Speaker 1: By Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe
Speaker 1: McCormick and Robert. You remember back in the day when
Speaker 1: we did that pair of episodes about urban evolution, about
Speaker 1: how certain animals and plants were adapting to the ways
Speaker 1: that humans are changing the landscape on the surface of
Speaker 1: the Earth, changing it to build cities, to build suburbs
Speaker 1: and all that. And and along with all this change
Speaker 1: in the landscape come new ecological niches, new opportunities for nutrition,
Speaker 1: new ways of surviving, new new incentives and disincentives, and
Speaker 1: along with that you get this whole new brand of
Speaker 1: evolution is the kinds of creatures that evolved to live
Speaker 1: in environments that we've created. Now, of course, it's easy
Speaker 1: to think about ways that that might happen in in
Speaker 1: city is on land, but you can also think about
Speaker 1: the fact that sometimes people refer to like aircraft carriers
Speaker 1: and large naval vessels as a city at sea, So
Speaker 1: that starts to maybe make you wonder, is the same
Speaker 1: thing happening with our large water craft? Are we creating
Speaker 1: sort of urban marine environments in which in which all
Speaker 1: new types of evolutionary niches are created. This is a
Speaker 1: great question, and this is a question we're going to
Speaker 1: dive into, uh in this at one point almost literally
Speaker 1: right uh, in this two part exploration of stuff to
Speaker 1: boil your mind. The first episode here is going to
Speaker 1: focus on functional ships, ships at sea at large, and
Speaker 1: then we're going to talk in the second episode about
Speaker 1: what very often happens to ships at sea. Eventually they
Speaker 1: wind up at the bottom of the sea, right they
Speaker 1: wind up at shipwrecks, and in in either case there
Speaker 1: are all these wonderful examples of how life adapts to
Speaker 1: this unnatural structure, this unnatural uh floating, be it a
Speaker 1: floating you know, city of floating, an aircraft carrier, or
Speaker 1: just a mere dinghy blister in barnacles. Am I so
Speaker 1: excited to talk about this stuff today? Yes? Now, I
Speaker 1: do want to throw in just a quick note, uh.
Speaker 1: We are going to talk about some of the dire
Speaker 1: consequences of ships, but we're not going to get into
Speaker 1: some of the particulars. Some of these we've talked about
Speaker 1: on the show, concerning say, ship strikes and propellor injuries
Speaker 1: to uh. To various organisms or sonic distress that can
Speaker 1: occur just thanks to the sheer volume that just the
Speaker 1: noise created by all of these large vessels let's see,
Speaker 1: and some of the technologies they utilize. So not so
Speaker 1: much the direct kinetic conflict between ships and wildlife, but
Speaker 1: more like the the adaptations. Right, look at the non
Speaker 1: human organisms that managed to thrive on ships, even though
Speaker 1: in some cases their their their ability to thrive manages
Speaker 1: to upset the balance of nature. Now, if I were
Speaker 1: to start thinking about this topic, not knowing anything else,
Speaker 1: the first organism that would come to my mind is
Speaker 1: the barnacle. Yes, the barnacle. Uh. The barnacle is irresistible
Speaker 1: because when you think of of ships, uh, you and
Speaker 1: you try and focus in on organisms that are gaming
Speaker 1: the system, the barnacle is just impossible to ignore. I'd say.
Speaker 1: Barnacle is also a top five funny sounding word. Barnacle. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it kind of sounds like it's got that that K
Speaker 1: sound that's always humorous in the in the English language,
Speaker 1: and then it starts with like a barney sound. Um.
Speaker 1: But as ridiculous as they sound, they can it gets
Speaker 1: pretty serious at times. Well, so I only think of
Speaker 1: barnacles as growing on ships, but that can't be the
Speaker 1: only place they grow. So what does the natural home
Speaker 1: of a barnacle. Well, you do have some species of
Speaker 1: barnacle that thrive in other situations, such as the particular
Speaker 1: variety of barnacle that is parasitic to a particular species
Speaker 1: of crab that grows up you know, under its it's plating. Yikes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty pretty nasty. I think this is the one
Speaker 1: that essentially like castrates the male crabs in uh, in
Speaker 1: its you know, parasitic manipulation, brutal, Yeah, but especially ironic
Speaker 1: given the size of barnacle genitalia. Yeah, but which we'll
Speaker 1: get to in a in a bit here. But but
Speaker 1: for the most part, when you're talking about barnacles, you're
Speaker 1: talking about barnacles that cling to rocks, and then along
Speaker 1: comes the whole of a ship, and it often presents
Speaker 1: a very rock like surface on which it can attach. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: the barnacle is a pretty interesting organism in its own right,
Speaker 1: without even getting into the complexity of ships. They're they're
Speaker 1: they're a sessile suspension feeder, but they have two active
Speaker 1: swimming larval stages, so that the final version. The the
Speaker 1: you know, the adult mature barnacle is indeed that little
Speaker 1: crusty thing that's that's living on the rock around the
Speaker 1: whole of the ship. That's the full vult that's the
Speaker 1: full vultron. Yes, there are two stages before that where
Speaker 1: they're free, free swimming their marine arthropods related to crabs
Speaker 1: and lobsters. And they begin life as as these freshly
Speaker 1: hatched larvae uh free moving plankton like creatures, and then
Speaker 1: they developed through several mold stages into a a a
Speaker 1: larva stage which seeks out a nice rock or a
Speaker 1: rock like surface like the bottom of a ship to
Speaker 1: call home. It positions itself, it's secrete cell shell platings
Speaker 1: around it, and then it just never moves. It depends
Speaker 1: on if it's attached to a rock. It's probably depending
Speaker 1: on on the tides, for instance, to bring food close
Speaker 1: enough for it to snatch up with its grasping sire sirie,
Speaker 1: how do you spell that? Ce i r r I siri? Nice? So,
Speaker 1: So this is like the world's most lethargic full vultron. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean basically they just set up shop and they
Speaker 1: depend upon you know, the cyclical nature of of the
Speaker 1: waters to bring them what they need to eat, and
Speaker 1: then they grab it. You know, there are actually a
Speaker 1: lot of organisms this in the ocean, and we'll talk
Speaker 1: about a couple of other ones throughout these episodes. But
Speaker 1: what the barnacle has in common with several other of
Speaker 1: these organisms is that, like he has multiple stages of life,
Speaker 1: including a free moving stage of life, and then later
Speaker 1: it settles down and becomes sessile or immobile and just
Speaker 1: stays in one place and sort of reaches out for
Speaker 1: food and mating opportunities. So I've read they were roughly
Speaker 1: somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty different species of barnacle.
Speaker 1: And among shore barnacles, their habitat comes down to not
Speaker 1: only region, but also shore level. So you know, some
Speaker 1: are gonna like different different levels of shade. For instance,
Speaker 1: some cluster amid high energy shore waves, you know, where
Speaker 1: there's just a lot of circulation, a lot of crashing waves,
Speaker 1: while others actually attached so far upshore that waters only
Speaker 1: rise high enough for them to feed like a couple
Speaker 1: of times a month. So you can already imagine that
Speaker 1: there might be some like costs and benefits to that
Speaker 1: kind of lifestyle. Like if you're in one of those
Speaker 1: high energy wave region, I bet it's like that's really
Speaker 1: hard on you with the water hitting you all the time,
Speaker 1: but it probably also provides a lot more opportunities for
Speaker 1: food to reach you, if stuff's coming in a lot, right, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: And of course, the main barnacle topic of interest here
Speaker 1: today is the manner by which they attached to artificial structures. Um,
Speaker 1: they attached to wharfs, uh, any kind of structure that
Speaker 1: we have built and placed in the water, but particularly
Speaker 1: UH they are infamous for attaching to the holes of ships.
