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Speaker 1: In a solitude of the sea, deep from human vanity

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Speaker 1: and the pride of life that planned her stilly couches,

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Speaker 1: She steel chambers, light at the pyres of her salamandrian fires,

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Speaker 1: cold currents thread, and turned to rhythmic title Liars over

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Speaker 1: the mirrors, meant to glass the opulent the sea worm

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Speaker 1: crawls grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent, jewels enjoy designed to ravish

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Speaker 1: the sensuous mind, lie lightless, all their sparkles bleared and

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Speaker 1: black and blind. Dim moon eyed fishes near gaze at

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Speaker 1: the gilded gear and query, what does this vain, glorious

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Speaker 1: nous down here? Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind

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Speaker 1: from How Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, welcome to Stuff

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Speaker 1: to Blow your mind. My name is Robert Lamb, and

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Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick. And we began with the first five

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Speaker 1: stanzas of Thomas Hardy's epic on the Sinking of the Titanic,

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Speaker 1: The Convergence of the Twain. We didn't read the whole

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Speaker 1: poem because I think the first half is better than

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Speaker 1: the second half. I don't do you remember that one,

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Speaker 1: Robert h No, I'm not as up on this one,

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Speaker 1: but I now seems that we should have read this

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Speaker 1: in one of the many voices of the actor Tom Hardy,

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Speaker 1: that would have been that would have been lovely, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that would have been good. Or do a Billy's aane

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Speaker 1: impression from the movie Titanic. Yeah, you know. One of

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Speaker 1: the interesting things about this poem always is that it

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Speaker 1: was supposed to be like a memorial for the sinking

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Speaker 1: of the Titanic, But there's just like not even a

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Speaker 1: hint of of sadness or grieving for the lives lost.

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Speaker 1: Is just like celebrating the irony of the ship sinking. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and and in this section that we read here, there's

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Speaker 1: just a lot of almost kind of ghoulish gloom, uh,

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Speaker 1: obsessing with just sort of the mysterious nature of the shipwreck. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So there's the irony of the opulence going down and

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Speaker 1: then being surrounded by the worm and the moon dim

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Speaker 1: moon eied fishes that swim around at the bottom of

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Speaker 1: the sea. Because that is a really captivating image, isn't

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Speaker 1: it Like taking this like the ultimate emblem of human

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Speaker 1: vanity and riches and and mechanical design and opulence and

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Speaker 1: all that, and then putting it down at like the

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Speaker 1: deepest hell there is on planet Earth the bottom of

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Speaker 1: the North Atlantic. It is kind of the ultimate irony,

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Speaker 1: the ultimate middle finger from nature. But of course, shipwrecks

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Speaker 1: are a thing that you know, it's it's not like

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Speaker 1: the Titanic was the first ship to ever sink. Uh.

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Speaker 1: In fact, I think maybe we should start with the

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Speaker 1: trivia question. We know the answers from the for this

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Speaker 1: because we discussed it ahead of time, but I want you,

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Speaker 1: the listener out there, to think about this trivia question.

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Speaker 1: How many total shipwrecks do you think there are on

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Speaker 1: the bottoms of the world's oceans going back through all

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Speaker 1: human history. You know there's at least one because we

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Speaker 1: we just let from the Titanic. And despite that, one

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Speaker 1: film nobody has has has Raised the Titanic. They make

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Speaker 1: a movie where they brought it up. That happened. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: there was a film like Raised the Titanic. I think

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Speaker 1: it was called. It was one of these it's not

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Speaker 1: quite a disa it was. It was on the heels

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Speaker 1: of all the big disaster films because I recall uh

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Speaker 1: and Uh. I never saw it, but it had a

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Speaker 1: really um it was a really weird concept, it seems

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Speaker 1: for a film okay, okay, So the question is how

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Speaker 1: many total shipwrecks in human history. To be fair estimates,

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Speaker 1: very nobody can know this number. You just have to

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Speaker 1: have a rough guess. Uh. So guess maybe on the

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Speaker 1: order of magnitude that you would be thinking, like, uh,

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Speaker 1: before I had read these answers, or before I thought

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Speaker 1: it through, I probably would have guessed maybe on the

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Speaker 1: order of like, I don't know, fifty thousand or so,

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Speaker 1: even that seems like a lot, like fifty thousand ships.

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Speaker 1: Ships are huge that maybe it couldn't be that many.

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Speaker 1: But let's look at some external answers according to a

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Speaker 1: few experts. So according to the mass market adventure novelist

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Speaker 1: and underwater explorer Clive Cussler, who I always always forget

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Speaker 1: that he was also an underwater adventurer. Yeah, so you

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Speaker 1: like you see his book in every airport bookstore. I

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Speaker 1: think he writes, I don't know, I've never read one,

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Speaker 1: but I think they're like adventure novels about like, oh, submarines,

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Speaker 1: saying that somebody has to go down and get the

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Speaker 1: treasure out of it. I don't know if submarines carry treasure.

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Speaker 1: May be mixing genres there, but it's all underwater stuff

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Speaker 1: and so, but he's an actual underwater explorer as well.

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Speaker 1: And in his foreword to a book about shipwrecks by

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Speaker 1: the archaeologist James Delgado, there are more than one million

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Speaker 1: shipwrecks from history, from the history of human civilization. And

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Speaker 1: actually there are estimates that are even higher, a figure

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Speaker 1: often cited by the Inner Governmental Ocean a Graphic Commission

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Speaker 1: of UNESCO. UH. They've decided that the best testament is

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Speaker 1: about three million or even over three million. And of

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Speaker 1: course that's gonna that's gonna entail everything from dinghies to

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Speaker 1: treasure barges. Yeah, but even then, that's it. That is

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Speaker 1: such a high number. How could there be three million

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Speaker 1: shipwrecks at the bottom of the ocean. It just seems impossible.

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Speaker 1: But then I started, I started trying to do the

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Speaker 1: firmi estimation thing and thinking through it that way. Okay,

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Speaker 1: just work with some round numbers. Assume humans have been

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Speaker 1: sailing the oceans at some significant scale for maybe ten

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Speaker 1: thousand years. Obviously we've been sailing a lot more in

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Speaker 1: recent centuries. Right, Even if they're not venturing out across

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Speaker 1: vast bodies of water, they're at least hugging the shores,

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Speaker 1: they're at least going out to fish, they're at least

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Speaker 1: using uh, you know, channels to move around exactly. Now,

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Speaker 1: simply assume an average, and this is going to be

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Speaker 1: a very rough average, because it's going to vary a

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Speaker 1: lot over the different years, but a rough average of

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Speaker 1: one hundred shipwrecks per year over ten thousand years. Uh Now,

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Speaker 1: obviously that wouldn't be even close to evenly distributed, but

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Speaker 1: that already gets you to a million. Just a hundred

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Speaker 1: shipwrecks year for ten thousand years, you're at a million already. Now,

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Speaker 1: think of all the times when shipwrecks surge, say during

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Speaker 1: war between big naval powers, or during horrible storms, hurricanes, cyclones.

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Speaker 1: Think of the literally thousands of ships that were sunk

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Speaker 1: during World War Two alone, and suddenly a million shipwrecks.

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Speaker 1: It does not only seem not impossible, it seems quite

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Speaker 1: you know, like that seems maybe kind of low, right, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean you're left more with just a consideration of

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Speaker 1: how many shipwrecks remain even a remotely identifiable as a shipwreck,

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Speaker 1: and the vast, vast majority of shipwrecks out there are

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Speaker 1: completely unexplored. We might know where some of them are,

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Speaker 1: like they've been mapped in some way, but nobody's ever

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Speaker 1: been to them. And that's a tantalizing idea. We all

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Speaker 1: love the idea of of of an unexplored shipwreck, especially

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Speaker 1: considering that we wouldn't mind there might be treasure down there,

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Speaker 1: there might be some sort of monster down there. I mean,

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Speaker 1: it's the stuff of of so many wonderful um you know,

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Speaker 1: speculative bits of fiction or even um you know, more

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Speaker 1: believable fair like like The Deep. I believe what the

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Speaker 1: plot in that? Isn't it? That there's a like a

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Speaker 1: World War two era m vessel with a bunch of

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Speaker 1: morphine on it that's a sunk and it's like sunk

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Speaker 1: on top of of a treasure vessel from you know,

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Speaker 1: the co colonial days, like a Spanish treasure. Is this

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Speaker 1: the one with Nick Nolty? And yes, I believe so.

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Speaker 1: Despite my love of Robert Shaw, I've never seen this one.

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Speaker 1: Yeah it was. It was one of the big ones, right,

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Speaker 1: I gotta get on that. That's like seventies cinema, right, yeah,

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Speaker 1: classic seventies cinema. Okay, yeah, that may view it. This weekend.

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Speaker 1: But you know, I think one of the I think

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Speaker 1: one of the stupidest things about people exploring underwater shipwrecks

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Speaker 1: in movie underwater shipwrecks, the ones that happened under the water, uh,

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Speaker 1: shipwrecks in movies, is that they're always looking for treasure,

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Speaker 1: when in fact, the real treasures are not silver and gold,

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Speaker 1: and they're not even morphine. The real treasures of shipwrecks

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Speaker 1: are the bizarre, interesting adaptations of ocean life to our

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Speaker 1: sunken sea born cities exactly. Now, the previous episode of

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Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind was all about the things

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Speaker 1: that live and thrive in on and uh and on

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Speaker 1: a board, even in the riggings of functional sea vessels.

