. Yeah, according to the University
Speaker 1: of Alaska Fairbanks. Quote. The earthquake shook loose millions of
Speaker 1: cubic yards of dirt and rocks from a forty degree
Speaker 1: slope in the northeast corner of the bay. The rock
Speaker 1: mass displaced a large body of water, causing both of
Speaker 1: the splash wave that rose to one thousand, seven hundred
Speaker 1: forty feet and a gravity wave that was one fifty
Speaker 1: feet high at the head of the bay. The waves
Speaker 1: sheared and stripped the bark from thousands of trees, some
Speaker 1: of them four feet in diameter, just clear cut the
Speaker 1: land next to the bay. Yeah, and this occurred in
Speaker 1: night again, but they see seemingly something like it occurred
Speaker 1: at the same area in thirty six and also in
Speaker 1: the eighteen fifties and eighteen seventy four as well. So
Speaker 1: that's just a taste of the destructive possibilities of seismically
Speaker 1: generated waves in shallow coastal areas. Yeah, And of course,
Speaker 1: so we've got tsunamis as well. Tsunamis happened when something
Speaker 1: happens out in the ocean. Uh, there's like an earthquake,
Speaker 1: you know, shift in the sea floor and eruptions something
Speaker 1: like that, and then there's a pressure wave that goes
Speaker 1: throughout the water column towards the shore. As it nears
Speaker 1: the shore, of course, as it enters the shallow waters,
Speaker 1: that's when it becomes really destructive because that massive pressure
Speaker 1: it rises up out of the water and it, you know,
Speaker 1: keeps coming and flooding against the shore, taking whatever is
Speaker 1: on the shore along with it. Yeah. And now, obviously
Speaker 1: atmospheric conditions are complicated, as we've discussed on the show before.
Speaker 1: The complex systems um a lot of forces conversion together.
Speaker 1: It becomes very difficult to predict atmospheric conditions and weather
Speaker 1: conditions increasingly far in the future. And of course we
Speaker 1: have a very similar situation with the movement of the
Speaker 1: fluids in the ocean. But uh, but but with these cases,
Speaker 1: they make a lot more sense to us, right the tsunami,
Speaker 1: the earthquake generated tsunami, because we can we can easily say, well,
Speaker 1: this is the thing, this is the great event that
Speaker 1: caused the great wave. And the idea of a wave
Speaker 1: just coming out seemingly out of nowhere the sources it
Speaker 1: is seeming aly little more elusive, like it seems to
Speaker 1: be emerging from the complex interplay of different storm patterns
Speaker 1: and occurrents. Yeah, you might be just out in a
Speaker 1: storm with waves that are pretty regular, certain height, coming
Speaker 1: and going and going and going and going, and then
Speaker 1: there's one suddenly the mountain arrives. Or so the stories
Speaker 1: tell us, right, So the question is wind sailors tell
Speaker 1: these stories? Are they true? And so I thought maybe
Speaker 1: we should look at a couple of firsthand accounts. You ready, Robert,
Speaker 1: let's do it. Who's our first adventure? Well? I thought
Speaker 1: we should turn to one firstand account from the Antarctic
Speaker 1: explorer Ernest Shackleton, which came from the famous voyage of
Speaker 1: the James cared. Now, this voyage was one part of
Speaker 1: the overall survival journey after the failure of Shackleton's Antarctic
Speaker 1: expedition in a ship called the Endurance that started in
Speaker 1: nineteen fourteen. And this is an absolutely astounding survival story
Speaker 1: that is worth looking up if you've never read it.
Speaker 1: And this is this is only one part of the story, um,
Speaker 1: but the short version of the context here was a
Speaker 1: nineteen fourteen Shackleton and crew set out for Antarctica in
Speaker 1: this ship, the Endurance, but the ship became trapped in
Speaker 1: ice in the wet El Sea, and the ship eventually sank.
Speaker 1: Of course, this was nineteen fourteen or fifteen. You're in
Speaker 1: Antarctica that you know, your ship sinking is sort of
Speaker 1: a death sentence. Yeah, I mean even today, it's very
Speaker 1: bad news. So the crew made their way, you know,
Speaker 1: they're out there stranded, and the crew made their way
Speaker 1: to an uninhabited island known as Elephant Island, from after
Speaker 1: where the ship sank, and Shackleton reasoned that their only
Speaker 1: hope of survival was seeking help and reinforcement from the
Speaker 1: island of South Georgia, where he knew that there was
Speaker 1: a whaling station. So if they got to where the
Speaker 1: people were at the whaling station there, they could you know,
Speaker 1: come back for rescue with the bigger ship. But South
Speaker 1: Georgia was about eight hundred miles or hundred kilometers away
Speaker 1: over terrible seas, you know, the seas around Antarctica or
Speaker 1: you know, there's their icy there's rough, bad weather. It's
Speaker 1: not a place to be sailing in an unreinforced vessel.
Speaker 1: And the only viable vessel they had for making the voyage,
Speaker 1: because remember their ships sank. The best thing they had
Speaker 1: to use was a twenty two foot or about six
Speaker 1: and a half meter lifeboat called the James Cared, So
Speaker 1: Shackleton and a few others that they left the rest
Speaker 1: of the crew sheltered at Elephant Island and they set
Speaker 1: out on this brutal journey to get a rescue party,
Speaker 1: during which they encountered ice and bad weather. The story
Speaker 1: is harrowing and amazing. They talked about how, you know,
Speaker 1: ice would keep building up on the boat because it's freezing,
Speaker 1: and they'd be soaked by all these horrible waves that
Speaker 1: are pounding on them. It's freezing weather, and they'd have
Speaker 1: to keep constantly chipping the ice off of the boat
Speaker 1: because the ice would weigh the boat down and start
Speaker 1: to make it sink um. And you know, this is
Speaker 1: a this is like a multi week journey. And at
Speaker 1: one point, while Shackleton was at the tiller of the boat,
Speaker 1: uh So, there had been very bad weather, of course,
Speaker 1: and then he's at the tiller one time and he
Speaker 1: thinks he sees the clouds breaking and a clear sky
Speaker 1: up ahead. And then I want to quote from Shackleton's
Speaker 1: own account, quote, I called to the other men that
Speaker 1: the sky was clearing. And then a moment later I
Speaker 1: realized that what I had seen was not a rift
Speaker 1: in the clouds, but the white crest of an enormous wave.