Speaker 1: Now this may come as no surprise to our more
Speaker 1: nautical listeners, anybody out there who has been any amount
Speaker 1: of time at sea or has you know, served in UH,
Speaker 1: in the in the navy or whatnot. But barnacles are
Speaker 1: a huge problem for ships, and they have been been
Speaker 1: a problem for ships as long as we've had marine vessels.
Speaker 1: Ancient seafaring people had to contend with the accumulation of barnacles.
Speaker 1: And we do mean accumulation because we're not talking just
Speaker 1: a handful of organisms. We're talking in some cases tons
Speaker 1: of barnacles, literal tons of barn uncles, and they don't
Speaker 1: just attach, They grow into the surface and formed dense
Speaker 1: calcium deposits underneath the paint. And the technical name for
Speaker 1: this growth on ships is biofouling nice, which which is misleading, right,
Speaker 1: because I mean they're the barnacles just doing what it
Speaker 1: is evolved to do. You you could make the argument,
Speaker 1: I mean we're kind of biofouling and they're just biofouling
Speaker 1: as well. Everybody's biofouling. Yeah, I mean, if we're really
Speaker 1: tellying up biofouls, we should have biofouled out as a
Speaker 1: species by now. Oh yes, And I think I think
Speaker 1: that that becomes obvious throughout these podcast episodes. So how
Speaker 1: did ancient people contend with barnacles? Well, there were two
Speaker 1: time tested methods here. The first and the most popular
Speaker 1: option that is still practiced today is to just periodically
Speaker 1: dry dock a vessel, bring it up out of the water,
Speaker 1: and just scrape all the barnacles off the hull and
Speaker 1: then repaint it because of course the they're gonna pull
Speaker 1: the paint away with them. That sounds difficult, Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's difficult. It's costly, especially with larger vessels, and it
Speaker 1: takes your ship out of commission for a little bit.
Speaker 1: Right now, Another uh tactic that they had at their disposal,
Speaker 1: some had their disposal anyway, it was too periodically dock
Speaker 1: your saltwater vessel in freshwater so as to kill off
Speaker 1: some barnacles. Because barnacles are a marine species, you don't
Speaker 1: they're not gonna thrive in freshwater. So it but it
Speaker 1: depends on the species. Apparently it's four to six hours
Speaker 1: that's enough freshwater to kill some species, while others require
Speaker 1: upwards of fifty hours. And they're apparently reports of ships
Speaker 1: retaining their barnacles after being docked in freshwater for something
Speaker 1: like thirty five months. So it doesn't it's not like
Speaker 1: you just bring it into the freshwater and just watch
Speaker 1: them all fall off necessarily. You've got a few tough
Speaker 1: guys in there. Now some stats about why barnacles are bad,
Speaker 1: just to really just drive home, like you know, why
Speaker 1: you don't want to a ship's hole just encrusted with
Speaker 1: these things and some of these stats. It's come from
Speaker 1: a really insightful um but of course kind of jovial
Speaker 1: April Edition article in addition of popular mechanics, does it
Speaker 1: have puns. Um. I think it's gonna do a few
Speaker 1: puns here and there, but these are mostly just the
Speaker 1: facts here. This article pointed out that fifty to a
Speaker 1: hundred tons of barnacles they may be removed from a
Speaker 1: single scraping from some larger vessels, while very large vessels
Speaker 1: may produce two hundred to three hundred tons of barnacles.
Speaker 1: So think about ship carrying that much extra weight. Think
Speaker 1: about you yourself carrying that much extra weight or something
Speaker 1: more proportional to the human body around with you just
Speaker 1: didn't sheer, uh, you know, essentially parasite weight. So this
Speaker 1: could be like over a hundred cars worth of barnacles. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that is crazy to think about. I mean, look at
Speaker 1: it this way. A really large vessel may have an
Speaker 1: acre or more of space for barnacles if you just
Speaker 1: imagine it just folded out flat, like a field of barnacles,
Speaker 1: the unsuccessful sequel to Field of dreams. Yes, and as
Speaker 1: you can imagine, this sort of accumulation can impact the
Speaker 1: effectiveness of a vessel. It increases the frictional resistance, requiring
Speaker 1: from one fifth to one third more fuel to operate
Speaker 1: and reducing speed by one fourth. To one third of
Speaker 1: its optimal like d barnacled speed. And then on top
Speaker 1: of this, you know, especially by modern estimates, it can
Speaker 1: reduce the fuel economy of a vessel by up and
Speaker 1: this increases c O two emissions. So uh, yeah, they're
Speaker 1: all these additional effects that spill off from just having
Speaker 1: to drag all these extra organisms around with you. Now
Speaker 1: that you've been describing all this, the barnacle based torture
Speaker 1: method idea starts to make a lot more sense. Oh,
Speaker 1: you talk about keel hauling. Yeah, I don't know much
Speaker 1: about it, but I know it involves barnacles, so you know,
Speaker 1: we I feel like maybe we'd have to hand it
Speaker 1: off probably to like ridiculous history for them to do,
Speaker 1: you know, proper history of kuel hauling, because it's one
Speaker 1: of these things that is that that everyone pretty pretty
Speaker 1: much agreed with bar barring. But here's the basic idea.
Speaker 1: You take a pirate or sailor whoever is on board
Speaker 1: that you're just pleased with. Is this something pirates would do?
Speaker 1: There are accounts of pirates doing it, and there are
Speaker 1: account they're also accounts of of it happening on naval vessels.
Speaker 1: But it you know, it was long seen is just
Speaker 1: a barbaric thing that that was frowned upon in many
Speaker 1: different naval traditions, but other places considered it a viable punishment.
Speaker 1: But the ideas that you would you would rope somebody up,
Speaker 1: throw them over the front of the vessel, and then
Speaker 1: they would be dragged banged under the hole and then
Speaker 1: come up on the other side. I would come up
Speaker 1: in the back of the vessel, and of course that
Speaker 1: whole is covered in yield barnacles. Yeah, so although the
Speaker 1: shell scraping into your body, lacerating you on top of you,
Speaker 1: you just you know, slamming into the whole of the ship. Uh,
Speaker 1: that that alone could be enough to kill you. And
Speaker 1: then of course the drowning risk the cold waters in
Speaker 1: many cases. So yeah, it's a pretty pretty grotesque thing
Speaker 1: due to somebody. Uh, but it certainly becomes more grotesque
Speaker 1: when you consider acres of barnacles. That is awful. Now,
Speaker 1: you mentioned earlier ancient sailors dealing with the problem of
Speaker 1: barnacles and coming up with solutions. One particularly effective solution
Speaker 1: was copper. Oh copper, I mean, copper is a metal
Speaker 1: we had access to for a long time, even before
Speaker 1: we had bronze, we had copper. Yeah, so you saw
Speaker 1: the ancient Greeks and the Romans, for instance, using copper
Speaker 1: nails on the whole of their vessels. Uh. Later in
Speaker 1: the eighteenth century, the British Navy sheathed its wooden holes
Speaker 1: and copper um in part to deal with the barnacles,
Speaker 1: but also to deal with shipworms, which we'll we'll touch
Speaker 1: on later. Now you're probably wondering why copper, Why does
Speaker 1: copper work? You know, because just it's not that it's
Speaker 1: a metal alone, because we have steel holes that's still
Speaker 1: become covered with barnacles. Well, the reason is because in
Speaker 1: the water a toxic film forms on copper that repels
Speaker 1: barnacle larvae and this is even them inside. It as
Speaker 1: a potential factor in the superiority of the British Navy
Speaker 1: at the time they had the copper plated holes, and
Speaker 1: so the ships were just that much more efficient than
Speaker 1: all of the competing vessels because they had just far
Speaker 1: fewer literal hangars on on the holes. Now do you
Speaker 1: know if they were coated in copper specifically for this
Speaker 1: reason intentionally or was that just a happy accident. Now
Speaker 1: it was it was to deal with barnacles and shipworms.