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Speaker 1: And now we're dealing with sea vessels that have sunk

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Speaker 1: into the bottom of the ocean. So what happens immediately

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Speaker 1: after that depends on several factors. So the ship goes down,

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Speaker 1: and what happens depends on the size of the ship,

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Speaker 1: where it falls, the intensity of the impact when it

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Speaker 1: hits the bottom. And this is probably maybe it's something

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Speaker 1: you don't often think of, like when you live down

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Speaker 1: in the ocean. There are boats and cargo ships and

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Speaker 1: fifty ton battleships floating above you all the time, and

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Speaker 1: if something goes wrong, they can fill with water and

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Speaker 1: they lose their buoyancy and they come crashing down on

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Speaker 1: your head. The only equivalent I can imagine is if

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Speaker 1: like ship sized objects were falling down on us from

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Speaker 1: space or from the sky at a rate of dozens

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Speaker 1: or hundreds of times per year, and then we're just lost,

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Speaker 1: in most cases, just lost to whatever was losing those ships.

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Speaker 1: They're like, oh, what's down there somewhere? We can maybe

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Speaker 1: we can, we can find some of them. We can

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Speaker 1: retrieve things for some of these wrecks. But that's about it.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, what if like what if like two hundred

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Speaker 1: airplanes every year were like the size of a battleship,

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Speaker 1: they crash somewhere on Earth and nobody ever went in

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Speaker 1: to clean it up. It just stayed wherever it fell. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: And certainly that's the case when when an airplane crashes

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Speaker 1: into the ocean. In many cases, I mean, their flights

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Speaker 1: have been lost, just as ships have been lost throughout

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Speaker 1: human history. Yeah, so you've got this introduction of this

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Speaker 1: this new thing into the underwater ecosystem. So we were

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Speaker 1: wondering what happens to the life below when a ship

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Speaker 1: comes down. I found one discussion of this in a

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Speaker 1: book called The Biology of Disturbed Habitats by Lawrence R.

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Speaker 1: Walker from Oxford University Press. And so in this book,

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Speaker 1: he's generally looking at ways that humans disrupted natural ecosystems

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Speaker 1: and habitats, and one of the many things he looks

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Speaker 1: at is a shipwreck. So he says number one. Of course,

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Speaker 1: more damage is caused by shipwrecks in shallow water, where

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Speaker 1: biodiversity is already high. You can imagine this like if

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Speaker 1: there's a core all reef or something shipwreck comes down

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Speaker 1: on that, it's a it's initially going to crush a

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Speaker 1: bunch of life and screw things up, right, And then

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Speaker 1: we'll get to at least one example of this later

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Speaker 1: on in the episode. It's when the ship falls into

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Speaker 1: essentially a waste land. I guess that's where there's considerably

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Speaker 1: less harm and potentially room for things to flourish. Yeah, well,

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Speaker 1: there's room for things to flourish in both cases. But

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Speaker 1: there are also negative trade offs as well, right well,

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Speaker 1: like like if it damages, if it heavily damages the

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Speaker 1: coral reef and introduces room for some organisms to thrive.

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Speaker 1: It's like, you know, what, did we really end up

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Speaker 1: ahead here? We we damaged a vital part of the ecosystem. Well,

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Speaker 1: even in in all the cases we'll talk about that,

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Speaker 1: it's there's some difficulty calculating the net benefits and and

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Speaker 1: detriments caused by a sunken ship, but we'll get into

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Speaker 1: that in a minute. So obviously as you into two, yeah,

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Speaker 1: where it's out there in the deep, where the bottom

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Speaker 1: might be a waste land, where there's just sort of

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Speaker 1: not much going on on the bottom of the ocean,

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Speaker 1: which is true for much of the ocean, like a

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Speaker 1: lot of the ocean has sandy or muddy bottom without

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Speaker 1: a ton of biodiversity or or closely you know, densely

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Speaker 1: compacted life. And so when a when a ship sinks

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Speaker 1: out in deep water where biodiversity is lower, the initial

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Speaker 1: impact tends to be less. But as we've been alluding to,

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Speaker 1: shipwrecks are known to have both positive and negative long

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Speaker 1: term consequences for underwater biodiversity. So negative consequences can of

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Speaker 1: course come in the form of like the initial impact

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Speaker 1: crushing stuff and screwing up a reef or anything like that.

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Speaker 1: But they can also come in the form of say

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Speaker 1: a ship disintegrating over time and leaking toxic substances over

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Speaker 1: time into the water. One example might be fuel or

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Speaker 1: other chemicals that are in the structure of the ship itself.

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Speaker 1: For some they're serving some kind of chemical purpose, say

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Speaker 1: within the engine. Yeah, because you know, in many of

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Speaker 1: these cases, we're dealing with a functionally functional vessel that

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Speaker 1: has that has sunk due to say an attack by

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Speaker 1: a military vessel or uh, you know, storm situation, etcetera. Sabotage,

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Speaker 1: were sabotage, it's gonna have fuel aboard. And they are

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Speaker 1: even even very notable cases where a vessel is intentionally

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Speaker 1: sunk for testing purposes, but still with tons of fuel

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Speaker 1: on board. One example I came across of this was

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Speaker 1: the plight of the German heavy cruiser Prince Eugen, captured

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Speaker 1: by the United States in World War Two, and then

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Speaker 1: Cobb and then cobbled into part of this ghost fleet

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Speaker 1: that the military put together, along with the aircraft carrier Saratoga,

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Speaker 1: the battle ship New York, more than eighty warships in total,

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Speaker 1: and they put this motley crew together. So and then

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Speaker 1: anchored them at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands in

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Speaker 1: order to hit the fleet with two nuclear attacks to

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Speaker 1: see what happens when you hit a fleet with an

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Speaker 1: atomic weapon. Uh, but they thought like the ships might

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Speaker 1: be okay in the atomic blast. Well, and I guess

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Speaker 1: they didn't know a lot. Yeah, yeah, but but here

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Speaker 1: this is a summary of the results from a popular

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Speaker 1: mechanics article by Kyle Mizukami. Quote, Prince you can survived

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Speaker 1: the blasts, but she became frightfully radioactive. After initial attempts

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Speaker 1: to decontaminate the ship, the U S towed the heavy

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Speaker 1: cruiser to Kawa Jalion Atall, where she sank six months later.

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Speaker 1: So the ship was survived these these atomic detonations. Today

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Speaker 1: the ship is visible just off the coast of U

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Speaker 1: Budge Island, upside down in shallow water, her propellers resting

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Speaker 1: above the surface of the Pacific Ocean. Now. By the

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Speaker 1: nineteen seventies, though, there was significant concern from the US

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Speaker 1: Fish and Wildlife Service that oil might leak from this wreck,

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Speaker 1: oil that fortunately was not radioactive. That was one of

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Speaker 1: their concerns. They checked on that to make sure that

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Speaker 1: that we weren't dealing with the potential of not only

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Speaker 1: leaked oil, but leaked radioactive oil. But still the US Army, Navy,

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Speaker 1: and the Republic of Micronesia they all embarked on a

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Speaker 1: salvage mission to retrieve it's something like two thousands, seven

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Speaker 1: hundred sixty seven tons of oil, which we're still in there,

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Speaker 1: still in there. That's how tanked up this vessel was.

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Speaker 1: And this project was actually completed just last year with

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Speaker 1: some two fifty thousand gallons of oil removed about nine

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Speaker 1: of its holdings, and the remaining oil is said to

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Speaker 1: be safely enclosed in a few internal tanks. I mean,

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Speaker 1: at least for the foreseeable future. But but that's one

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Speaker 1: of the things about all of these these ships. Ships

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Speaker 1: are artificial creations of human technology, and they are they

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Speaker 1: have a fair amount of difficulty just thriving on the

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Speaker 1: surface of the water. We've talked about the accumulation of barnacles,

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Speaker 1: for example, So you sink it down to the bottom. Uh,

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Speaker 1: things are just going to get rustier and rustier over time.

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Speaker 1: They don't stay contained forever, but maybe some things can

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Speaker 1: stay contained for a long time. Yeah, it least they

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Speaker 1: got two fifty thousand gallons of oil moved from this thing.

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Speaker 1: Uh speaking of the US Fish and Wildlife Service, UH,

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Speaker 1: I also was reading an article that mentioned in two

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Speaker 1: thousand fourteen, they completed a five point five million dollar

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Speaker 1: conservation project to remove three wrecked ships weighing a total

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Speaker 1: of one million pounds from the Pacific Remote Islands and

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Speaker 1: National Wildlife Refuge. UH. These wrecks had all occurred in

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Speaker 1: the previous fifteen year period, and they had damaged the reef.

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Speaker 1: So there's just an example of another case where we

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Speaker 1: have shipwrecks, but they're in the exactly the wrong spot

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Speaker 1: and then they have to be removed. Right. So now

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Speaker 1: we've discussed some of the obvious ways that a shipwreck

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Speaker 1: can be very negative, can have very negative consequences, and

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Speaker 1: especially in a place like a reef where there's already

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Speaker 1: high biodiversity, there's already a lot of stuff living there. Um.