Speaker 1: During twenty six years experience of the ocean in all
Speaker 1: its moods, I had not encountered a wave so gigantic.
Speaker 1: It was a mighty upheaval of the ocean, a thing
Speaker 1: quite apart from the big, white capped seas that had
Speaker 1: been our tireless and me's for many days. I shouted,
Speaker 1: for God's sake, hold on, it's got us. Then came
Speaker 1: a moment of suspense that seemed drawn out into hours
Speaker 1: white surge, the foam of the breaking sea around us.
Speaker 1: We felt our boat lifted and flung forward like a
Speaker 1: cork and breaking surf. We were in a seething chaos
Speaker 1: of tortured water, but somehow the boat lived through it,
Speaker 1: half full of water, sagging to the dead weight and
Speaker 1: shuddering under the blow. We bailed with the energy of
Speaker 1: men fighting for life, flinging the water over the sides,
Speaker 1: with every receptacle that came to our hands, and after
Speaker 1: ten minutes of uncertainty, we felt the boat renew her
Speaker 1: life beneath us. So the fact that this giant wave
Speaker 1: did not sink or just completely smash their tiny boat
Speaker 1: to pieces. Is one of the many bizarre miracles of
Speaker 1: this unbelievable journey. Uh. You know, you always have to wonder,
Speaker 1: like how things like that happened, But apparently it did
Speaker 1: according to Shackleton's telling, and the crew actually did manage
Speaker 1: to reach South Georgia. According to an account by Jerry Pearson,
Speaker 1: though after they got ashore in South Georgia, quote, at
Speaker 1: two am on the first night ashore, Shackleton woke everyone shouting,
Speaker 1: look out, boys, hold on, it's going to break on us.
Speaker 1: It was a nightmare. Shackleton thought that the black snow
Speaker 1: crested cliff above them was a giant wave. Yeah. That
Speaker 1: that is an impressive telling. And but yet at the
Speaker 1: same time, you can easily go either way on it. Right,
Speaker 1: you can say, well, all right, Shackleton is a trustworthy
Speaker 1: source of information and this is what he saw. But
Speaker 1: then on the other hand, we have to say he
Speaker 1: was in an extreme situation. I mean, we've spoken before
Speaker 1: in the show about how extreme conditionings can lead to
Speaker 1: seemingly paranormal encounters. You know, if you've been awake for
Speaker 1: a long time, if you're fighting for your survival, etcetera.
Speaker 1: And all of those elements are are here. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: there are problems with the plausibility of the story. I mean,
Speaker 1: how did this wave not sink and kill them? Yeah,
Speaker 1: So whatever happened obviously made an impression Like this consummate
Speaker 1: survivor had nightmares not of monsters in the deep, but
Speaker 1: of a lone killer wave rolling up out of the
Speaker 1: ocean as high as a mountain side. Uh. And so
Speaker 1: one thing about giant waves like this is that if
Speaker 1: they exist, we shouldn't have necessarily expected to hear eyewitness
Speaker 1: accounts of them all that often in history because of
Speaker 1: a couple of things. Number one, of course, if they
Speaker 1: do exist, for a long time people thought them to
Speaker 1: be very rare. But on top of that, if sailors
Speaker 1: in the wooden ships of olden days encountered a wave
Speaker 1: like this, uh, there was not a good chance of
Speaker 1: them living to tell about it. Right. The goliath wave
Speaker 1: would just arise, suddenly, kill everyone, sink the ship, and
Speaker 1: then melt back into the sea without a trace. How
Speaker 1: would you how would you even know it had happened? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it would be like asking for eyewitness accounts of the
Speaker 1: Grim Reaper. Yeah, because if if if the reapers showing up,
Speaker 1: but then it's probably doing its job. Yeah. But the
Speaker 1: of course, uh, Shackleton's story is not the only one.
Speaker 1: There actually were a lot of stories like this. Many
Speaker 1: mariners told these tales of a giant kill their wave.
Speaker 1: In the book Oceanography in the Days of Sale by
Speaker 1: Ian Jones and Joyce Jones, the authors write about the
Speaker 1: French naval explorer and scientists Dumont d'Urville and his his
Speaker 1: disputes with the French scientists Francois Arago about the upper
Speaker 1: limits of wave height. Quote when the astrolabe and that
Speaker 1: was Derville's ship. When the Astrolabe in eighteen twenty six
Speaker 1: was making its way across the southern stretches of the
Speaker 1: Indian Ocean, it encountered a gale with mountainous seas, in
Speaker 1: which a man was lost overboard. Dumont d'Urville, in his narrative,
Speaker 1: expressed the opinion that the waves reached a height of
Speaker 1: at least eighty to a hundred feet. In an era
Speaker 1: when opinions were being expressed that no wave would exceed
Speaker 1: thirty feet, Dumont d'urville's estimations were received. It seemed with
Speaker 1: some skepticism and France, while Arago rejected and even ridiculed
Speaker 1: Derville's claim. Basically, you know, this is just a seamen's fancy. Uh.
Speaker 1: He referred in writing to the quote truly prodigious waves
Speaker 1: with which the lively imagination of certain navigator's delights in
Speaker 1: covering the seas. That sounded like a burn. That was
Speaker 1: a bit of a burn. I think, yeah, I think
Speaker 1: he was being a bit dismissive here. But maybe we
Speaker 1: should take a break and then when we come back,
Speaker 1: we can talk about some physical evidence that actually points
Speaker 1: to the existence of waves like this. All right, we're back.
Speaker 1: We've we've discussed accounts anecdotal evidence of giant waves, of
Speaker 1: freak waves, of rogue waves. But now we're going to
Speaker 1: get into what the science has to say. What what
Speaker 1: kind of proof is there, if any, to substantiate these claims, Right,
Speaker 1: you'd want some kind of physical evidence other than just
Speaker 1: people saying they saw a giant wave, because people say
Speaker 1: they saw all sorts of things. But uh, you know,
Speaker 1: ultimately though, this is why we have science. This is
Speaker 1: why we have a recording equipment. This is so we
Speaker 1: can actually validate that that waves of this nature exists. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so we talked about the French scientists France while
Speaker 1: Rago being severe really doubting that waves like this existed.