Speaker 1: But of course the age of the wooden warship came
Speaker 1: to an end in favor of steel, and in this
Speaker 1: you end up losing your copper advantage. Now you can
Speaker 1: use copper laced paints, but these particles leach out, and
Speaker 1: in doing so they end up hurting vulnerable organisms that
Speaker 1: aren't attaching to your hole, like salmon and oysters, meanwhile
Speaker 1: depleting the paint of its protective power, so you end
Speaker 1: up having to deal with the barnacles again. Anyway, then
Speaker 1: there have been other poison based methods as well, So
Speaker 1: lacing your whole paint with arsenic mercury strict nine cyanide
Speaker 1: tin apparently pretty effective, but you end up with the
Speaker 1: same consequences, just killing sea life wherever the ship goes,
Speaker 1: because it's just raining down death, just poisoning the ocean. Yeah,
Speaker 1: apparently the since that, the synthetic drug metatomadine has proven
Speaker 1: pretty effective. According to a two thousand eleven article in
Speaker 1: Popular Science by Joshua Saul, the drug quote activates the
Speaker 1: octopamine receptor, is similar to adrenaline receptors in barnacle larvae,
Speaker 1: causing them to flee. So in other words, it just
Speaker 1: like cranks them up on barnacle math and so that
Speaker 1: they can't settle in. Then they end up swimming off.
Speaker 1: It wears when it wears off, but they end up
Speaker 1: you know, they don't fix themselves to the whole. They're
Speaker 1: like Jason, stay them in that movie exactly. You're not
Speaker 1: gonna You're not gonna see Jason stay them in those
Speaker 1: cranked movies, like settle down anywhere. No, he's gonna be
Speaker 1: in constant motion. Uh. Now some other solutions have also
Speaker 1: been presented UH many in recent years, such as the
Speaker 1: use of a robotic whole bio mimetic underwater grooming system
Speaker 1: or whole bug. So that'd be sort of like a
Speaker 1: Remora fish for your for your shift, go along and
Speaker 1: clean a whole room, but if you will, okay um.
Speaker 1: There also have been new chemical approaches that depend on
Speaker 1: in some cases, you know, on natural chemicals that have
Speaker 1: been found in um in other organisms, bio mimetic approaches
Speaker 1: that are based on say, shark skin or other uh
Speaker 1: surfaces or structures skin, other skin inspired whole hydro gels.
Speaker 1: And then there's been some some research concerning bacterial solutions
Speaker 1: as well. UH but barnacles remain a problem. They've they've
Speaker 1: performed exceedingly well and they continue to do so. Some
Speaker 1: of the ships they grow on stick to a very
Speaker 1: small geographic area. Uh, some don't move at all, especially
Speaker 1: if they say, you know, sink to the bottom of
Speaker 1: the sea, as we'll get to in their second episode.
Speaker 1: But one interesting byproduct of all of this is that
Speaker 1: it's enabled barnacles to travel in ways that they never
Speaker 1: did in pre modern or even pre human time. Well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: especially in their their later stages of life. Barnacles are
Speaker 1: not light footed. You know, they're not going to be
Speaker 1: hiking around unless they happen to end up on something
Speaker 1: that travels with them. Right. And then, remember, you know,
Speaker 1: even though this is the endpoint, barnacles do breed. The
Speaker 1: cycle of life is going to continue, and it's going
Speaker 1: to continue with those plankton like um mobile larvae. And
Speaker 1: while we're on the subject of barnacle breeding, if you've
Speaker 1: never looked up barnacle penises, that's worth of google. Well.
Speaker 1: The barnacle penises, i think are just one of either
Speaker 1: the largest or one of the largest like penis to
Speaker 1: body size ratio in in the entire animal kingdom because
Speaker 1: obviously they can't like move around to find a mate,
Speaker 1: so they essentially have to reach to find a mate,
Speaker 1: and so there isn't a very strong incentive to have
Speaker 1: a ridiculously long penis, and that is what a lot
Speaker 1: of these little creatures have, so that they're not only
Speaker 1: clinging to your whole, feeding from your whole, they're also
Speaker 1: breeding on the whole of your ship up. So this
Speaker 1: scenario with the you know, the ships encrusted with barnacles,
Speaker 1: and then the ships moving around, uh sometimes across the
Speaker 1: surface of the globe. This has led to the spread
Speaker 1: of various invasive barnacle species linking coastal inco ecosystems that
Speaker 1: would have never come into contact with with one another,
Speaker 1: otherwise threatening to biodiversity in the process. And certainly barnacles
Speaker 1: are just one part of the problem. But even in
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight, according to Assessing the Global Threat
Speaker 1: of Invasive Species to marine biodiversity by Muhlner at All
Speaker 1: published in Frontiers and Ecology and the Environment, as few
Speaker 1: as sixteen percent of marine ecosystems were unaffected by invaders,
Speaker 1: and they stressed that these figures might be off due
Speaker 1: just to under reporting. I mean previously, if you had
Speaker 1: asked me to think about the invasive species threats caused
Speaker 1: by ocean travel on boats, I primarily would have thought
Speaker 1: of terrestrial animals stowing away in car go holds or
Speaker 1: on boats and then getting moved from say, one island
Speaker 1: to another. Yeah, I would not really have considered much
Speaker 1: the marine ecosystems that are brought along by the parts
Speaker 1: of the boat that are underwater or maybe even filled
Speaker 1: with water, which we can get to in a bit.
Speaker 1: But before we do that, first of all, we're gonna
Speaker 1: take a break, and then we're going to discuss another
Speaker 1: very notable infamous ship hopping organism. And this one resides
Speaker 1: inside the hole a rascal with lungs. Thank alright, we're back.
Speaker 1: So what do you think it is? What's the other
Speaker 1: big organism that comes to mind when you think about
Speaker 1: about the ships at sea? Hyenas? That would be good.
Speaker 1: I didn't run across any any particular mention of hyenas.
Speaker 1: Uh No, it's got to be the rat, right, it
Speaker 1: has to be the rat, the rat man. What's the
Speaker 1: most prominent religion with a rat god? Because I want
Speaker 1: to join that one. I mean, rats are impressive. You
Speaker 1: just gotta hand it to them. They know what's up. Well,
Speaker 1: it does remind me that the Ganesha has a has
Speaker 1: a rat as a vehicle, you know, and the rat
Speaker 1: does have have some importance in different corners of Hinduism.