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Speaker 1: But Walker says that especially when you're looking at like

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Speaker 1: the deeper ocean. He says, quote, shipwrecks have important ecological

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Speaker 1: consequences that in some ways resemble bull those of carcasses

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Speaker 1: like a whale fall. Yeah, And so I was like, Wow,

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Speaker 1: I wish you would say more about that. He doesn't

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Speaker 1: in this section, but I looked up his section on

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Speaker 1: marine carcasses and this was very interesting. I see what

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Speaker 1: he's talking about here. So the effects of marine carcasses

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Speaker 1: falling down to the bottom of the ocean, Walker summarizes

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Speaker 1: some research in the number one. He says that, so

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Speaker 1: there's one study from nineteen nine that estimates there might

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Speaker 1: be one gray whale carcass for every three hundred square

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Speaker 1: kilometers of ocean floor. So what happens when a whale

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Speaker 1: falls to the ocean floor? Number one? Of course, it

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Speaker 1: depends on where it falls, But even in the benthic

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Speaker 1: zone out there in the deep sea, when a whale

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Speaker 1: carcass sinks, some opportunistic scavengers that specialize in unpredictable food sources,

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Speaker 1: such as grenadier fish and some benthic invertebrates will arrive

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Speaker 1: and start eating a sunken whale carcass literally within minutes.

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Speaker 1: In the example of one experimentally sunk whale carcass, crabs, sharks,

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Speaker 1: and other fish had eaten the whale's flesh within a

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Speaker 1: few months, and this was followed by a colonization of

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Speaker 1: polychete worms, which we'll get back to that in a bit.

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Speaker 1: But so after that, sulfur based chemosynthetic organisms show up,

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Speaker 1: and these communities can exist within the ecosystem of the

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Speaker 1: carcass for more than five or six years. And this

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Speaker 1: suggests that fauna that normally live on deep ocean hydrothermal

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Speaker 1: vents can also make a habitat out of a whale carcass.

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Speaker 1: And we'll see as we go on, also out of

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Speaker 1: a sunken ship. Yeah, it's I mean a whales carcass,

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Speaker 1: especially when you're dealing with the largest whales. This is

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Speaker 1: a substantial amount of of biomass to just sink to

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Speaker 1: the bottom. Like and unlike with a number of other

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Speaker 1: living creatures in the seas, it can sink to the bottom,

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Speaker 1: other things are going to have more potential to be

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Speaker 1: consumed and torn apart. UH. In the upper layers to tell,

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Speaker 1: there's only there's nothing left but like a a faint

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Speaker 1: rain of gray particles that the bottom. But here we

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Speaker 1: can see the vast majority of the carcass UH can

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Speaker 1: sink to the bottom and then become a community. And

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Speaker 1: if you're interested in this, I think Robert, You and

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Speaker 1: Christian had an episode about this from a few years ago,

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Speaker 1: right about whalefall and like the Osadax bone worm. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I believe that was one of the episodes we did

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Speaker 1: with Dr maraw Hart, the author of Sex in the Seat.

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Speaker 1: So if you haven't heard that one, there's more for

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Speaker 1: you to go back and check out. Yeah, dealing with

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Speaker 1: one of the the highly specialized organisms. That's that is

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Speaker 1: all in on a whale carcass. But I think it's

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Speaker 1: fascinating how a whale carcass here can become not just

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Speaker 1: a food source but a habitat in itself, and in

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Speaker 1: much the same way as sunken ship out in the

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Speaker 1: ocean can become a habitat. Walker doesn't elaborate more on

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Speaker 1: the relationship between his description of whale carcasses and sunkin ships,

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Speaker 1: but I said I would come back to this, so

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Speaker 1: I looked into it. And there is a parallel about

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Speaker 1: the colonization of whale carcasses by sulfur based chemosynthetic bacteria.

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Speaker 1: And we will discuss this after we get back from

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Speaker 1: a break. All right, we're back, So we're on the

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Speaker 1: subject of how a shipwreck can be kind of like

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Speaker 1: a fallen whale carcass out in the ocean. And one

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Speaker 1: of the ways that has been suggested is that there

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Speaker 1: is a similar way that different organisms that often live

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Speaker 1: around geothermal vents can colonize these fallen carcasses, whether it's

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Speaker 1: an organic whale carcass or a mechanical monster carcass of

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Speaker 1: of a great great ship. Um so I found an

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Speaker 1: n o A a report on the marine wildlife colonization

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Speaker 1: of a group of three nineteenth century shipwrecks in the

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Speaker 1: Gulf of Mexico known as the Monterey shipwrecks, and the

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Speaker 1: authors of this report discuss these findings in a paragraph

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Speaker 1: about tube worms. So here's the rundown. The ship remains

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Speaker 1: show signs of vestament of farren tube worms that get

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Speaker 1: chemical nutrition from sulfides which are produced by chemosynthetic bacteria.

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Speaker 1: And now these tube worms you will usually find growing

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Speaker 1: near hydrothermal vent at the bottom of the ocean, eating

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Speaker 1: the byproducts of micro organisms. And this in itself is

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Speaker 1: a wonderful and surprising discovery about nature, the life that

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Speaker 1: surrounds deep sea hydrothermal vents. Up here on the surface

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Speaker 1: in the sunshine. You know, we're used to living in

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Speaker 1: food webs that are mostly traceable back to auto trophes

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Speaker 1: that get their energy from the sunlight. Right, So a

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Speaker 1: crocodile eats a dingo, which aid a rabbit which ate grass,

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Speaker 1: and the plant matter in the grass was chemically synthesized

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Speaker 1: sugar using the energy of the sun. It all comes

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Speaker 1: from the sun, and it kind of results in a

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Speaker 1: I guess you could say about a heliocentricum idea of

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Speaker 1: for us humans where we just think of of of

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Speaker 1: all life is being more directly linked to the energy

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Speaker 1: of the sun. Yeah, there's quite a good reason for

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Speaker 1: surface religions to have sun gods. You know, Helios is

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Speaker 1: the true provider, but there is another god in the deep, right,

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Speaker 1: there is a Hadian god down there. Let's say that

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Speaker 1: the hadi in one is a goddess. Okay, she creates

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Speaker 1: these awesome parallel trophic webs that don't have so much

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Speaker 1: to do with sunlight in some cases not at all,

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Speaker 1: in some cases at least not as much as the

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Speaker 1: surface food webs. So at the bottom of the ocean,

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Speaker 1: there's total darkness without access to sunlight. But one way

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Speaker 1: stuff at the bottom of the ocean in the darkness

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Speaker 1: can survive is to eat something from the photosynthesis food

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Speaker 1: web that falls down from above. Right, you've got stuff

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Speaker 1: making food out of sunlight up there. It comes down

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Speaker 1: and you eat it. But another way is to skip

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Speaker 1: the sunlight based nutrition, get your energy from the heat

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Speaker 1: and chemical rich waters around deep sea hydrothermal fins, So

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Speaker 1: deep down to the bottom of the ocean, you've got

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Speaker 1: these places where you've got heated minerals gushing up out

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Speaker 1: of the out of the earth into the water. And

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Speaker 1: around these events, microorganisms form mats which take in chemicals

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Speaker 1: and minerals, for example, hydrogen sulfide escaping from the earth,

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Speaker 1: and they oxidize it into sulfur, and this chemical reaction

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Speaker 1: produces energy that can be used to create nutrition for

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Speaker 1: the micro and thus another type of food web is born.

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Speaker 1: So other organisms might graze on the microbial mats and

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Speaker 1: eat them or eat their byproducts, and then you've got

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Speaker 1: a second round of eaters that feed on the first round,

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Speaker 1: and so forth. And hydrothermal vents are just amazing. You've

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Speaker 1: also got these giant tube worms that actually live in

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Speaker 1: a mutualistic relationship with the chemosynthetic vent microbes. The microbes

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Speaker 1: provide the worms with nutrition and the worms provide the

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Speaker 1: microbes with shelter. Uh. But so where did chemosynthetic bacteria

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Speaker 1: come from in the Monterey shipwrecks. Well, the authors of

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Speaker 1: the n O a A report suggest a process. They say,

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Speaker 1: you know, probably first wood boring organisms come in and

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Speaker 1: consume the wooden parts of the ship, and then this

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Speaker 1: converts stored chemical energy in the wood into bioavailable nutrients.

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Speaker 1: And then they write, quote, as organisms devour these nutrients,

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Speaker 1: increased respiration causes the development of anoxy condition without oxygen

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Speaker 1: and sulfide production by sulfate reducing bacteria. As a result,

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Speaker 1: the shipwrecks are producing conditions similar to those of other

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Speaker 1: deep sea chemosynthetic habitats, such as methane seeps and hydrothermal vents.

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Speaker 1: So the shipwrecks here are like a new temple to

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Speaker 1: the Hadian goddess of the hydrothermal vents. They provide a

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Speaker 1: sort of analog of the conditions of hydrothermal vents that

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Speaker 1: can allow similar organisms to thrive without anything escaping from

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Speaker 1: the earth. Yeah, this is interesting about considering the wood

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Speaker 1: here because of course, for the vast majority of of

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Speaker 1: of human history, ships were wooden like we're discussing the

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Speaker 1: wooden ships, uh and their their issues with barnacles in

425
00:23:48,080 --> 00:23:51,800
Speaker 1: the last episode. Uh so, and of course even ships

426
00:23:51,840 --> 00:23:53,720
Speaker 1: with steel hull, so they're gonna have a number of

427
00:23:53,760 --> 00:23:56,840
Speaker 1: wooden components on them. Yeah. And I guess in a way,

428
00:23:56,880 --> 00:24:00,320
Speaker 1: this would be a version of the other kind of

429
00:24:00,359 --> 00:24:03,119
Speaker 1: survival down in the deep where which is surviving based

430
00:24:03,119 --> 00:24:06,440
Speaker 1: on stuff from the photosynthesis web up above falling down.