Speaker 1: And from a scientific point of view, there had long
Speaker 1: been reason to doubt these accounts of gigantic monster waves,
Speaker 1: not that it was impossible for a giant wave to exist,
Speaker 1: but that monstrous waves of the kind reported by mariners,
Speaker 1: you know, the kind that would cause some of the
Speaker 1: damage attributed to them, they were thought to only come
Speaker 1: about on the scale of maybe once in hundreds or
Speaker 1: thousands of years. You know, it's like the thousand year
Speaker 1: storm kind of thing. So like every thousand years a
Speaker 1: wave like this might occur, but then then just might
Speaker 1: not be people around to see it. Yeah, exactly. So
Speaker 1: you know you've got this question. We're Shackleton and all
Speaker 1: these others exaggerating, hallucinating, misremembering was this the was the
Speaker 1: mountain that flows like a mermaid or something? So, I mean,
Speaker 1: on one hand, you have that argument, right that maybe
Speaker 1: they're just not occurring enough for anyone to ever see them.
Speaker 1: So it doesn't seem right that we have numerous accounts
Speaker 1: um where where people say they witnessed them. But of
Speaker 1: course we also have to consider that, you know the
Speaker 1: fact that ships and seamen again have always gone missing
Speaker 1: like this. You look to the uh, the sheer number
Speaker 1: of ship ACTU, you look to accounts of human activities
Speaker 1: on the sea. Ships have always sunk. Ships have always
Speaker 1: encountered bad weather or various other uh you know, things
Speaker 1: that would cause them to perish. Yeah. And another thing
Speaker 1: we should think about is that ships sink and disappear
Speaker 1: at a rate that would absolutely set our hair on
Speaker 1: fire if it was like airplanes or something. You know,
Speaker 1: if there's like one major airline crash, people freak out.
Speaker 1: But ships go missing or sink all the time. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was looking around for some stats on this and
Speaker 1: today and again, as humans command the sea more than
Speaker 1: ever before, more ships are on the sea than than
Speaker 1: at any point in human history, and we're looking at
Speaker 1: a loss of something like a hundred large vessels every year. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's about an average. Yeah, Yeah, I've seen it all since.
Speaker 1: The stat also thrown out there that it basically amounts
Speaker 1: to two vessels per week, and that's just large vessels.
Speaker 1: When you add in smaller vessels, it's even more. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And now, and of course some of these are gonna
Speaker 1: be clear cases right where they say, oh, you know
Speaker 1: this was the ships sunk because you know it ran
Speaker 1: aground here, some sort of a collision here, et cetera.
Speaker 1: But in other cases it could inevitably remain a mystery
Speaker 1: is just you know, a case by case scenario. So
Speaker 1: we have to ask these cases of the mysterious cases, uh,
Speaker 1: the very sort of case that may have led to
Speaker 1: various nautical superstitions like the Bermuda triangle uh and and
Speaker 1: an olden times sea monsters. Could these be due to
Speaker 1: some manner of rogue wave? Yeah? Exactly. And so to
Speaker 1: answer that question, I think one good thing, just one
Speaker 1: good place to start, and where people did look for
Speaker 1: a long time was for physical evidence of damage caused
Speaker 1: by rogue waves. Yeah and uh And for the longest
Speaker 1: we simply didn't have any solid evidence. Uh. And we
Speaker 1: didn't have any evidence of them, a solid evidence of
Speaker 1: them occurring. We didn't have footage or anything. Uh. So
Speaker 1: all we still had were just those, um those various
Speaker 1: bits of anecdotal and from anecdotal evidence and then experts
Speaker 1: weighing in on what seemed possible and like. But of course,
Speaker 1: if waves like this were occurring, they should in some
Speaker 1: ways cause damage that we should be able to see
Speaker 1: and detect, because, I mean, what water is amazingly powerful. People,
Speaker 1: we do not have good intuitions about the physical power
Speaker 1: of moving water. Uh. This may come from our experience,
Speaker 1: like swimming for pleasure or splashing in a bathtub. You know,
Speaker 1: we're moving water just glides gently and gracefully around the body,
Speaker 1: causing no harm at all. But our intuitions about water
Speaker 1: really fail when we encounter large masses of fast moving fluids.
Speaker 1: Like the way people behave in flash floods is a
Speaker 1: great example of this. You will a lot of times
Speaker 1: see people who appear to think they can just wade
Speaker 1: through knee high moving floodwaters, only to discover tragically that
Speaker 1: it just washes you away instantly, or in any cases
Speaker 1: they think they can drive through. Oh yeah, and and
Speaker 1: it's tragic, but it it's It reflects the fact that
Speaker 1: our intuitions about the power of moving water are not good.
Speaker 1: We underestimate it. Likewise, with giant wave, you know, we
Speaker 1: may be used to playing in the surf on a
Speaker 1: beach vacation or something where the waves are harmless. They're fun.
Speaker 1: You can glide with pleasure over each peak and trough,
Speaker 1: but sufficiently huge walls of moving water that are moving
Speaker 1: fast can act more or less like huge walls of
Speaker 1: concrete smashing right into you at speed, just like tsunamis
Speaker 1: can you know, tear down solid buildings and trees. A
Speaker 1: giant wave of crashing into a ship or a structure
Speaker 1: can cause devastating physical damage. It hits, it moves, it
Speaker 1: twists the structure. I mean it, It's like a hand
Speaker 1: of a god indeed, and besides a heavy hitter. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So if you ask, was there ever physical damage that
Speaker 1: would indicate the existence of seemingly impossible rogue waves like
Speaker 1: before we had direct records of one, I think the
Speaker 1: answer is yes, there were. There were some very chilling
Speaker 1: and mysterious clues left in the wreckage of battered ships
Speaker 1: and structures in or near the water. Uh. There there
Speaker 1: are stories going way back to like waves crashing against
Speaker 1: lighthouses that that are so far up off the water
Speaker 1: it seems impossible that like a wave could have damaged them.