Speaker 1: But but the idea of a of a rat is
Speaker 1: a vehicle, a thing that would you know, that would
Speaker 1: move you, that would move the remover of obstacles. Uh.
Speaker 1: That that fits perfectly what we know of the rat.
Speaker 1: Like the rat has gone everywhere that humans have gone.
Speaker 1: It is our our our furry secretive shadow, I mean,
Speaker 1: after like micro organisms that live inside our bodies. Is
Speaker 1: there anything more inherently linked to human civilization that we
Speaker 1: take with us everywhere we go to the extent of
Speaker 1: a rat. I can't think of one. No, I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess maybe cockroaches are perhaps another example. But in
Speaker 1: both cases we're dealing with with animals that have been
Speaker 1: with us as long as we've had surplus food, you know,
Speaker 1: as long as we've been growing enough to say, oh,
Speaker 1: I'll save this for later. The rats have been around
Speaker 1: um and and so as long as we've been piling
Speaker 1: some of the surplus uh material into ships or boats
Speaker 1: the rats have been willing to come on board and
Speaker 1: and find a place to hide if there is at
Speaker 1: all room for them. Now, I wonder what makes a
Speaker 1: rat decide to join the navy, Like, not all rats
Speaker 1: do this. Some rats just hang out, but other ones
Speaker 1: they go into the boats. And they're the ones that
Speaker 1: that settled the new rat frontiers. Do we know what
Speaker 1: makes one decide to do that? Well, I mean it's
Speaker 1: the available food. It's it's just but we're gonna get
Speaker 1: into like some slight differences here between the brown rat
Speaker 1: and the black rat as far as it's willingness to
Speaker 1: go to sea. Now, I should also point out that
Speaker 1: in addition to always having ship rats, we've also always
Speaker 1: had ship cats to deal with the problem. Like even
Speaker 1: even on like ancient Egyptian river boats, the cats were there. Um,
Speaker 1: if you go back into the vikings had ats for instance.
Speaker 1: I didn't know that, yeah uh. And then we'll have
Speaker 1: some examples later on of other know, some menagerie's living
Speaker 1: aboard sea going vessels. Um, But it's one of those
Speaker 1: as with the cat in with the dog. You know,
Speaker 1: there's this mix of purpose and companionship, Like the cat
Speaker 1: is there, the cat is amusing you have a little
Speaker 1: antisocial but then it occasionally kills a rat or a
Speaker 1: mouse that would otherwise try and get into your provisions
Speaker 1: or your cargo. Okay, question just popped into my mind
Speaker 1: of interpretation of some great mythology. Take the Noah's ark story.
Speaker 1: You gotta have two of every animal. I think they're
Speaker 1: a different version where sometimes you gotta have more of
Speaker 1: certain animals. But like, but yeah, so you gott have
Speaker 1: at least two of every animal, male and female. Do
Speaker 1: you do you bother packing two rats? Or do you
Speaker 1: just assume you're gonna have at least a few hundred
Speaker 1: rats anyway, so you don't bother to like put put
Speaker 1: those on board. I like to imagine that that Noah
Speaker 1: asks the Almighty this and says, hey, do I need
Speaker 1: to pack the rats and the mice? And God says says, now,
Speaker 1: don't worry about those that they're self packing. Right, if
Speaker 1: you build it, they will come. Yeah, they're already. They're
Speaker 1: they're waiting on you. The field of barnacles. That that's
Speaker 1: the motto. So when we look at rat success stories,
Speaker 1: we're mainly talking here about the black rat Ratus rattus
Speaker 1: a k a. The ship rat. And then there's brown
Speaker 1: the brown rat or Rattus nor vegicus. Now, these are
Speaker 1: just in general, some of the most successful mammals on
Speaker 1: the planet, especially the brown rat, which with few exceptions,
Speaker 1: just lives wherever humans live. Um and as such, the
Speaker 1: story of human migration is the story of of rat migration.
Speaker 1: To a large extent, every island or new land that
Speaker 1: humans have brought ruined too, they've also brought rats, rats,
Speaker 1: who in turn have decimated native species, out competing them
Speaker 1: for resources, introducing diseases, and preying on them, all depending
Speaker 1: on how a given organism fits into the black or
Speaker 1: brown rats approach to life, and sometimes the portunate natives
Speaker 1: that fall to these new rat overlords our rodent species themselves.
Speaker 1: So we've touched touched on some of these, uh in
Speaker 1: our discussions of Christmas Island. Oh yeah, it was the
Speaker 1: idea there that there was some native rat on Christmas
Speaker 1: Island that kept the crab populations in check originally. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the hypothesis anyway, and then there were like invasive
Speaker 1: rats that killed off those rats, and then the crab
Speaker 1: population skyrocket, right, Yeah, but that's potentially what's happening so
Speaker 1: the first success story though here was that of the
Speaker 1: black rat and the house mouse. They followed human agricultural
Speaker 1: expansion for thousands of years, but interestingly enough, the brown
Speaker 1: rat didn't leave its native abode in China and Mongolia
Speaker 1: until far more recently um and so this would be
Speaker 1: the difference alluded to in you know, of a rat's
Speaker 1: willingness to take to see or take to the road.
Speaker 1: I was looking at a two thousand sixteen genomic study
Speaker 1: published in the Royal Society's journal Proceedings be that mapped
Speaker 1: the expansion of the brown rat using tissue samples from
Speaker 1: three d and fourteen rats from seventy six global locations.
Speaker 1: So this was the first in depth genetic study of
Speaker 1: brown rats from around the world and was conducted by
Speaker 1: Fordham University. They followed this sub species movements first of
Speaker 1: all into Southeast Asia, and from there I believe they
Speaker 1: went to they hit Japan and in Siberia, and then
Speaker 1: there was another movement that ends up going out across
Speaker 1: Eurasia via the Silk Road. And then once it gets
Speaker 1: all the way to Europe, that's that's where it really
Speaker 1: uh sets off because here it's it is it perfectly
Speaker 1: lined up for the voyages of discovery and of course,
Speaker 1: of course a colonization and exploitation. So from here they
Speaker 1: end up reaching the America's Africa, Australia and untold you
Speaker 1: know islands in between. And one key point here, according
Speaker 1: to the researchers, is that while the black rat is
Speaker 1: a natural expansionist, following the path alf of grain and
Speaker 1: garbage through human history, the brown rat is otherwise is
Speaker 1: usually normally you know, it's normally happy just to hang
Speaker 1: out in a single location. He's the Bilbo Baggins of rats.
Speaker 1: You know, he's not eager to travel and adventure, at
Speaker 1: least not without some prodding. Um. But of course we
Speaker 1: know Bilbo does travel, he does adventure, right, So so
Speaker 1: the question then is you know what prodded him on,
Speaker 1: what prodded the uh, this particular species of rat on?