431
00:24:07,080 --> 00:24:11,680
Speaker 1: But this would be like converting that into at later stages,

432
00:24:11,840 --> 00:24:15,479
Speaker 1: into a parallel of the chemosynthetic food web. You end

433
00:24:15,560 --> 00:24:18,480
Speaker 1: up with the same tube worms, the same chemosynthetic bacteria,

434
00:24:18,560 --> 00:24:21,960
Speaker 1: the same sulfur based food web, and the creatures of

435
00:24:22,000 --> 00:24:24,359
Speaker 1: the deep sea hades take root. And of course in

436
00:24:24,400 --> 00:24:25,919
Speaker 1: all of this, uh, you know, we were kind of

437
00:24:26,280 --> 00:24:28,639
Speaker 1: glassing over the obvious that win A when a ship

438
00:24:28,720 --> 00:24:31,720
Speaker 1: first sinks into the ocean, it may or may not

439
00:24:31,920 --> 00:24:36,320
Speaker 1: contain uh say, human beings or or either or other

440
00:24:36,720 --> 00:24:41,520
Speaker 1: you know, could certainly can contain other organisms as well, chickens, goats, uh,

441
00:24:42,160 --> 00:24:44,679
Speaker 1: the gorilla and orangutang that we discussed in the in

442
00:24:44,680 --> 00:24:47,560
Speaker 1: the most recent episodes, So there could be other forms

443
00:24:47,600 --> 00:24:51,199
Speaker 1: of immediate sustenance. Aboord a ship as well. It's a

444
00:24:51,280 --> 00:24:54,080
Speaker 1: ship is like a box of chocolates that has various

445
00:24:54,280 --> 00:24:58,159
Speaker 1: you know, surprising morsels throughout and you you don't know

446
00:24:58,200 --> 00:24:59,960
Speaker 1: what they're going to be until they land on the

447
00:25:00,000 --> 00:25:03,640
Speaker 1: bottom and you explore. Yeah, it could be full of primates,

448
00:25:04,160 --> 00:25:06,879
Speaker 1: it could be full of plant life, it could be

449
00:25:06,920 --> 00:25:11,280
Speaker 1: cook full of radioactive oil. You simply don't know what's

450
00:25:11,320 --> 00:25:16,520
Speaker 1: the box of chocolate's equivalent of radioactive oil. Um depends

451
00:25:16,560 --> 00:25:19,119
Speaker 1: on the box of chocolates. Some of them they're all

452
00:25:19,240 --> 00:25:22,480
Speaker 1: radioactive oil. I'd say, we're the ones that have the

453
00:25:22,560 --> 00:25:26,280
Speaker 1: really fake cherry goo in the middle. Oh yeah, yeah,

454
00:25:26,320 --> 00:25:28,040
Speaker 1: because those can be Those can be good if you

455
00:25:28,040 --> 00:25:30,720
Speaker 1: have a really nice a Machino cherry inside of a chocolate,

456
00:25:31,080 --> 00:25:36,080
Speaker 1: but very often you get the radioactive sludge version of that.

457
00:25:36,240 --> 00:25:40,280
Speaker 1: I'm more into the Luxardo cherries myself. Okay, no, no, no,

458
00:25:40,320 --> 00:25:42,919
Speaker 1: Back to the tube worms from Motion Hill. So the

459
00:25:42,920 --> 00:25:45,800
Speaker 1: Monterey rex are not the only ones where vent life

460
00:25:45,800 --> 00:25:48,840
Speaker 1: has been discovered like this. For example, I found this

461
00:25:48,920 --> 00:25:53,640
Speaker 1: one paper by Maria Christina Gambi, Anya Schultz and Inzio

462
00:25:53,680 --> 00:25:57,440
Speaker 1: Amato called Record of Limeli Brachia, and then it lists

463
00:25:57,440 --> 00:26:01,760
Speaker 1: several uh taxon names here from a deep shipwreck in

464
00:26:01,800 --> 00:26:05,960
Speaker 1: the Western Mediterranean Sea, Italy in Marine Biodiversity Records two

465
00:26:06,000 --> 00:26:09,840
Speaker 1: thousand eleven and the author's report finding tube worms Lamelli

466
00:26:09,880 --> 00:26:13,440
Speaker 1: braccia at a shipwreck site of a ship called the

467
00:26:13,680 --> 00:26:17,440
Speaker 1: Katania which was sunk in nineteen seventeen on the bottom

468
00:26:17,480 --> 00:26:20,560
Speaker 1: of a western basin of the Mediterranean Sea and the

469
00:26:20,600 --> 00:26:23,800
Speaker 1: author's right quote. It needs still to be clarified which

470
00:26:23,840 --> 00:26:27,200
Speaker 1: type of energy source the obligate symbiotic bacteria of these

471
00:26:27,240 --> 00:26:31,000
Speaker 1: worms may use for nutrition, since no sulfur emissions can

472
00:26:31,040 --> 00:26:34,920
Speaker 1: be documented on and around the shipwreck. The Katania contained

473
00:26:35,080 --> 00:26:40,119
Speaker 1: some wooden structures and was transporting cotton balls and oil seeds,

474
00:26:40,160 --> 00:26:43,520
Speaker 1: so here's some more little chocolate morsels, cotton balls and

475
00:26:43,560 --> 00:26:47,840
Speaker 1: oil seeds, so the symbiotic bacteria may rely on degradation

476
00:26:47,920 --> 00:26:51,920
Speaker 1: of these materials. This record stresses the importance of shipwreck

477
00:26:52,280 --> 00:26:56,000
Speaker 1: as a possible stepping stone habitat for the large scale

478
00:26:56,160 --> 00:27:02,000
Speaker 1: dispersion of vesta minta fera, meaning like life. So that's

479
00:27:02,040 --> 00:27:06,520
Speaker 1: really interesting. They're saying it's possible shipwrecks could serve as

480
00:27:06,560 --> 00:27:10,919
Speaker 1: a stepping stone habitat to sort of walk communities of

481
00:27:11,040 --> 00:27:14,639
Speaker 1: vent life from one scarce deep sea vent to another

482
00:27:14,760 --> 00:27:16,920
Speaker 1: across the bottom of the ocean. This is interesting. I

483
00:27:16,960 --> 00:27:20,920
Speaker 1: wonder if if this means that the accidental sinkings of

484
00:27:21,200 --> 00:27:25,040
Speaker 1: ships in human history have enabled populations from one vent

485
00:27:25,119 --> 00:27:28,200
Speaker 1: to reach other vents, that they that that what otherwise

486
00:27:28,359 --> 00:27:31,640
Speaker 1: journeys that would have otherwise been impossible. Yeah, I'm I'm

487
00:27:31,640 --> 00:27:33,800
Speaker 1: trying to think of an analogy for the surface. It's like,

488
00:27:33,840 --> 00:27:36,159
Speaker 1: go back to the idea that there are these giant

489
00:27:36,240 --> 00:27:38,719
Speaker 1: ship sized airplanes flying around all the time and they

490
00:27:38,720 --> 00:27:42,359
Speaker 1: crash pretty often. What if they crash and create like

491
00:27:42,400 --> 00:27:45,040
Speaker 1: they're full of water and create an oasis in the

492
00:27:45,080 --> 00:27:49,240
Speaker 1: middle of a desert that occasionally crashes allow plant life

493
00:27:49,280 --> 00:27:52,080
Speaker 1: to like cross a desert barrier, right, or I think

494
00:27:52,440 --> 00:27:56,360
Speaker 1: you can also maybe draw some analogies to land bridges

495
00:27:57,240 --> 00:28:01,840
Speaker 1: enabling our our ancestors to cross from one piece of

496
00:28:01,920 --> 00:28:04,320
Speaker 1: land to another. Yeah. So I think at this stage

497
00:28:04,400 --> 00:28:06,560
Speaker 1: this is just a hypothesis of the authors. We don't

498
00:28:06,600 --> 00:28:08,520
Speaker 1: know for sure if this is the case, but that, Yeah,

499
00:28:08,560 --> 00:28:12,080
Speaker 1: what a fascinating idea if that's true, Like the fact

500
00:28:12,160 --> 00:28:14,840
Speaker 1: that whenever a ship sinks, you could be enabling the

501
00:28:14,920 --> 00:28:17,760
Speaker 1: spread of wildlife through the deep dark desert. I mean

502
00:28:17,800 --> 00:28:19,200
Speaker 1: it's kind of it's again, it kind of comes back

503
00:28:19,200 --> 00:28:21,120
Speaker 1: to the idea of like the butterfly effect. Right, it's

504
00:28:21,160 --> 00:28:26,119
Speaker 1: just one small change, uh could unsettle an ecosystem or

505
00:28:26,160 --> 00:28:33,760
Speaker 1: allow one invasive organism to completely invade uh this other habitat. Yeah, now,

506
00:28:33,800 --> 00:28:35,280
Speaker 1: I guess on the other hand, we could at least

507
00:28:35,280 --> 00:28:37,639
Speaker 1: say that it looks like whale carcasses might do a