Speaker 1: You know, lighthouses more than a hundred feet up off
Speaker 1: the normal waterline, with windows smashed out and and stuff
Speaker 1: like that, And you'd be like how did that happen?
Speaker 1: In Nineto, the mobile offshore drilling platform, the Ocean Ranger,
Speaker 1: was apparently damaged by a giant wave off the coast
Speaker 1: of Canada. It sustained damage to its ballast control room,
Speaker 1: which only could have happened if there was an extremely
Speaker 1: high wave, and this led to a chain reaction of
Speaker 1: events that caused the platform to sink, and tragically, all
Speaker 1: eighty four crew members died. Everyone aboard died when this
Speaker 1: thing sank. But there were also there there have been
Speaker 1: stories all throughout the twentieth century of like ocean liners
Speaker 1: about you know, passenger vessels and cargo vessels and naval
Speaker 1: vessels that would report being suddenly hit by a giant
Speaker 1: wave that the just ricked havoc upon the ship. You know,
Speaker 1: it would damage the bridge, it would rip off the
Speaker 1: mast and rigging. Sometimes it would rip away lifeboats that
Speaker 1: were like you know, had deal bolts holding them in place.
Speaker 1: Things that wouldn't make sense if it was just rocking
Speaker 1: in normal bad weather. But even with all this physical
Speaker 1: evidence of structures and ships being hit by these powerful events,
Speaker 1: it will still be hard to missure and confirm the
Speaker 1: existence of these giant rogue waves firsthand, because number one,
Speaker 1: you can't predict in advance when one will appear, Like
Speaker 1: there are obviously better places and times to look for them,
Speaker 1: but you can't know when one's going to happen or where.
Speaker 1: And then if when one does show up, you suddenly
Speaker 1: have a number of priorities yeah, exactly ahead of perhaps
Speaker 1: recording it. And that being said, we are increasingly in
Speaker 1: an age of just ubiquitous recording equipment. So who knows
Speaker 1: what the very near future will bring. Yeah, And so
Speaker 1: when one does appear that there's generally not time to
Speaker 1: react and track and observe it, like you're saying, it's
Speaker 1: just there, and then within a few seconds you will
Speaker 1: very possibly be dead. So the key here really is
Speaker 1: to to not, of course, not just depend on eyewitness accounts,
Speaker 1: which we already had, and so there's an inherent problem there, uh,
Speaker 1: And we can't go looking for them, uh per se
Speaker 1: because their difficulties there. What you need are essentially machine recordings,
Speaker 1: passive detections to some sort of detection system that that
Speaker 1: will say, it will tell you like what what sort
Speaker 1: of wave activity is occurring near a given vessel or
Speaker 1: a near a given offshore platform? Yeah, and one that
Speaker 1: is lucky or unlucky enough to catch one in the act.
Speaker 1: And so the history of rogue wave science I think
Speaker 1: really changed in nine right, because that's when we finally
Speaker 1: did get this this sort of evidence. So it was
Speaker 1: January one in the North Sea, uh, the North Sea
Speaker 1: platform drop Ner, which is a gas platform. This is
Speaker 1: built in nineteen eighty four and it consists of seven
Speaker 1: risers and even today it's an important complex in the
Speaker 1: Norwegian oil industry. So this would be situated like in
Speaker 1: the North Sea between Norway and Scotland. Basically, yeah, so
Speaker 1: what's your you know, this is like these are rough seas,
Speaker 1: but on this particular day, equipment aboard the platform, namely
Speaker 1: a downward looking laser recorded a monster of a wave,
Speaker 1: so significant wave height in the area. This is just
Speaker 1: like the average sort of wave height that was occurring
Speaker 1: was already twelve meters or thirty nine point thirty seven feet, Okay,
Speaker 1: so everything was already like really, that's that sounds horrible.
Speaker 1: I would not I wouldn't want to be anywhere near that.
Speaker 1: You know, you don't want to take your James Carrot
Speaker 1: out on that, right. But then according to the data,
Speaker 1: a wave rolled in that was twenty five point six
Speaker 1: meters high or eight three point nine feet. Now it,
Speaker 1: as is often the case, you you might just hear
Speaker 1: a number and it might not mean anything to you,
Speaker 1: but do your best to stop for a second here
Speaker 1: and picture it. Yeah, we're talking a seven story building
Speaker 1: of a wave and uh and it's coming at the platform.
Speaker 1: And indeed the platform sustained h minor damage, luckily, but
Speaker 1: that damage was enough to to verify the reality of
Speaker 1: the waves. So, in other words, showing that this wasn't
Speaker 1: just a recording anomaly where you know, the laser went
Speaker 1: wonky or something a seagull flew unwritten or whatever would
Speaker 1: cause it to to to produce some sort of an anomaly.
Speaker 1: Uh No, we also have the physical damage to the
Speaker 1: structure to back up what happened. Yeah, so they've got
Speaker 1: the they've got the accurate scientific reading from this instrument,
Speaker 1: and they've got corroborating evidence. So it wasn't just a
Speaker 1: freak measurement. It was in fact a freak wave, a
Speaker 1: rogue wave. And so in really the first day of
Speaker 1: the new year, we entered an era in which the
Speaker 1: rogue wave was no longer purely a myth, it was
Speaker 1: a reality, and from there we enter the decades of
Speaker 1: figuring out, well, what's the frequency, what's the cause, and
Speaker 1: ultimately what is the risk. Yeah, now, so you might
Speaker 1: ask the question, Okay, we've just been talking about big waves.
Speaker 1: What is a rogue wave? Technically I think alluded to
Speaker 1: this earlier, But a rogue wave is defined in relative terms, right,
Speaker 1: So it's a wave that's greater than twice the size
Speaker 1: of all the other waves in the same area at
Speaker 1: the same time. Uh. And yes, so rogue waves do
Speaker 1: occur even in the context of very powerful regular wave patterns.