Speaker 1: Well basically yeah, but you know, again, the house mouse
Speaker 1: originated in the fertile crescent black rats in India, and
Speaker 1: so you know, early farming societies and widespread trade, that's
Speaker 1: what pumped these rodents out pretty early on. But the
Speaker 1: brown rat didn't really jump into high gear to the
Speaker 1: last three centuries, the most recent three centuries of human civilization,
Speaker 1: particularly the brown rats of Europe again who departed on
Speaker 1: these voyages uh to uh, you know, to take North
Speaker 1: and South America Africa and show you and uh and
Speaker 1: in that the Brown rats expansion expansion, the authors argue here,
Speaker 1: is entirely human mediated. Uh. It's depending into a very
Speaker 1: large extent on the ships. Interestingly enough, the researchers didn't
Speaker 1: find evidence of a lot of rat immigrants though to
Speaker 1: New York City. They were looking at the the the
Speaker 1: rat genome there. But so many ships come there, yeah,
Speaker 1: so and and certainly the rats are still coming. But
Speaker 1: they pointed out that what appears to be happening is
Speaker 1: that the New York City rats are just so entrenched,
Speaker 1: so well fed and powerful, and just so mean and territorial,
Speaker 1: they can't be dethroned, exactly, they can't be beat. So
Speaker 1: they're actually protecting their territory from new incoming rats. If
Speaker 1: you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.
Speaker 1: But lots of people who can make it elsewhere can't
Speaker 1: make it there, right And of course this this would
Speaker 1: hold true theoretically for places beyond New York City. Essentially
Speaker 1: like once the rats have entrenched themselves. Once the brown
Speaker 1: rats have have taken over in an area, they're gonna
Speaker 1: hold it. They're gonna hold that fork because this is
Speaker 1: their their sweet garbage empire. All right, I think we
Speaker 1: should take a quick break, but when we come back,
Speaker 1: we will talk about ballast water and builge life. Thank alright,
Speaker 1: we're back. And and in this portion of the podcast
Speaker 1: episode really getting into a territory of ship life that
Speaker 1: is easy to overlook. Yeah, so yeah, you can imagine.
Speaker 1: Of course, the first thing I would have thought of
Speaker 1: would be barnacles clinging to the hull. Then if you
Speaker 1: imagine things stowing away in a ship, obviously rats come
Speaker 1: to mind. But ship life, by by no means stops there.
Speaker 1: There is so much more shift life to talk about. Uh,
Speaker 1: And so I want to start with the question of
Speaker 1: have you ever seen what's on the underside of like
Speaker 1: a yacht or a sail boat? What's down there? It's
Speaker 1: not just like a sort of round bottom, right. What
Speaker 1: you will usually see is a big fin thing poke
Speaker 1: down into the water below the yacht or the sailboat.
Speaker 1: And this is known as the keel. I guess the
Speaker 1: same word that's referenced in the horrible practice of keel
Speaker 1: haul uh. And it can serves several functions, but one
Speaker 1: of the main functions of the keel is stability. It's
Speaker 1: there to keep the boat stable and upright, and it
Speaker 1: does this a couple of ways. So one is that
Speaker 1: if you imagine like wind blowing really hard against the
Speaker 1: sail of a sailboat and it's sort of tipping the
Speaker 1: boat over to one side, the keel will be underwater
Speaker 1: pushing against the water, and this helps provide a counterbalancing
Speaker 1: resistance force that makes it harder to roll the boat.
Speaker 1: Just imagine like empty out a plastic soda bottle and
Speaker 1: floated on the surface of the water, and see how
Speaker 1: easy it is to roll that around on its side.
Speaker 1: Obviously would be very easy, But if you take a
Speaker 1: single fin to the bottle running lengthwise under the water,
Speaker 1: suddenly the fin hanging down in the water is going
Speaker 1: to make it a lot harder to roll the bottle around.
Speaker 1: The other advantage is that the keel helps give the
Speaker 1: boat a lower center of gravity. It pulls the center
Speaker 1: of the hull down and that also helps resist any
Speaker 1: force that wants to roll the boat. Or I think
Speaker 1: it's called healing healing the boat over to the to
Speaker 1: the side. Now, imagine that you've got a really big boat.
Speaker 1: You want, like a cargo ship that can transfer a
Speaker 1: load of shipping containers across the ocean. Obviously, it needs
Speaker 1: to have a very big hull, be very buoyant, So
Speaker 1: you might load it up with heavy cargo, uh, to
Speaker 1: to take to your destination, and it sits down deep
Speaker 1: in the water because it's full, right uh. And so
Speaker 1: you deliver the cargo. But once you deliver the cargo,
Speaker 1: if you don't fill back up immediately with more cargo,
Speaker 1: you're going to be traveling around with an empty or
Speaker 1: mostly empty hull. You be riding high and dry exactly.
Speaker 1: So you might imagine, oh, my god, is that what
Speaker 1: that phrase comes from. I never knew that, I assumed,
Speaker 1: but I actually have never looked it up. I'm gonna assume.
Speaker 1: You must us to be right. Can't wait for the
Speaker 1: corrections if you're not. So. Yeah, So you might imagine
Speaker 1: that a ship in this situation faces a problem similar
Speaker 1: to a sailboat without a keel. Right, it's buoyant, it's
Speaker 1: sitting high up in the water without enough mass deep
Speaker 1: in its hold to keep the center of gravity low
Speaker 1: and prevent it from rolling. So the answer to this
Speaker 1: problem is what's known as ballast. This is material that's
Speaker 1: taken into the ship's hull to provide stability. And if
Speaker 1: you're a giant metal tub sitting out in the ocean,
Speaker 1: a very convenient and accessible form of ballast is what water. Obviously,
Speaker 1: so in chips that use ballast water, after they discharge cargo,
Speaker 1: they will fill tanks in the hull up with water
Speaker 1: for ballast and then pump the ballast water out when
Speaker 1: they load up their hull with new cargo. So they'll
Speaker 1: be going to one place filling up with tens of
Speaker 1: thousands of tons of seawater than going to another place
Speaker 1: and dumping it all out. Perhaps you can begin to
Speaker 1: imagine how this could go wrong, because it's not just seawater.
Speaker 1: It's not just it's not like pure water from your
Speaker 1: your out of your brid of filter. No, it's more
Speaker 1: like the stank water that comes out of your refrigerator filter.
Speaker 1: Right do you have one of those? Is the refrigerator
Speaker 1: put out nasty water? It does not put out any water. Now,
Speaker 1: we don't get to experience that. More than half the
Speaker 1: people I know who have one of those things that
Speaker 1: puts out water. It puts out this water with an
Speaker 1: other worldly funk. I don't know what's going on there.
Speaker 1: It may be being drawn from the ocean. But yeah,
Speaker 1: So I want to talk about a few ways that
Speaker 1: this could really go wrong, because in alertic it's kind
Speaker 1: of like a filter feeder. It's it's if it's as
Speaker 1: if a large whale to one corner of the world
Speaker 1: sucked all this stuff in and instead of digesting it,
Speaker 1: just vomited it somewhere else. It's more like that that
Speaker 1: ancient description of the kraken that we talked about it
Speaker 1: I think in the Bathosphere episodes that said that it's,
Speaker 1: you know, this giant fish that it sucks in like
Speaker 1: mill ends of gallons of water. Basically, it sucks in
Speaker 1: a whole ocean's worth of things and then just belches
Speaker 1: it all out after it has partially eaten it or whatever.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just you're drawing in a lake basically.