508
00:28:37,680 --> 00:28:40,880
Speaker 1: similar thing, So it wouldn't just be ships, but we'd

509
00:28:40,880 --> 00:28:43,840
Speaker 1: be contributing every time, we every time the captain goes

510
00:28:43,840 --> 00:28:46,240
Speaker 1: down with the ship. But back to Walker, he says,

511
00:28:46,280 --> 00:28:49,160
Speaker 1: of course, on top of the his comparison to the carcasses,

512
00:28:49,440 --> 00:28:52,480
Speaker 1: shipwrecks can just generally have a very positive impact on

513
00:28:52,600 --> 00:28:56,800
Speaker 1: benthic biodiversity because a shipwreck, like a sunken ship, creates

514
00:28:56,840 --> 00:29:02,640
Speaker 1: habitats for colonization by all kinds of organism barnacles, sponges, brianzonans,

515
00:29:03,000 --> 00:29:06,160
Speaker 1: and the fish that feed on those organisms. So in

516
00:29:06,200 --> 00:29:08,080
Speaker 1: many ways, I think we really can think of a

517
00:29:08,080 --> 00:29:11,760
Speaker 1: sinking ship as kind of like a giant inorganic whale carcass,

518
00:29:12,000 --> 00:29:14,160
Speaker 1: I guess, with a major difference being that ships are

519
00:29:14,160 --> 00:29:16,600
Speaker 1: not covered in edible flesh, though they might have a

520
00:29:16,640 --> 00:29:19,280
Speaker 1: wooden hull that might be edible to some organisms. They

521
00:29:19,320 --> 00:29:22,440
Speaker 1: might be full of morsels of you know, organisms and

522
00:29:22,480 --> 00:29:25,440
Speaker 1: food and stuff like that that partially filled this role.

523
00:29:25,640 --> 00:29:27,840
Speaker 1: On the other hand, they might be full of poisons

524
00:29:27,840 --> 00:29:30,520
Speaker 1: and toxins that leach out into the water and damage

525
00:29:30,600 --> 00:29:33,600
Speaker 1: sea life. So you've got these positive and negative effects

526
00:29:33,600 --> 00:29:36,120
Speaker 1: coming along. Whenever a ship goes down, it could just

527
00:29:36,160 --> 00:29:38,640
Speaker 1: be filled with gold coins, and you know, what are

528
00:29:38,640 --> 00:29:40,520
Speaker 1: you gonna do with that? I mean depends on if

529
00:29:40,520 --> 00:29:43,040
Speaker 1: you're a tube worm that doesn't care or a greedy

530
00:29:43,040 --> 00:29:47,840
Speaker 1: octopus that must have all the gold. You show up,

531
00:29:47,880 --> 00:29:49,680
Speaker 1: you think you might get something to eat or some

532
00:29:49,800 --> 00:29:52,680
Speaker 1: wood to munch on, and it's just the amber room.

533
00:29:52,760 --> 00:29:55,480
Speaker 1: What am I going to do with this? Okay? So

534
00:29:55,520 --> 00:29:57,880
Speaker 1: we've been talking about what happens to a shipwreck sort

535
00:29:57,880 --> 00:29:59,800
Speaker 1: of in the short term when it goes down, But

536
00:30:00,120 --> 00:30:02,760
Speaker 1: I was wondering what happens to a shipwreck over a

537
00:30:02,800 --> 00:30:05,920
Speaker 1: long period of time after it goes down. So I

538
00:30:06,000 --> 00:30:08,320
Speaker 1: want to look at a passage from another book. This

539
00:30:08,360 --> 00:30:11,120
Speaker 1: is by Martin R. Spate and Peter A. Henderson. Marine

540
00:30:11,160 --> 00:30:16,560
Speaker 1: ecology Concepts and applications. Uh From and Spate and Henderson

541
00:30:16,720 --> 00:30:20,360
Speaker 1: say essentially that sunken ships can function as artificial reefs.

542
00:30:20,360 --> 00:30:22,680
Speaker 1: This shouldn't be much of a surprise. In fact, ships

543
00:30:22,680 --> 00:30:26,200
Speaker 1: are often sunk on purpose to create artificial reefs. Now,

544
00:30:26,400 --> 00:30:30,600
Speaker 1: the wisdom of doing this might be somewhat questionable, right,

545
00:30:30,760 --> 00:30:32,520
Speaker 1: I feel like this is one of those areas where

546
00:30:32,520 --> 00:30:34,240
Speaker 1: it's easy to fall into the trap of thinking, well,

547
00:30:34,280 --> 00:30:36,560
Speaker 1: anytime you scuttle a vessel and send it to the

548
00:30:36,560 --> 00:30:38,960
Speaker 1: bottom of the sea, you're you know, you're you're doing

549
00:30:39,000 --> 00:30:43,000
Speaker 1: a favor to marine communities down there, right, But of course,

550
00:30:43,040 --> 00:30:45,720
Speaker 1: as we already discussed, that's not the case if your

551
00:30:45,800 --> 00:30:49,840
Speaker 1: vessel is full of oil or you just dropped it

552
00:30:49,880 --> 00:30:54,000
Speaker 1: on top of a on a delicate reef environment, exactly right.

553
00:30:54,040 --> 00:30:57,200
Speaker 1: So they're they're positives and negatives that come along with this.

554
00:30:57,400 --> 00:31:01,680
Speaker 1: But literally, mechanically, what doce O old obsolete warships and

555
00:31:01,720 --> 00:31:05,200
Speaker 1: stuff like that do once they go down to the bottom. So,

556
00:31:05,240 --> 00:31:07,520
Speaker 1: first of all, the authors say they provide a quote

557
00:31:07,800 --> 00:31:11,960
Speaker 1: new clean, hard substrates for the settlement of many sessile

558
00:31:12,040 --> 00:31:15,040
Speaker 1: and sedentary species. Like suddenly there's a lot of just

559
00:31:15,280 --> 00:31:18,800
Speaker 1: new virgin territory that you could have fixed yourself too,

560
00:31:19,000 --> 00:31:23,120
Speaker 1: exactly right. So, sescile and sedentary species like coral generally

561
00:31:23,160 --> 00:31:27,000
Speaker 1: make a base out of rocky surfaces like loose seafloor.

562
00:31:27,080 --> 00:31:29,600
Speaker 1: Sediment does not provide a good place for them to

563
00:31:29,680 --> 00:31:32,200
Speaker 1: lock down. So if you've got a lot of you know,

564
00:31:32,280 --> 00:31:35,520
Speaker 1: empty ocean floor, that's just kind of sandy out there

565
00:31:35,080 --> 00:31:38,040
Speaker 1: that these organisms can't really find purchase there. That's not

566
00:31:38,400 --> 00:31:40,440
Speaker 1: the way they make a living. They need a rock

567
00:31:40,840 --> 00:31:44,360
Speaker 1: or they need a ship's hull. Second, they provide shelter

568
00:31:44,600 --> 00:31:47,920
Speaker 1: and a complex habitat for fish that like to hide

569
00:31:47,960 --> 00:31:51,480
Speaker 1: within and around physical structures rather than out in open water.

570
00:31:51,560 --> 00:31:53,640
Speaker 1: And there are a lot of species like this where

571
00:31:53,720 --> 00:31:55,800
Speaker 1: where you know, you can imagine when you go into

572
00:31:55,800 --> 00:31:58,760
Speaker 1: a restaurant, would you would you rather be sitting at

573
00:31:58,760 --> 00:32:00,920
Speaker 1: a table in the middle of the room with your

574
00:32:00,960 --> 00:32:03,400
Speaker 1: back to the door, or in a kind of secluded

575
00:32:03,480 --> 00:32:07,640
Speaker 1: booth in the far corner. Am I going to fetch

576
00:32:07,680 --> 00:32:10,600
Speaker 1: a handgun from the toilet and assassinate a mafia down?

577
00:32:11,040 --> 00:32:12,840
Speaker 1: I don't know. I guess it kind of depends on

578
00:32:12,840 --> 00:32:14,840
Speaker 1: the restaurant. Oh wait, Robert, I don't know if I

579
00:32:14,880 --> 00:32:17,720
Speaker 1: was getting into bad. Are you like a table preference,

580
00:32:18,080 --> 00:32:20,200
Speaker 1: Like you'd rather be in the middle of the room. Well,

581
00:32:20,280 --> 00:32:23,480
Speaker 1: I mean, if the restaurant's good, there's a hopefully you're

582
00:32:23,480 --> 00:32:25,360
Speaker 1: not gonna have a lot of choices. You're gonna have

583
00:32:25,400 --> 00:32:26,960
Speaker 1: to deal with it. You're gonna have to deal with

584
00:32:27,000 --> 00:32:29,280
Speaker 1: that table right next to the door and get a

585
00:32:29,280 --> 00:32:31,800
Speaker 1: blast of cold air every time somebody opens it. Oh no,

586
00:32:31,840 --> 00:32:34,600
Speaker 1: I'm not advising people to complain about their table. Don't

587
00:32:34,640 --> 00:32:36,760
Speaker 1: do that. You look like such a jerk when you're like,

588
00:32:36,800 --> 00:32:39,440
Speaker 1: I don't like this table. But no, I mean everybody

589
00:32:39,520 --> 00:32:42,120
Speaker 1: would not every Most people, I think, would rather be

590
00:32:42,280 --> 00:32:44,280
Speaker 1: secluded in the corner where you got your back to

591
00:32:44,320 --> 00:32:46,680
Speaker 1: the wall, you got your kind of ensconced in a

592
00:32:46,720 --> 00:32:49,400
Speaker 1: protective little booth area. Yeah, I guess there is a

593
00:32:49,520 --> 00:32:54,080
Speaker 1: natural tendency to want that kind of seating. However, we

594
00:32:54,240 --> 00:32:58,840
Speaker 1: certainly heard, you know, people give like security advice where

595
00:32:58,880 --> 00:33:00,600
Speaker 1: they say, all right, for thing you do when you

596
00:33:00,640 --> 00:33:02,800
Speaker 1: go into a restaurant, you just go ahead and inspect

597
00:33:02,840 --> 00:33:06,600
Speaker 1: all the eggs, look for a handgun behind the toilet,

598
00:33:07,080 --> 00:33:09,120
Speaker 1: make sure you have your escape breath, like I don't know,

599
00:33:09,200 --> 00:33:11,080
Speaker 1: like like yes, know how to get in and out

600
00:33:11,120 --> 00:33:13,800
Speaker 1: of a building. But ultimately, like if I'm going into

601
00:33:13,840 --> 00:33:17,480
Speaker 1: and enjoy, say, you know, some pizza or sushi, what

602
00:33:17,560 --> 00:33:20,120
Speaker 1: have you, you want to be imagining what violence might be.