Speaker 1: So even in places where the waves are unusually high
Speaker 1: and choppy, you can get these things that stand out
Speaker 1: that are more than twice as tall as the other
Speaker 1: waves around them. Because again this North Sea example, like
Speaker 1: those were some pretty tall waves. I mean, weren't we
Speaker 1: talking earlier about um in about earlier experts thinking that
Speaker 1: like thirty feet was more or less the limit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that that was long believed to be about where waves
Speaker 1: capped off, at least in the kind of conditions you'd
Speaker 1: expect every year. Right, And so the the just the
Speaker 1: ambient wave height in the in the area was already uh.
Speaker 1: In excess of that, now, I guess maybe we should
Speaker 1: talk about how rogue waves exactly cause damage to ships, right,
Speaker 1: because there there are multiple waves that being hit by
Speaker 1: this flowing mountain, this giant wall of water can sink
Speaker 1: you and destroy you. Of course, anytime a ship is
Speaker 1: hit by a giant wave, its physical structure can just
Speaker 1: be directly damaged by like the force of the impact.
Speaker 1: And this is this is especially relevant to the superstructure
Speaker 1: of a ship. Superstructure is what you call all that
Speaker 1: stuff that's sticking up off the top of the hull,
Speaker 1: like the mast, the rigging, the bridge, the lifeboat's uh,
Speaker 1: it can all be smashed two bits or ripped apart.
Speaker 1: And of course a lake's worth of water is going
Speaker 1: to wash over the top of the vessel, and if
Speaker 1: there's a way for the vessel to take this water on,
Speaker 1: it very well can do that. So that's your first problem,
Speaker 1: and I think that's an easy one to miss because again,
Speaker 1: like you said, we we just we often don't think
Speaker 1: about just the sheer punch of that water, especially when
Speaker 1: it is like a fist the size of a lay
Speaker 1: of of lakes worth of water. Yeah, well, just imagine
Speaker 1: you are standing in the bridge of the ship, and
Speaker 1: this wall of water comes across you. So it washes
Speaker 1: over the hull, it washes over the deck, and it
Speaker 1: smashes into the bridge. And what what very well could
Speaker 1: happen there is if you know, if the bridge is
Speaker 1: not in some significant way destroyed, it may well smash
Speaker 1: through all the windows and throw all that glass at
Speaker 1: you and wash into the bridge. But so if it
Speaker 1: hits a ship laterally, like hits a ship on the side,
Speaker 1: the ship can be capsized to buy a rogue wave,
Speaker 1: flipped over on its side or upside down, which of
Speaker 1: course can lead to foundering. You don't want your ship sideways,
Speaker 1: um if it gets If a ship gets hit head
Speaker 1: on by a rogue wave, this can also harm it
Speaker 1: caused major problems. It can lead to the bow or
Speaker 1: the stern or the ship being lifted in an angle
Speaker 1: up out of the water. And if it's a large ship,
Speaker 1: this can be really dangerous because Robert, you remember that
Speaker 1: scene in Titanic, you know where the ship starts sinking
Speaker 1: from the bow wind and the stern of the boat
Speaker 1: is lifted up at an angle in the air. Ship
Speaker 1: holes are extremely heavy and they're not designed to withstand
Speaker 1: sheer stresses on the hull of that immensity, like the
Speaker 1: structure can't support half of the way to the ship
Speaker 1: hanging up in the air. So the Titanic, of course
Speaker 1: kind of cracked like a celery stalk. We we I
Speaker 1: think I was reading that. The main theory now is
Speaker 1: that the crack started at the bottom at a weak
Speaker 1: point along the base of the ship, and then it
Speaker 1: just cracked off, and then the bow sank, and then
Speaker 1: the stern bobbed for a bit and then sank as well.
Speaker 1: But of course giant waves can cause other large ships
Speaker 1: to do the same. So if the wave washes over you,
Speaker 1: you can end up with one end of the ship
Speaker 1: sort of lifted, poking up out of the water as
Speaker 1: it comes out of this wave motion, and that stress
Speaker 1: can crack or or otherwise significantly damaged the hull, which
Speaker 1: of course again can make you sink. So there there
Speaker 1: are a lot of ways that a giant wave can
Speaker 1: mess you up. You just don't want them at all.
Speaker 1: All Right, we're gonna take one more break. When we
Speaker 1: come back, we're gonna discuss some of the causes for
Speaker 1: rogue waves, and also a very recent paper that explored
Speaker 1: the question just how often are these occurring and how
Speaker 1: powerful are they? Thank thank all, we're back. So we're
Speaker 1: looking at the question first of what causes rogue waves.