Speaker 1: Uh So, here's here's one thing that happened. I want
Speaker 1: to talk about the jelly invasion. So we will be
Speaker 1: looking at the carnivorous tina for Nemeopsis laity, also known
Speaker 1: as the sea wall nut. That sounds delicious. It's I
Speaker 1: don't know. I haven't tried it, you know. I did
Speaker 1: forget to mention that there are varieties of barnacle you
Speaker 1: can eat that are consumed in for instance, Japanese and
Speaker 1: Spanish customs. So the sea walnut, it's it's a species
Speaker 1: of comb jelly native to the east coast of the
Speaker 1: America's So it goes sort of like along the east
Speaker 1: coast of North America, I think somewhere around New England
Speaker 1: and then way all the way down to Argentina. It
Speaker 1: does not really look like a walnut to me. You
Speaker 1: can look it up. It's more like a It's a small,
Speaker 1: transparent comb jelly is usually just a few centimeters or
Speaker 1: a few inches long. It's got feeding tentacles, It's got
Speaker 1: these spiny combs running up and down the length of
Speaker 1: the body that glow with a faint bioluminescence when the
Speaker 1: jelly is disturbed. And so even though it is a
Speaker 1: native to the U to the eastern coast of the
Speaker 1: America's in the early nineteen eighties and Mimiopsis appeared in
Speaker 1: the Black Sea and it rapidly expanded to colonize the area.
Speaker 1: In the words of author T. A. Shiganova in a
Speaker 1: nine paper and Fisheries Oceanography, quote, the Black Sea was
Speaker 1: characterized until the mid nineteen seventies as a highly productive
Speaker 1: ecosystem at all trophic levels, which by the nineteen nineties
Speaker 1: had degraded to an ecosystem with low biodiversity dominated by
Speaker 1: a dead end gelatinous food web. Now that may be
Speaker 1: just technical terminology, but it sounds it sounds quite pejorative.
Speaker 1: So the Black Sea's got this dead end gelatinous food
Speaker 1: web now. And to quote from article and New Scientists
Speaker 1: by Fred Pierce, quote, at one point it's biomass reached
Speaker 1: a billion tons, ten times the world's annual fish landings.
Speaker 1: Uh So, essentially what had been a diverse and thriving
Speaker 1: habitat for marine life was turned into jelly hell, and
Speaker 1: fish populations were hit really hard, especially since the sea walnut.
Speaker 1: It hurts them in two different ways. It preys on
Speaker 1: fish eggs and larvae directly, so it's eating up the fries,
Speaker 1: but also it preys on zooplankton, which is a food
Speaker 1: source for the fish. So it's just it's like a
Speaker 1: biological apocalypse scenario. It's like like a green goose scenario,
Speaker 1: exactly right. So you've got this species of anchovy that
Speaker 1: was really hit hard, the ingraulis in krasicolus, and that
Speaker 1: that was an important commercial fishery. It was catastrophically affected,
Speaker 1: at least for a time in the nineteen nineties. Uh
Speaker 1: that we should also note that the sea walnut was
Speaker 1: not the only problem facing life in the Black Sea
Speaker 1: at the time. You've got the other obvious culprits like pollution,
Speaker 1: YouTube location and so forth lending a hand and really
Speaker 1: screwing up this ecosystem. And given how we introduced this,
Speaker 1: it might not be hard to guess how the jellies
Speaker 1: from Hell ended up colonizing the Black Sea. The most
Speaker 1: likely explanation is they were brought there by accident in
Speaker 1: the ballast water of merchant ships. So ships somewhere that
Speaker 1: these jellies existed naturally filled up their ballast tanks. They
Speaker 1: went to the Black Seed to pick up some cargo,
Speaker 1: They discharged their ballast tanks, and they spit a bunch
Speaker 1: of jellies out into the Black Sea that quickly took root,
Speaker 1: reproduced fast, and and colonized the entire thing and turned
Speaker 1: it into the dead end gelatinous food web. Yeah, nobody
Speaker 1: wants that were basically in another blob scenario, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so maybe maybe you're you don't want to think about
Speaker 1: dead en gelatinous food web. How about crab horror? Uh? So,
Speaker 1: we we've mentioned, i think on the show before, the
Speaker 1: invasive European green crab, the car car Kenis maynas, which
Speaker 1: is an invasive species in North America, thought to be
Speaker 1: read by ships being carried across the ocean and ballast water. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I believe we touched at least briefly on the fact
Speaker 1: that they're too small to eat, but if you have
Speaker 1: the proper equipment and methods, you can kind of process
Speaker 1: them down into a rather tasty broth. That's been one
Speaker 1: of the crab stock Yeah, crab stock, Yeah, essentially. Uh.
Speaker 1: This is, of course, has been one of the solutions
Speaker 1: or attempted solutions to many an invasive species problem. Can
Speaker 1: we figure out a way for us to eat them? Um?
Speaker 1: And and will certainly come back to another invasive species
Speaker 1: for which we often try and roll out this this option,
Speaker 1: the rat, well man and the rat. The rat is
Speaker 1: certainly showing up and even the finest of restaurants in
Speaker 1: the in the world, but usually not on the plate,
Speaker 1: at least not while anybody's looking. Right. But this isn't
Speaker 1: the only invasive crab. Oh no, no, there are a
Speaker 1: bunch of other species. I think we may have also
Speaker 1: mentioned that Chinese mitten crab. It's been spread far outside
Speaker 1: its original range and not look nearly as interesting as
Speaker 1: the name makes it sound. It's got kind of like
Speaker 1: it's got kind of white claws maybe that look a
Speaker 1: little bit mitteny, but not just like full on mittens. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: that would be cool. But uh, but it's not like
Speaker 1: the boxing crab that has the pom poms, right, or
Speaker 1: doesn't look like the hof crab, you know, the hydrothermal
Speaker 1: vent lobster that had kind of kind of looks more
Speaker 1: like it has mittens, at least to my eye. Now,
Speaker 1: I guess comparatively, this is a relatively boring looking crab.
Speaker 1: But it is a harmful invasive species and brought from
Speaker 1: one place to another by the discharge of ballast water. Probably.
Speaker 1: Now there's also there are even more tragic examples, like cholera.
Speaker 1: So Cholera is a diarrheal disease caused by infection with
Speaker 1: the bacterium Fibrio colora, and according to the CDC, there
Speaker 1: are an estimated two point nine million cases of cholera infection,
Speaker 1: leading to approximately nine thousand deaths worldwide every year. Cholera
Speaker 1: is is a major public health menace, and it's spread
Speaker 1: primarily through the ingestion of unclean, unwashed food and unclean
Speaker 1: drinking water, especially say, when sewage is allowed to commingle
Speaker 1: with water that's later used to drink or prepare food,
Speaker 1: or or water crops or something like that. Uh. And
Speaker 1: it's widely believed by experts that cholera is spread by
Speaker 1: ballast water. I've seen ballast water cited by experts as
Speaker 1: an explanation for an epidemic of cholera in South America
Speaker 1: in the early ninety nineties that began in Peru but
Speaker 1: spread to multiple countries and ended up killing thousands of people.
Speaker 1: Cholera is no joke, and we should always be thinking
Speaker 1: about ways to stop it from spreading. But by taking
Speaker 1: in ballast water at one place and dumping it out
Speaker 1: somewhere else, you can risk spreading cholera from one point
Speaker 1: of the globe to another. And of course it's cases
Speaker 1: like these that that have led to public campaigns to
Speaker 1: require all the merchant ships to sterilize ballast water. That
Speaker 1: this is a a thing that would help prevent spreading
Speaker 1: harmful forms of ballast dwelling life from one place to another.