603
00:33:20,280 --> 00:33:22,040
Speaker 1: So I want to just assume that I'm going to

604
00:33:22,120 --> 00:33:23,720
Speaker 1: get out of here in one piece and I'm not

605
00:33:23,720 --> 00:33:26,080
Speaker 1: gonna have to fight my way out with, you know,

606
00:33:26,120 --> 00:33:29,400
Speaker 1: with chopsticks or something. But that's that's kind of a

607
00:33:29,520 --> 00:33:34,400
Speaker 1: human privilege. There is certainly in an oceanic environment you

608
00:33:34,440 --> 00:33:36,680
Speaker 1: need to be prepared to fight your way out. Right. Yeah,

609
00:33:36,720 --> 00:33:39,640
Speaker 1: I would say generally the life of an ocean dwelling

610
00:33:39,760 --> 00:33:43,320
Speaker 1: organism is much more dangerous than your average restaurant. But

611
00:33:43,400 --> 00:33:46,440
Speaker 1: even given our understanding of that, it's it's very natural

612
00:33:46,520 --> 00:33:48,800
Speaker 1: to see. I mean, I don't want to compare fish

613
00:33:48,800 --> 00:33:50,640
Speaker 1: and humans too much, but it's natural to see how

614
00:33:50,720 --> 00:33:53,280
Speaker 1: organisms like shelter. You know, you like to have a

615
00:33:53,280 --> 00:33:55,160
Speaker 1: place to hide, a place you can kind of like

616
00:33:55,200 --> 00:33:58,520
Speaker 1: get with, get under stuff and get inside stuff that

617
00:33:58,600 --> 00:34:00,920
Speaker 1: makes you feel secure. Yeah, shipwreck is gonna have a

618
00:34:00,920 --> 00:34:05,120
Speaker 1: lot of little nooks and crannies that organisms could could

619
00:34:05,360 --> 00:34:09,239
Speaker 1: could could could hide in little naturally occurring caves. I

620
00:34:09,320 --> 00:34:12,680
Speaker 1: was fortunate enough to get to snorkel over a shipwreck

621
00:34:12,800 --> 00:34:15,360
Speaker 1: in Barbados a few years back. It was a World

622
00:34:15,360 --> 00:34:19,120
Speaker 1: War One era vessel and and so it had plenty

623
00:34:19,160 --> 00:34:21,480
Speaker 1: of time for stuff to you know, accumulate. You could

624
00:34:21,520 --> 00:34:24,279
Speaker 1: still certainly it was a big metal vessel, so a

625
00:34:24,280 --> 00:34:27,239
Speaker 1: big steel vessel, so there's still plenty of it there.

626
00:34:27,360 --> 00:34:30,120
Speaker 1: It was definitely a shipwreck. You could identify it as

627
00:34:30,160 --> 00:34:33,719
Speaker 1: a human u structure, but it was. It was very

628
00:34:33,760 --> 00:34:36,759
Speaker 1: well populated, and it's kind of haunting to swim over it.

629
00:34:36,800 --> 00:34:40,479
Speaker 1: And you stare down into these dark recesses and see

630
00:34:40,520 --> 00:34:43,160
Speaker 1: things swimming in and out of it. Uh, see all

631
00:34:43,200 --> 00:34:45,640
Speaker 1: of this life that is thriving just all over the

632
00:34:45,680 --> 00:34:48,120
Speaker 1: surface of the thing. Do you do? You constantly think

633
00:34:48,560 --> 00:34:50,399
Speaker 1: you see a dark recess and you think what would

634
00:34:50,440 --> 00:34:52,680
Speaker 1: happen if I stuck my hand in there? Oh? Yeah,

635
00:34:52,760 --> 00:34:54,919
Speaker 1: you think what would happen if I dove down there

636
00:34:55,040 --> 00:34:58,080
Speaker 1: and got lost in it? You know? You see these

637
00:34:59,000 --> 00:35:02,839
Speaker 1: documentaries in which people are diving not only down to shipwrecks,

638
00:35:02,880 --> 00:35:05,600
Speaker 1: but going inside them, and that you know that that

639
00:35:05,719 --> 00:35:12,320
Speaker 1: kind of yeah. So anyway, here's another advantage that sunkin

640
00:35:12,360 --> 00:35:15,399
Speaker 1: ships can provide to organisms that I found this one

641
00:35:15,440 --> 00:35:18,759
Speaker 1: interesting and surprising Spatan Henderson do not mention this one.

642
00:35:18,800 --> 00:35:21,880
Speaker 1: I found this instead in some online materials from the

643
00:35:21,880 --> 00:35:26,120
Speaker 1: Ocean Exploration Trust, which is associated with Bob Ballard the

644
00:35:26,200 --> 00:35:31,400
Speaker 1: Undersea Explorer UM. And so it's this elevation above the

645
00:35:31,440 --> 00:35:35,040
Speaker 1: sea floor. So like by climbing up higher off the

646
00:35:35,080 --> 00:35:39,160
Speaker 1: ocean floor, they say, you give yourself better access to

647
00:35:39,360 --> 00:35:43,480
Speaker 1: currents moving streams of water within the ocean. So if

648
00:35:43,520 --> 00:35:47,200
Speaker 1: you are saying immobile or mostly immobile organism like a

649
00:35:47,320 --> 00:35:50,640
Speaker 1: fly trap anemony, you want to take root in a

650
00:35:50,680 --> 00:35:53,880
Speaker 1: place where food sources will drift past you, so you

651
00:35:53,920 --> 00:35:56,480
Speaker 1: can grab and eat things as they float on by.

652
00:35:56,719 --> 00:35:59,239
Speaker 1: It's kind of like a reverse drive through. Well that

653
00:35:59,280 --> 00:36:03,160
Speaker 1: makes sense. Yeah, Uh, You're able to essentially climb up

654
00:36:03,320 --> 00:36:06,400
Speaker 1: into an area of greater traffic, like getting up in

655
00:36:06,400 --> 00:36:09,359
Speaker 1: the wind. Yeah, so imagine sort of like plopping down

656
00:36:09,400 --> 00:36:13,160
Speaker 1: a fresh unoccupied combination of a reef and a cave

657
00:36:13,280 --> 00:36:16,440
Speaker 1: system in the water. Obviously, things are gonna want to

658
00:36:16,440 --> 00:36:19,840
Speaker 1: take roots. So shipwrecks can be especially attractive to marine

659
00:36:19,840 --> 00:36:21,960
Speaker 1: life if they sink in a place with muddy or

660
00:36:22,040 --> 00:36:24,680
Speaker 1: sandy seabed, like we've been talking about since the sunken

661
00:36:24,760 --> 00:36:28,480
Speaker 1: vessel will now be the only hard substrate around, and

662
00:36:28,600 --> 00:36:31,560
Speaker 1: hard substrates are very valuable real estate in the ocean.

663
00:36:31,880 --> 00:36:34,000
Speaker 1: In another way, we've already discussed the analogy of a

664
00:36:34,040 --> 00:36:37,280
Speaker 1: desert oasis, but this is another way that a shipwreck

665
00:36:37,360 --> 00:36:39,840
Speaker 1: can be kind of like a desert oasis at the

666
00:36:39,840 --> 00:36:43,000
Speaker 1: bottom of the sea. And then ultimately it's gonna it's

667
00:36:43,040 --> 00:36:45,880
Speaker 1: there's there's often going to be something there for quite

668
00:36:46,040 --> 00:36:48,560
Speaker 1: a while now, certainly with with wooden vessels, those are

669
00:36:48,600 --> 00:36:52,600
Speaker 1: going to deteriorate at a far faster rate, whereas steel

670
00:36:52,640 --> 00:36:56,120
Speaker 1: hold ships are going to linger quite a bit longer.

671
00:36:57,000 --> 00:37:00,640
Speaker 1: But speaking of Bob Ballard, I was watching a documentary

672
00:37:00,640 --> 00:37:03,960
Speaker 1: a while back about his work and some of the

673
00:37:04,280 --> 00:37:07,719
Speaker 1: you know, the undersea explorations that he's taken part in.