Speaker 1: And this is not a fully settled question. I think
Speaker 1: that there are some, uh some competing and not necessarily
Speaker 1: mutually exclusive hypotheses here, right, So first let's go back
Speaker 1: to the dropping or wave for a moment. According to
Speaker 1: the European Center for Medium Range Weather Forecasts high resolution
Speaker 1: retrospective forecast forecasts that he's going backwards in time retrocasts
Speaker 1: um quote suggests that waves driven by a southward moving
Speaker 1: polar low interacted with a substantial local wind generated wave
Speaker 1: system to produce the conditions conducive to the observed large
Speaker 1: rogue wave. And that's from work by Bitlow at all. Okay,
Speaker 1: so that's saying that there are there were conflicting wave
Speaker 1: patterns that that came together in a way that they
Speaker 1: think created this massive wave. It was something about the
Speaker 1: way that these two different patterns interacted when they when
Speaker 1: they crashed together. Right. And you know, again, storm systems,
Speaker 1: weather and the movements of the ocean. These are complex
Speaker 1: systems that are often difficult for us to understand. But
Speaker 1: I think we can all understand the power of convergence,
Speaker 1: you know, when you have have I mean, we see
Speaker 1: this is something that's understandable about whether, right, we have
Speaker 1: two fronts coming together. Um, you know, we realize that
Speaker 1: that can be bad news. Um and uh, and so
Speaker 1: it seemingly we've had a similar situation here. Um, there's
Speaker 1: two energetic systems coming together, and it creates conditions that
Speaker 1: are optimal for this extra large wave to rise up
Speaker 1: out of the sea. And I'll talk more about stuff
Speaker 1: like that in just a minute. They also point to
Speaker 1: the work of cavalry at all from six and they
Speaker 1: point out that also that we shouldn't think of rogue
Speaker 1: waves as ultrawere altra rare once a generation occurrences. Rather quote,
Speaker 1: such waves are a regular part of large storms, and
Speaker 1: coming across them is just a matter of probability, depending
Speaker 1: on the spatial and temporal scales considered. So the dropping
Speaker 1: your wave was probably a result of these two crossing
Speaker 1: low frequency wave systems, and it's it's, it's and it
Speaker 1: may be more common than we initially thought, especially with
Speaker 1: fast moving storms. Yeah, So what exactly is like the
Speaker 1: physical mechanism that causes them in these situations. Well that's
Speaker 1: still being investigated. But there do appear to be several
Speaker 1: potential causes and explanations. Like I said, I think these
Speaker 1: are not mutually exclusive, like some might explain some rogue
Speaker 1: waves and others might explain others. According to the n
Speaker 1: o A, A picks out a couple of main ones
Speaker 1: that it identifies as as the primary candidates. One is
Speaker 1: wave interference. So when you study the propagation of waves,
Speaker 1: and this is not just waves in water, this is
Speaker 1: waves of all kinds, like electromagnetic radiation waves, sound waves,
Speaker 1: waves through matter like like you see in water. When
Speaker 1: you see these, uh, when you look at the propagation
Speaker 1: of these types of waves, you begin to see that
Speaker 1: when patterns of waves come into contact with one another,
Speaker 1: they create an interference pattern. And this means that waves can,
Speaker 1: for example, sort of cancel each other out. This is
Speaker 1: also known as destructive interference. Uh. You might have seen
Speaker 1: a demonstration of this with like speakers. If you take
Speaker 1: like sound speakers and you place them at just the
Speaker 1: perfect distance apart away from you, the sound waves can
Speaker 1: actually cancel each other out, and suddenly you're not hearing
Speaker 1: the sound they're making anymore. But if you turn off
Speaker 1: one of the speakers, then you can hear it again
Speaker 1: because they're not canceling each other out anymore. So that's
Speaker 1: destructive interference when the peaks and the tropics are um
Speaker 1: are alternating canceling each other out. But peaks and tropics
Speaker 1: can also line up to multiply one another into giant waves,
Speaker 1: and this is known as constructive interference. Ironically, it's the
Speaker 1: constructive interference that is destructive to our stuff, our ships,
Speaker 1: and our structures. Uh. So that's one thing, just the
Speaker 1: normal kinds of wave wave interference patterns. Another thing sounds
Speaker 1: like it taps into the explanation we were just discussing,
Speaker 1: and is the interaction of water currents with wave patterns
Speaker 1: created by storms. Essentially, when the current is flowing one
Speaker 1: way and storm winds are pushing surface waves the opposite way,
Speaker 1: this can cause an interaction that shortens the frequency of waves,
Speaker 1: and this sometimes leads to waves joining together and forming
Speaker 1: these gigantic rogue waves. But there's one other major proposed
Speaker 1: mechanism or proposed explanation I was reading about two uh,
Speaker 1: and this is a hypothesis that deals with nonlinear effects
Speaker 1: so the details of this are far over my head,
Speaker 1: but I'll do my best. Basically, some research shows that
Speaker 1: you can actually predict the formation of rogue waves if
Speaker 1: you model ocean waves with reference to to a nonlinear
Speaker 1: version of the Shreddinger equation, which of course we normally
Speaker 1: would use to model the behavior of objects at the
Speaker 1: quantum scale, such as individual atoms. But the the interesting
Speaker 1: thing about matter about objects at the quantum scale, like
Speaker 1: atoms or electrons or photons, is that in many ways
Speaker 1: they seem to behave like waves. You know. That's one
Speaker 1: of the great paradoxes of quantum mechanics is, well, how
Speaker 1: can a particle behave like a wave pattern? But the
Speaker 1: Shreddinger equation, and it's highly predictive, it tells us yes,
Speaker 1: they do in fact behave like a wave pattern, and
Speaker 1: you need to model them like a wave pattern or
Speaker 1: you can't predict what they're gonna do. So the shredding
Speaker 1: your equation is is useful at modeling and predicting these
Speaker 1: behavior of these wave patterns. But but also apparently the
Speaker 1: non linear version of it is relevant to predicting the
Speaker 1: behavior of waves at large scale, like waves in the
Speaker 1: ocean and the mathematical functions underlying this explanation. Like I said,
Speaker 1: they're way over my head. But essentially it's a model
Speaker 1: that shows how normal interacting wave patterns, just you know,
Speaker 1: standard waves going back and forth in the ocean can
Speaker 1: sometimes become unstable and result in one wave, one wave
Speaker 1: peak leaching or sucking energy from the surrounding wave peaks,
Speaker 1: reducing the surrounding waves and this one wave of becoming
Speaker 1: huge in the process. So that that's another proposed explanation.
Speaker 1: So where are we currently are in our understanding of
Speaker 1: rogue waves. That's probably the next logical question to get to,
Speaker 1: because if we've discussed already, it's like we we've we
Speaker 1: we haven't known for sure they exist for too terribly
Speaker 1: long and we're still we're still competing or multiple scenarios
Speaker 1: that may explain how they're occurring. Well, I looked to
Speaker 1: a two thousand nineteen research paper from the University of
Speaker 1: Southampton in the UK, and basically what they did is
Speaker 1: they looked at that they decided to take instead of
Speaker 1: like a global look at the data, they tried to
Speaker 1: isolate it. Uh. They looked to fifteen different buoys on
Speaker 1: the US Western Cboard and they looked at a twenty
Speaker 1: year window, so we're looking at ninety four through as
Speaker 1: being the window of data that they were looking at,
Speaker 1: isolated to this this region, and uh, this study revealed
Speaker 1: the following. So, first of all, rogue waves vary greatly
Speaker 1: depending on the area of sea and the time period
Speaker 1: focused on the first part of that I think makes
Speaker 1: sense because we discuss it just needs to be twice
Speaker 1: as big as the as the waves in the area.