Speaker 1: And there are plenty of ways to do this right.
Speaker 1: You can have combinations of like filters just on intake
Speaker 1: and outflow, your radiation biosides and all all that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. Everything you would expect. Yeah, because especially when
Speaker 1: you when you really think about the sheer number of
Speaker 1: big cargo vessels out there on the seas. You know,
Speaker 1: we know, it's easy to sort of fall into the
Speaker 1: trap of thinking about you know, us living in this
Speaker 1: age that's defined by uh by air travel. But but
Speaker 1: so many of our goods are are making their way
Speaker 1: around the world on these giant ships. Yes, absolutely, you
Speaker 1: use something that arrived by ship every day. Now, there
Speaker 1: are plenty of other organisms we could chat about here. Um,
Speaker 1: the zebra muscle, for instance, shows up a lot in
Speaker 1: these papers. One that uh that I happened upon. I
Speaker 1: mean I looked it up bit because when I think
Speaker 1: of invasive aquatic species, I and help but think of
Speaker 1: the lion fish. Now if you if you've ever looked
Speaker 1: at well salt water with fish in it, I feel
Speaker 1: like there's a really good chance you've seen a lion fish.
Speaker 1: Because this also known as the zebra fish. It's confusing, well,
Speaker 1: lion zebra it's very If you look at one, you
Speaker 1: can it's the main thing you see is that it
Speaker 1: has kind of a stripy ornate pattern, but also kind
Speaker 1: of a main kind of currence. You know, it's got both,
Speaker 1: so both in the liberty spikes. Yeah, it looks they
Speaker 1: look super stylish. Now, when we say lionfish, that's generally
Speaker 1: referring to several species of the genus Taros tarois, but
Speaker 1: the most infamous member of the genus is the red
Speaker 1: lion fish or tarois of Volatons, a beautiful and really
Speaker 1: an almost delicate looking reef fish from the Indo Pacific
Speaker 1: that is anything but delicate. No. These they may look
Speaker 1: like a living Christmas ornament, but they're a spiny, venomous
Speaker 1: carnivore that has proven itself incredibly durable and has staked
Speaker 1: out invasive territory and warm waters around the world. Now
Speaker 1: you can find them u all up and down the
Speaker 1: Atlantic coast of North and South America from Rhode Island
Speaker 1: to Brazil. Uh And they have a host of enemies
Speaker 1: in their native waters that will gladly gobble them up,
Speaker 1: you know, various sharks and whatnot, but they have no
Speaker 1: natural enemies elsewhere. In fact, some would be predators in
Speaker 1: these foreign waters. They try to eat them, but they
Speaker 1: can't cope with the spines, right, they haven't co evolved
Speaker 1: a defense, so you end up with just way too
Speaker 1: many lionfish hanging out. For instance, Um, several years ago,
Speaker 1: I went on a family trip to Jamaica and we
Speaker 1: did a lot of snorkeling, and it was just super
Speaker 1: cool getting to see all of these you know, natural
Speaker 1: denizens of this little coral reef that was right off
Speaker 1: off the coast there. It was really one of the
Speaker 1: most magical experiences of my life. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: you'd reach these corners, you'd see, oh, here's a lionfish here,
Speaker 1: and here's the lionfish there, and they're not supposed to
Speaker 1: be there. And then sometimes it would be like, oh,
Speaker 1: here's half a dozen lion fish just hanging out together.
Speaker 1: And yes, it's a beautiful organism. Uh And and that's
Speaker 1: why they've been very popular as aquarium specimens, but when
Speaker 1: they are taken out of their native waters, they just
Speaker 1: take over. Now, why why do they wind up in
Speaker 1: these native water as well? The most accepted theory, backed
Speaker 1: up by a sort of limited genetic diversity and invasive populations,
Speaker 1: is that they stem from aquarium species that were dumped
Speaker 1: into the Atlantic Ocean around southeast Florida, UH and from
Speaker 1: here the currents distributed their egg masses and larvae far
Speaker 1: and wide. But ballast waters can also help distribute larval dispersion,
Speaker 1: certainly within their adopted habitats, but some have argue that
Speaker 1: it could have played a role in their overall expansion
Speaker 1: as well. Um again, don't be fooled by the glamorous
Speaker 1: look though these are. The lionfish is a hearty little monster.
Speaker 1: You're saying that they could they could make it for
Speaker 1: a bit in the tank. There are there are at
Speaker 1: least anecdotal accounts of them surviving in bulge water, you know,
Speaker 1: just sort of the mucky water and the very depths
Speaker 1: of a ship. Over the last few decades, the world
Speaker 1: has experienced and an exponential increase in documented marine invasions
Speaker 1: due to the global transport of invertebrates in ballast water
Speaker 1: as we've been touching on, and lion fish populations in
Speaker 1: the Atlantic have increased as well. Though it's always worth
Speaker 1: noting that there's there's more public awareness regarding the lion fish.
Speaker 1: There have been some some um, some big campaigns to
Speaker 1: encourage local fishermen to uh to catch lion fish and
Speaker 1: then also reminding them like, here's how you can eat them.
Speaker 1: Here are cooking uh here, here some preparation methods you
Speaker 1: can employ, and I'm told that they're quite tasty. But
Speaker 1: then also the other part of this is that they
Speaker 1: do stand out more as well. Like when you see
Speaker 1: a lion fish uh in its own habitat or in
Speaker 1: an an invasive situation, it really catches your attention because
Speaker 1: it is an eye grabbing fish. It is a fish
Speaker 1: who's very body is alerting you to its presence and saying,
Speaker 1: don't mess with me. Wherebert I'd say before this episode,
Speaker 1: ballast water regulation was not something I realized was worth
Speaker 1: caring about. Now I realized that is a very important
Speaker 1: issue for for world ecological preservation. Absolutely. Now some of
Speaker 1: you may be listening and wondering, well, just how many
Speaker 1: different species can pile up in the bilge waters of
Speaker 1: a ship like the lionfish right or or its whole
Speaker 1: uh you know, cleaning to the side or in the ballast.
Speaker 1: I looked at an article titled Marine Boating Habits and
Speaker 1: the Potential for the spread of Invasive Species in the
Speaker 1: Gulf of St. Lawrence by Darbyson at All, February two
Speaker 1: th eight in Aquatic Invasion, Volume four. And they were
Speaker 1: just looking at boats in the Atlantic's Gulf of St.
Speaker 1: Lawrence in Canada, and they found that bilge water and
Speaker 1: whole scrapings from the vessels there contained thirty one and
Speaker 1: forty seven taxa, respectively. So that's thirty one from billage water,
Speaker 1: forty seven from whole scrapings. And this included such invasives
Speaker 1: as the clubbed toniquet and the green crab. All right,
Speaker 1: And to clarify, how is bilge water different from ballast
Speaker 1: water that's not ballast water. No. My understanding is that
Speaker 1: bilge water is kind of it's more it's not it's
Speaker 1: not so much intentionally taken in. It's not part of
Speaker 1: this ballast system in these larger ships. I think it's
Speaker 1: more like what manages to leak into the ship and
Speaker 1: then gets pumped out later. Right. Yeah, so like older
Speaker 1: ships like a clipper ship, Uh my understanding, would not
Speaker 1: have had a ballast system certainly like a modern ship does,
Speaker 1: but it would have had bilge water. Nice. Now, of course,
Speaker 1: there are a whole host of invasive creatures that ventured
Speaker 1: along on ships because humans intentionally brought them along. We've
Speaker 1: already talked about the cat um we mentioned in passing
Speaker 1: the dog. Chickens came with us as well, and also
Speaker 1: even some some old world monkeys came along for a ride.