674
00:37:08,160 --> 00:37:10,880
Speaker 1: And in one of them, they were they were looking

675
00:37:11,040 --> 00:37:15,600
Speaker 1: at really ancient recks, uh, you know, Greek sailing vessels

676
00:37:16,080 --> 00:37:19,279
Speaker 1: and uh. And by this point in time there was

677
00:37:19,360 --> 00:37:22,640
Speaker 1: virtually nothing left, like all the wood was gone, but

678
00:37:22,800 --> 00:37:26,560
Speaker 1: you had you had the remnants of the cargo on

679
00:37:26,640 --> 00:37:29,759
Speaker 1: there there on the bottom arrange more or less in

680
00:37:29,760 --> 00:37:33,920
Speaker 1: the shape of the ship. Oh yeah, yeah. And so

681
00:37:34,000 --> 00:37:35,920
Speaker 1: another thing I do want to talk about is how

682
00:37:35,960 --> 00:37:38,160
Speaker 1: you can have remains of a ship even after a

683
00:37:38,200 --> 00:37:40,560
Speaker 1: lot of the wood is gone from a wooden shipwreck,

684
00:37:41,080 --> 00:37:43,120
Speaker 1: not just from the cargo. I mean the stuff about

685
00:37:43,120 --> 00:37:45,279
Speaker 1: the cargo is interesting because, yeah, you see like the

686
00:37:45,280 --> 00:37:47,879
Speaker 1: ghosts of the shape of the ship, and then inside

687
00:37:47,960 --> 00:37:51,400
Speaker 1: there like the amphora, like the wine jars or you know,

688
00:37:51,840 --> 00:37:54,920
Speaker 1: gold or something, at least the shattered remnants of it. Yeah.

689
00:37:55,040 --> 00:37:58,640
Speaker 1: Uh So sometimes what happens to the remains of a

690
00:37:58,680 --> 00:38:02,040
Speaker 1: ship is what's known as concretion. And Robert, I have

691
00:38:02,080 --> 00:38:04,160
Speaker 1: attached an image for you to look at here in

692
00:38:04,160 --> 00:38:06,560
Speaker 1: our notes. Uh this is an image I put in

693
00:38:06,719 --> 00:38:10,120
Speaker 1: of a concretion from the remains of the Queen Anne's Revenge,

694
00:38:10,520 --> 00:38:14,719
Speaker 1: the flagship of the pirate Blackbeard. How do you say?

695
00:38:14,760 --> 00:38:17,280
Speaker 1: His name? Is it Edward Teach? Its spelled like Teach,

696
00:38:17,360 --> 00:38:19,680
Speaker 1: but I want to say, it's like taoch or something.

697
00:38:20,840 --> 00:38:25,960
Speaker 1: I don't know. I always said Teach. Okay, Well I'm okay.

698
00:38:26,280 --> 00:38:28,120
Speaker 1: But he like he's going to teach you a lesson

699
00:38:28,160 --> 00:38:30,080
Speaker 1: with his cut lists if you don't hand over all

700
00:38:30,120 --> 00:38:33,200
Speaker 1: the booty. So Edward Teach, the pirate known as black Beard.

701
00:38:33,480 --> 00:38:37,160
Speaker 1: He sailed around, he robbed ships, his flagship the Queen

702
00:38:37,200 --> 00:38:39,640
Speaker 1: Anne's Revenge was sunk. I think it was sunk off

703
00:38:39,640 --> 00:38:43,600
Speaker 1: the coast of North Carolina. Um, but so it. I

704
00:38:43,640 --> 00:38:46,400
Speaker 1: was reading a blog post by a North Carolina archaeologist

705
00:38:46,480 --> 00:38:51,360
Speaker 1: named Courtney Page, who worked on the Queen Anne's Revenge project,

706
00:38:51,840 --> 00:38:55,080
Speaker 1: and uh, and she was writing about how this process happens.

707
00:38:55,160 --> 00:38:59,520
Speaker 1: You know, when people study sunken ships that contain iron elements,

708
00:39:00,040 --> 00:39:03,759
Speaker 1: this often leads to the creation of what are called concretions.

709
00:39:03,800 --> 00:39:06,640
Speaker 1: And these are interesting structures. As the name implies, they

710
00:39:06,719 --> 00:39:10,640
Speaker 1: sort of resemble concrete. I was looking at this image

711
00:39:10,640 --> 00:39:13,239
Speaker 1: of the one from the Queensland's Revenge, and it looks

712
00:39:13,280 --> 00:39:18,000
Speaker 1: to me like a cement cow heart or a deep

713
00:39:18,040 --> 00:39:20,600
Speaker 1: fried chicken cutlet. It's kind of what I was getting from.

714
00:39:20,640 --> 00:39:22,520
Speaker 1: It looks like you could go on a biscuit. It

715
00:39:22,560 --> 00:39:24,440
Speaker 1: looks like you go on a sandwich. Would be a

716
00:39:24,520 --> 00:39:29,000
Speaker 1: real tooth crack in sandwich. But yes, so so. Concretions

717
00:39:29,000 --> 00:39:32,640
Speaker 1: are formed out of a combination of products and processes.

718
00:39:32,719 --> 00:39:36,360
Speaker 1: One is the corrosion of iron in seawater. Iron is

719
00:39:36,400 --> 00:39:40,319
Speaker 1: corroded by the water and that produces byproducts. But the

720
00:39:40,360 --> 00:39:46,240
Speaker 1: concretion also incorporates according to page sand biological byproducts created

721
00:39:46,239 --> 00:39:50,160
Speaker 1: by marine life forms. So anywhere there's iron in a wreck,

722
00:39:50,480 --> 00:39:54,359
Speaker 1: concretions can form and spread around in nearby structures, even

723
00:39:54,480 --> 00:39:56,799
Speaker 1: structures that are not made of iron, So you can

724
00:39:56,840 --> 00:39:59,360
Speaker 1: have iron elements that are things like cooking pots or

725
00:39:59,440 --> 00:40:03,719
Speaker 1: cannonball balls or nails, studs, tools. And this leads to

726
00:40:03,719 --> 00:40:07,040
Speaker 1: the fact that sometimes even in waters where organic materials

727
00:40:07,080 --> 00:40:11,360
Speaker 1: like cloth and rope and wood would normally disintegrate over time,

728
00:40:11,760 --> 00:40:15,520
Speaker 1: they can be preserved by their proximity to an iron object,

729
00:40:15,560 --> 00:40:21,000
Speaker 1: which means they get encrusted with concretions and partially preserved well,

730
00:40:21,040 --> 00:40:25,080
Speaker 1: almost like a fossilization. Really, yeah, kind of. And some objects,

731
00:40:25,320 --> 00:40:27,759
Speaker 1: like she gives the example of wrought iron objects, they

732
00:40:27,800 --> 00:40:31,760
Speaker 1: often disappear and dissolve entirely in the water, leaving only

733
00:40:31,840 --> 00:40:35,480
Speaker 1: their concretion byproducts behind. So you like can't see the

734
00:40:35,480 --> 00:40:37,520
Speaker 1: original thing, but you might be able to try to

735
00:40:37,600 --> 00:40:40,640
Speaker 1: determine what it was by looking at this cement Cowhart

736
00:40:40,680 --> 00:40:45,840
Speaker 1: that formed around it. Another interesting bit of shipwreck iron

737
00:40:45,920 --> 00:40:48,560
Speaker 1: chemistry I want to look at is the rustical Robert,

738
00:40:48,600 --> 00:40:51,880
Speaker 1: have you ever seen these before? Yes, you included a picture,

739
00:40:51,920 --> 00:40:53,640
Speaker 1: and this is this is something you see on a

740
00:40:53,719 --> 00:40:57,800
Speaker 1: number of these documentaries were exploring shipwreck. Yeah, like I

741
00:40:57,880 --> 00:41:00,200
Speaker 1: think you see it on the Titanic. Actually, and a

742
00:41:00,280 --> 00:41:03,560
Speaker 1: rustical is pretty simple. It's like an icicle made of rust.

743
00:41:03,680 --> 00:41:07,600
Speaker 1: It happens when iron oxidizes in some deep sea wrecks,

744
00:41:07,960 --> 00:41:12,160
Speaker 1: creating hanging formations of rusty material, which are sometimes inhabited

745
00:41:12,360 --> 00:41:16,920
Speaker 1: by a special species of bacteria. Back to rustical loving bacteria.