Speaker 1: And also this is very key. Across to the two
Speaker 1: decade windows studied, instances of rogue waves fell slightly while
Speaker 1: the size of the individual waves increased. Okay, so there's
Speaker 1: less of them, but they're more powerful when you do
Speaker 1: get them right. Kind of a good news bad news situation, right. Uh.
Speaker 1: They also found found that you know, rogue waves are
Speaker 1: more prevalent, prevalent and uh and severe in winter months,
Speaker 1: and they're they're happening with increasing of frequency within calmer
Speaker 1: background seas. Oh that's interesting. Now we know from previous
Speaker 1: just first of all, from anecdotes, you know, common sailors knowledge,
Speaker 1: but also I think for more recent research that there
Speaker 1: are rogue wave hot spots in the world where there's
Speaker 1: particularly dangerous sorts of interaction between ocean currents and weather.
Speaker 1: I know, for example, one place that's you have to
Speaker 1: be a rogue wave of hot spot is like the
Speaker 1: southern Cape of Africa. You know, if you're you're going
Speaker 1: around the Cape of Good Hope. It's long been understood
Speaker 1: as treacherous waters. Yeah, you know, it long believed to
Speaker 1: be a place of bad weather, but also apparently a
Speaker 1: place of rogue waves. So everyone's probably wondering, well, how
Speaker 1: often are these things occurring? Again, there was once this
Speaker 1: idea that these were once in a lifetime events that
Speaker 1: it was it was like seeing a unicorn on the
Speaker 1: high seas. But it looks like now we're talking many
Speaker 1: times per day in the global ocean um and then
Speaker 1: you know, that's a ship that's a concern for ships
Speaker 1: at sea, not only you know, the global shipping industry,
Speaker 1: but other vessels as well. A two thousand four study
Speaker 1: identified more than ten giant waves above the twenty five
Speaker 1: meter or eighty two footmark during a mere three week window.
Speaker 1: It's one of those things that makes you thankful that
Speaker 1: the ocean is big and we're not on most of
Speaker 1: it most of the time. But there's a lot of
Speaker 1: us out there and a lot of our stuff out
Speaker 1: there at any given time. Also, again, yeah we're there.
Speaker 1: There's more human activity on the oceans than ever before. Uh,
Speaker 1: just to give everyone a taste of just that the
Speaker 1: shipping industry alone, because because the shipping industry is huge,
Speaker 1: it's easy to take for granted, but it is how
Speaker 1: Uh most of the goods make their way around the world.
Speaker 1: They're not traveling by airplane, they're traveling via ships. Uh.
Speaker 1: Coin I found some good stats on this from the
Speaker 1: International Chamber of Shipping. So first of all, the international
Speaker 1: shipping industry is responsible for the carriage of around nine
Speaker 1: of world trade and a given ships shipping vessel, we're
Speaker 1: talking of a two hundred million dollar investment. Like that's
Speaker 1: the when when you see these ships that are laden
Speaker 1: with shipping containers, Uh, that's a two hundred million dollar vessel.
Speaker 1: You're probably looking at the operation of merchant ships generates
Speaker 1: an estimated annual income of over half a trillion US
Speaker 1: dollars and freight rates. They're over fifty thousand merchant ships
Speaker 1: trading internationally, transporting every kind of cargo, and the world
Speaker 1: fleet and shipping is it's in over a hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty nations and manned by over a million seafarers of
Speaker 1: virtually every nationality. So it's it's immense and there's more
Speaker 1: of it than ever before. And then we have these
Speaker 1: waves out there. Yeah, and so the idea that these
Speaker 1: waves could be increasing in intensity or becoming more dangerous,
Speaker 1: that's pretty scary because it doesn't just mean like it's
Speaker 1: scarier for people who physically go out on the water.
Speaker 1: Of course, it certainly is, but it also represents a
Speaker 1: threat to UH, to the world economy, you know, the
Speaker 1: economics of goods moving back and forth. Um. And then
Speaker 1: just some more data from this particular paper, the University
Speaker 1: of Southampton paper, UH just considering the u s. West Coast,
Speaker 1: which was the focus of his study. They say that
Speaker 1: here you have of total US containerized trade and that
Speaker 1: this is the largest u AS gateway for container vessels.
Speaker 1: And even when ships are not sunk or capsized by
Speaker 1: a wave like this, there's a still the risk of
Speaker 1: rogue wave induced collisions. So you know, that's another thing
Speaker 1: to consider. If you have two boats that are near
Speaker 1: each other, UH, and you have an enormous wave disrupting
Speaker 1: the waters, then there's a possibility that things could uh
Speaker 1: slam together, which they're certainly not designed to do. Then,
Speaker 1: on top of that, this is a region where there's
Speaker 1: just a high volume of tanker, bolt carrier, roll on,
Speaker 1: roll off, passenger fishing ships, um, you know, all focused
Speaker 1: around the ports in the region. And then of course
Speaker 1: you have a fair amount of activity just to service
Speaker 1: offshore structures in the oil and gas industry. Coming back
Speaker 1: to in our examples with oil platforms earlier, rogue waves
Speaker 1: have also swept people out to sea in California and
Speaker 1: Oregon and uh. And then one other point, the researchers
Speaker 1: indicated the global climate change isn't necessarily a factor in
Speaker 1: all of this. Um. Part of this is that there's
Speaker 1: just a great deal of oscillation with the with with
Speaker 1: the size of these waves, and we're dealing with such
Speaker 1: a complex system and we have only two decades of
Speaker 1: rogue wave data to deal with. You. But at the
Speaker 1: same time, they don't seem to be ruling it out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean because of increasing energy, right if the sea
Speaker 1: levels arising in the oceans are getting warmer and you're
Speaker 1: getting more intense weather patterns. Yeah, So basically they're not
Speaker 1: saying it's not the cause. They're just saying we were
Speaker 1: not presenting that with this data. Ultimately, they again only
Speaker 1: two decades worth of data to go on. Here, I
Speaker 1: was reading an interview from back in two thousand and
Speaker 1: ten with the author Susan Casey, who wrote a book
Speaker 1: that I read a few years ago and I absolutely loved.