Speaker 1: And this h the idea of of old world monkeys
Speaker 1: hanging out in in in the on a ship, in
Speaker 1: the riggings of of a ship, uh, forced me to
Speaker 1: do a bit of a dive here looking into accounts
Speaker 1: of animals running wild, particularly primates running wild on old ships.
Speaker 1: And there's actually there's an account from an eight nine
Speaker 1: edition of the Sydney Morning Herald that tells of the
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty nine voyage of the Margaret, which sets sail
Speaker 1: from South Africa for Boston with a cargo of something
Speaker 1: around a hundred cockatoos, a dozen snakes, two crocodiles and
Speaker 1: orangutang and a gorilla in various monkeys and parrots. And
Speaker 1: this is this is a horrible story, um that that.
Speaker 1: It's just just just full of terrible things happening. So
Speaker 1: first of all, there were rats on board as well,
Speaker 1: of course, and they ate all the provisions for the birds,
Speaker 1: and that doomed most of the birds to perish. Then
Speaker 1: bad weather released snakes and crocodiles, who then battled with
Speaker 1: the rats. At the end of this battle, Royal, you
Speaker 1: had one crocodile remaining, and then it was crushed by
Speaker 1: falling cargo in another storm. And then the monkeys escaped
Speaker 1: into the ship's rigging and the crew were only able
Speaker 1: to recapture four of them before uh more, stormy weather
Speaker 1: set in and swept the rest of the monkeys out
Speaker 1: to sea. Yeah, and so they perished. And then the
Speaker 1: gorilla also got out and allegedly threatened sailors with a truncheon.
Speaker 1: Um there. This is a quote that's related in the
Speaker 1: BBC article of the incident from two thousand fourteen. Quote.
Speaker 1: Having obtained possession of an iron bar, he commanded all
Speaker 1: objects within ten feet of where he was chained, reported
Speaker 1: the the Devisease and Wiltshire Gazette. With this formidable truncheon,
Speaker 1: he threatened to brain every sailor who came within range.
Speaker 1: The cook one day, unwarily approaching, heard the bar whistling
Speaker 1: through the air and ducked, but not in time to
Speaker 1: say his head, which was half scalped. WHOA. So yeah,
Speaker 1: they ended up with just a chain guerrilla throwing things
Speaker 1: around within the ship, and they just had to put
Speaker 1: up with it until they got back. Why is it
Speaker 1: hard for me to feel bad for the humans? And yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't at all. I feel bad exclusively for the
Speaker 1: for the animals in that story. But but it does
Speaker 1: partially answer my question about about whether monkeys could take
Speaker 1: up in the rigging of a ship and survive, say,
Speaker 1: you know, you know, a transatlantic voyage and set up
Speaker 1: somewhere else, you know, purely on their their own without
Speaker 1: the the humans enabling their journey. And I think the
Speaker 1: answers is generally they could not. The humans would have
Speaker 1: to help them, because they would. There are a few
Speaker 1: cases like this where a monkey has swept out of
Speaker 1: the rigging into the sea. I ran a car across
Speaker 1: several accounts uh that were from an eighteen seventies six
Speaker 1: Harper's Weekly article by Lady Vernie a. K. Francis Vernie
Speaker 1: who lived eighteen nineteen through eighteen ninety. She mentions the
Speaker 1: vessel on called the h MS You're Yalus and she
Speaker 1: she writes that there was a monkey on the ship
Speaker 1: that had allegedly gotten into the ship's rigging and there
Speaker 1: was fear that it might wreck uh the chronometer. And indeed,
Speaker 1: one day the monkey crept into the room where they
Speaker 1: kept the chronometer uh and then carried it off into
Speaker 1: the rigging. And the crew, especially like the master who
Speaker 1: was in charge of looking after this instrument, they were
Speaker 1: just chasing after the monkey, trying to get it back,
Speaker 1: and finally the monkey throws it into the ocean before
Speaker 1: they can stop him. Mice. She also writes of a
Speaker 1: monkey on another ship that reportedly held up in the
Speaker 1: rigging until bad weather spilled it overboard and the sea
Speaker 1: was rough, and the captain was just like, good leave
Speaker 1: it there. But the crew had become so attached to
Speaker 1: the monkey it was like, you know, their mascot. At
Speaker 1: that point they insisted, no, we're lowering a boat and
Speaker 1: we're gonna save the monkey. They it kind of sounds
Speaker 1: like yeah, they so he's he caves. He's like, all right,
Speaker 1: we'll go look for the monkey. They go down in
Speaker 1: the boat are looking around for it, and then they
Speaker 1: look up and they see that the monkey has already
Speaker 1: reboarded the vessel and is climbed back into the rigging. Yes,
Speaker 1: I want to high five that monkey. Uh. There's another account,
Speaker 1: she writes, of the monkey Jocko, who had earned its
Speaker 1: place aboard a particular ship and was known for jealously
Speaker 1: chucking a kitten overboard, and despite initial protest from from
Speaker 1: from the dog from a mother dog on the ship,
Speaker 1: it nursed a litter of puppies as well. But she
Speaker 1: shares this quote from from one of the crew members
Speaker 1: on this particular vessel, quote, Jocko was an abominable beast.
Speaker 1: I could not bear him. He used to get drunk
Speaker 1: and play underhanded tricks. Still, he was not altogether bad.
Speaker 1: What Yeah, And and yet there's one more, she mentions,
Speaker 1: without sighting a particular ship. Uh, an orangutan quote on
Speaker 1: board a king's ship returning from India with a governor
Speaker 1: general on board. Quote A most genteel person that put
Speaker 1: on a flannel shawl every evening as soon as it
Speaker 1: became cold. Crossing it tidily across its chest like a lady.
Speaker 1: In this it was copying the Governor General's wife, who
Speaker 1: was also on board. So so I guess the orangutang
Speaker 1: was a you know, a pretty laid back passenger on
Speaker 1: that voyage. But anyway, just a few um difficult to
Speaker 1: substantiate stories of primates on the high seas well. Those
Speaker 1: were a strange mix of horrifying and delightful, yes, which
Speaker 1: I think kind of sums up human nautical adventures in general. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess we're all primates on the waves.
Speaker 1: That's true. Alright, Joe, I think it's time to go
Speaker 1: ahead and sink this ship. To go ahead and end
Speaker 1: this episode, to scuttle it so that in our next
Speaker 1: episode we might discuss uh sunken ships and the habitats
Speaker 1: they create for marine life forms. In the meantime, if
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Speaker 1: shirt designs off of these episodes. And we didn't even
Speaker 1: get into two squirrels. But of course we didn't even
Speaker 1: get into squirrels here. But of course, uh, Benjamin Franklin
Speaker 1: took one on the high Seas with him. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: he took it to England, only to have it get
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