Speaker 1: It's sort of a half memoir, half science book about
Speaker 1: the Fara Lawn islands off the off sort of around
Speaker 1: where San Francisco is um and and about great white sharks,
Speaker 1: and that that book was called The Devil's Teeth. But
Speaker 1: this interview was about another book she wrote, apparently a
Speaker 1: book about giant waves called The Wave, published in two
Speaker 1: thousand ten, And in the interview she talks about how
Speaker 1: companies that write insurance policies for maritime voyages are concerned
Speaker 1: about increasing risk, and part of this risk seems to
Speaker 1: be concerned about rogue waves. She says, quote Lloyd's of London.
Speaker 1: Of course, you know, big maritime insurer Lloyd's of London
Speaker 1: is actually quite concerned about cruise ships. One of the
Speaker 1: guys said to me, this is a high concentration of risk.
Speaker 1: You've got five thousand people on boats that are getting
Speaker 1: bigger and bigger, and they're going into gnarly or and
Speaker 1: gnarly or places. They're all over Antarctica now. For example,
Speaker 1: recently one of the hardier cruise ships got hit by
Speaker 1: a hundred foot rogue wave and all of its navigation
Speaker 1: equipment got knocked out and the windows got broken. During
Speaker 1: another recent cruise in Antarctica, all all the people ended
Speaker 1: up in the water, which isn't a good situation. By
Speaker 1: the grace of God, there was another boat nearby. Now
Speaker 1: we're talking about big picture risk here. I just want
Speaker 1: to stress that we're not trure more in this episode.
Speaker 1: We're not attempting to scare you out of your next
Speaker 1: oceanic voyage cruise or anything of that nature. Though I
Speaker 1: think if that were our goal, we could do a
Speaker 1: very good job of it. But well, no, that is
Speaker 1: not our goal. I mean, but yeah, there are obviously,
Speaker 1: um going to be huge risks to ocean ocean voyages
Speaker 1: of all kinds, and one of the biggest impacts that
Speaker 1: would be there would obviously be trade. I do think
Speaker 1: it's interesting that there are still uh such mysterious, unresolved
Speaker 1: questions about the behavior of waves of waves in the ocean.
Speaker 1: I mean, this seems like something that people have been
Speaker 1: aware of for a very long time, been studying for
Speaker 1: a very long time. But it's one of those kind
Speaker 1: of chaotic and complex things that maybe we don't often
Speaker 1: stop to to appreciate the mystery and majesty of what's
Speaker 1: easy to just watch wave activity in the ocean, I said,
Speaker 1: on the beach or on the deck of a ship,
Speaker 1: and and watch the waves. And it's calming, and it's
Speaker 1: it's rhythmic. There seems to be a I mean, there
Speaker 1: is an order to it, but it seems to there
Speaker 1: seems to be an order that we can grasp, that
Speaker 1: we can that we can understand from a human perspective,
Speaker 1: And of course, really it's it's ultimately more the domain
Speaker 1: of of increasingly complex um computer simulation programs, if not
Speaker 1: the machinations of some sort of vengeful sea god. Well,
Speaker 1: I think one of the reasons we're so tempted to
Speaker 1: wish to think of the waves as regular as because
Speaker 1: we can listen to them is because it's auditory. Because
Speaker 1: it's auditory information instead of just being visual information, it
Speaker 1: assumes a kind of background rhythm whenever we're by the ocean,
Speaker 1: or we hear something recorded by the ocean, or we're
Speaker 1: on the ocean. Uh. You know, the wave of activity
Speaker 1: becomes the the steady, reliable percussion of our lives. And
Speaker 1: then the idea that one of these waves could suddenly
Speaker 1: reach out and be not like the others, be this
Speaker 1: angry hand of God feels like a violation of what
Speaker 1: nature has asked us to expect. Yeah, the white noise
Speaker 1: app that I used to sleep every night never gives
Speaker 1: me a rogue way. This is always just consistent, calming
Speaker 1: oceanic activity. What if it just suddenly screamed your name?
Speaker 1: All right, Well, there you have it, you know, as
Speaker 1: as we've mentioned before. You know, we were both landsmen here,
Speaker 1: so we would love to hear from the sea folk
Speaker 1: out there. Uh, if you have any anything to add
Speaker 1: on this, Have you encountered uh sizeable waves or even
Speaker 1: if you have, you witnessed or seeing the handiwork of
Speaker 1: something that could be classified as a rogue wave, We
Speaker 1: would love to hear from you. Absolutely. Yeah, please get
Speaker 1: in touch. In the meantime, if you want to listen
Speaker 1: to this episode or more episodes of Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: Your Mind, head on over to Stuff to Blow Your
Speaker 1: mind dot com. That's where you'll find the landing page
Speaker 1: for this episode. Uh, and that also features the the
Speaker 1: artwork the great Wave off kind of God what. You
Speaker 1: can see this image in case you you're not sure
Speaker 1: you've seen it before, and if you want to interact
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Speaker 1: the discussion module. It's called Stuff to Blow your Mind
Speaker 1: discussion Module. It is a Facebook group, uh it is.
Speaker 1: It's a pretty decent place as far as social media goes. Uh.
Speaker 1: One of my more one of my few preferred social
Speaker 1: media destinations these days. Literally the only reason I still
Speaker 1: have a Facebook account, So make it your reason as well,
Speaker 1: and as always too if you want to. If you
Speaker 1: want to support our show, you know you can buy
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Speaker 1: But the best thing you can do is just rate
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Speaker 1: do so, and tell a friend if an episode really
Speaker 1: resonated with you, share it with someone else. I mean, really,
Speaker 1: that's the That's the bread and butter of this show's appeal.
Speaker 1: Big thank you as always to our excellent audio producer,
Speaker 1: Tory Harrison. If you would like to get in touch
Speaker 1: with us with feedback about this episode or any other,
Speaker 1: to suggest a topic for the future, or just to
Speaker 1: say hello. Tell us about rogue waves, tell us about
Speaker 1: waves in general, tell us your stories of the high seas.
Speaker 1: You can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
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