746
00:41:17,000 --> 00:41:18,920
Speaker 1: And one more thing I gotta mention this is this

747
00:41:19,000 --> 00:41:21,799
Speaker 1: doesn't really have anything to do with biology. But one

748
00:41:21,800 --> 00:41:25,480
Speaker 1: of my favorite bits of shipwrecks science trivia is that

749
00:41:25,719 --> 00:41:29,520
Speaker 1: lead ingots from an ancient Roman shipwreck have been used

750
00:41:29,520 --> 00:41:33,640
Speaker 1: in the twenty one century to build a neutrino detector. Wow,

751
00:41:33,640 --> 00:41:36,920
Speaker 1: that's awesome. I think it's supposedly because that because they

752
00:41:36,960 --> 00:41:40,439
Speaker 1: were so old and sunken, the recovered lead ingots had

753
00:41:40,960 --> 00:41:45,600
Speaker 1: much lower than average level levels of natural radioactivity or

754
00:41:45,640 --> 00:41:49,280
Speaker 1: something like that. Interesting. You don't think about the about

755
00:41:49,320 --> 00:41:52,680
Speaker 1: modern scientists creating something and saying, all right, it's ready

756
00:41:52,719 --> 00:41:55,319
Speaker 1: to go, but we we have one missing component, and

757
00:41:55,360 --> 00:41:57,800
Speaker 1: the only place we can get it is a sunken

758
00:41:58,040 --> 00:42:01,240
Speaker 1: Roman vessel. It sounds like the setup of a really

759
00:42:01,280 --> 00:42:08,560
Speaker 1: contrived deep sea adventure movie. Yeah, The Deep to Finding Neutrino. Alright, Well,

760
00:42:08,600 --> 00:42:10,520
Speaker 1: on that note, we're going to take one more break,

761
00:42:10,560 --> 00:42:12,280
Speaker 1: and when we come back, we're going to talk about

762
00:42:12,600 --> 00:42:15,480
Speaker 1: some of the more notable organisms that make their home

763
00:42:15,840 --> 00:42:20,759
Speaker 1: in the shipwreck. Thank alright, we're back. Okay. So we've

764
00:42:20,800 --> 00:42:23,080
Speaker 1: been talking about what happens when a ship sinks, it's

765
00:42:23,160 --> 00:42:26,680
Speaker 1: impact on marine biodiversity, uh, and what happens to the

766
00:42:26,680 --> 00:42:29,479
Speaker 1: ship itself the materials that's made out of. But let's

767
00:42:29,480 --> 00:42:33,360
Speaker 1: talk about some shipwreck life. What so a shipwreck sinks.

768
00:42:33,400 --> 00:42:36,120
Speaker 1: We've mentioned a few organisms that sometimes move in and

769
00:42:36,160 --> 00:42:39,040
Speaker 1: set up shop, but let's talk about some more. Well,

770
00:42:39,080 --> 00:42:41,520
Speaker 1: for starters, there are the shipworms that we talked a

771
00:42:41,560 --> 00:42:45,160
Speaker 1: little bit about in the previous episode. Shipworms. Yeah, these

772
00:42:45,200 --> 00:42:50,560
Speaker 1: are Tarado novalis and alongside barnacles, they were they were,

773
00:42:50,600 --> 00:42:54,040
Speaker 1: you know, once to score the scourge of wooden sailing vessels.

774
00:42:54,040 --> 00:42:57,360
Speaker 1: Certainly a functional sailing vessels, so it makes sense that

775
00:42:57,400 --> 00:43:00,880
Speaker 1: they would feast on the remains of wooden vessels as well. Okay,

776
00:43:01,000 --> 00:43:03,720
Speaker 1: So what they do is that they drill into the wood,

777
00:43:03,800 --> 00:43:06,760
Speaker 1: not to eat the wood, but for shelter. Any wooden

778
00:43:06,800 --> 00:43:09,319
Speaker 1: structure is just going to be, uh, you know, irresistible

779
00:43:09,360 --> 00:43:11,440
Speaker 1: because they can just make a home in it. I

780
00:43:11,480 --> 00:43:14,359
Speaker 1: got a new blister in barnacles. The okay, the new

781
00:43:14,360 --> 00:43:18,160
Speaker 1: expression should be shivering shipworms, blister and barnacles was as

782
00:43:18,200 --> 00:43:21,879
Speaker 1: a saying, yeah, that's from Tintin, So the the old

783
00:43:21,920 --> 00:43:26,839
Speaker 1: Sea Captain and Tintin he says, blister and barnacles. What's

784
00:43:26,840 --> 00:43:29,080
Speaker 1: in their cartoon Sea Captain that can yell shiver and

785
00:43:29,120 --> 00:43:33,080
Speaker 1: shipworms shiver and shop. I like shiver and shipworms more. Yeah,

786
00:43:33,360 --> 00:43:35,000
Speaker 1: I like it all right. Well, what if we just

787
00:43:35,080 --> 00:43:38,000
Speaker 1: glanced at a few studies that look into what kind

788
00:43:38,040 --> 00:43:40,759
Speaker 1: of organisms set up shop at shipwrecks and uh and

789
00:43:40,760 --> 00:43:43,640
Speaker 1: and see what they have to say. Sure, yeah, there's

790
00:43:43,680 --> 00:43:47,680
Speaker 1: one study we looked at by Zinsen at All, and

791
00:43:47,680 --> 00:43:50,720
Speaker 1: this was published in Marine Biodiversity back in two thousand

792
00:43:50,840 --> 00:43:56,240
Speaker 1: six titled Epifonal Inventory of two Shipwrecks from the Belgian

793
00:43:56,280 --> 00:44:00,080
Speaker 1: Continental Shelf. So in this study they had benife I

794
00:44:00,120 --> 00:44:05,640
Speaker 1: had one and twenty one macrofauna species, and they estimated

795
00:44:05,640 --> 00:44:09,400
Speaker 1: the number of species probably involved anywhere between one and

796
00:44:09,400 --> 00:44:11,600
Speaker 1: fifty and two hundred and eighty, So there were a

797
00:44:11,640 --> 00:44:15,680
Speaker 1: lot of Nigerians, right, right, so that the Nigerians would

798
00:44:15,680 --> 00:44:19,240
Speaker 1: be a large phylum of animals that includes jellyfish, coral

799
00:44:19,400 --> 00:44:23,120
Speaker 1: and semms. Yeah, clearly the type of organisms you might

800
00:44:23,120 --> 00:44:25,680
Speaker 1: expect to find in a uh, you know, like a

801
00:44:25,800 --> 00:44:30,319
Speaker 1: coral environment or certainly a shipwreck environment. They also point

802
00:44:30,320 --> 00:44:34,520
Speaker 1: out that the two dwelling amphipod Jossa her Money was

803
00:44:34,560 --> 00:44:37,760
Speaker 1: also particularly abundant. But there was still a fair amount

804
00:44:37,800 --> 00:44:41,040
Speaker 1: of variety between shipwrecks here just in this particular study

805
00:44:41,080 --> 00:44:45,879
Speaker 1: that they couldn't completely explain. So every shipwreck is different. Yeah, yeah,

806
00:44:46,160 --> 00:44:48,040
Speaker 1: I mean it kind of comes back to that idea,

807
00:44:48,600 --> 00:44:52,920
Speaker 1: that hypothesis that we mentioned earlier about them being uh

808
00:44:53,840 --> 00:44:58,520
Speaker 1: stepping stones between habitats and so forth. So it depending

809
00:44:58,560 --> 00:45:01,319
Speaker 1: on where ship falls, you know, they're gonna be different things,

810
00:45:01,760 --> 00:45:04,279
Speaker 1: perhaps in position to take advantage of it. And then

811
00:45:04,280 --> 00:45:06,040
Speaker 1: of course it's going to depend on the nature of

812
00:45:06,080 --> 00:45:08,839
Speaker 1: the wreck too, right, So the inherent conditions like how

813
00:45:08,880 --> 00:45:11,520
Speaker 1: deep is it, temperature of the water, you know, salinity

814
00:45:11,520 --> 00:45:13,600
Speaker 1: and all that kind of normal stuff, but then also

815
00:45:13,719 --> 00:45:16,759
Speaker 1: just what's nearby and has access to set up shop,

816
00:45:16,840 --> 00:45:20,000
Speaker 1: like who can move in first? Right, because like there

817
00:45:20,040 --> 00:45:23,640
Speaker 1: are there are gonna be some some first responders, right,

818
00:45:24,920 --> 00:45:27,640
Speaker 1: the crab legions are probably gonna be a little slower

819
00:45:27,920 --> 00:45:30,320
Speaker 1: in getting there as opposed to certainly, you know, the

820
00:45:30,560 --> 00:45:33,719
Speaker 1: faster moving sharks. Now i'd wonder, like, are are there

821
00:45:33,800 --> 00:45:37,480
Speaker 1: qualities of certain boats or ships that make them more

822
00:45:37,520 --> 00:45:42,080
Speaker 1: amenable to hosting lots of marine biodiversity than other ones? Well,

823
00:45:42,080 --> 00:45:44,560
Speaker 1: this was a question that was looked at in a

824
00:45:44,600 --> 00:45:48,239
Speaker 1: two thousand seven marine ecology paper. Uh. This came from

825
00:45:48,600 --> 00:45:55,200
Speaker 1: Walker at All titled Spatial heterogeneity of epibinthos on artificial reefs.

826
00:45:55,520 --> 00:45:59,440
Speaker 1: Fouling communities in the early stages of colonization on an

827
00:45:59,440 --> 00:46:02,560
Speaker 1: East US Rallion shipwreck. We got that fouling again, so

828
00:46:02,640 --> 00:46:06,360
Speaker 1: much fouling in the ocean. And they point out that

829
00:46:06,600 --> 00:46:11,480
Speaker 1: complexity of structure is key enabling a complexity of colonization. Okay,

830
00:46:11,560 --> 00:46:13,520
Speaker 1: so if you've got like a lot of like a

831
00:46:13,560 --> 00:46:17,080
Speaker 1: little twists and turns and different kinds of structures on

832
00:46:17,120 --> 00:46:20,600
Speaker 1: your shipwreck, that maybe will mean that more different types

833
00:46:20,600 --> 00:46:23,040
Speaker 1: of organisms move in and that's good for you know,

834
00:46:23,080 --> 00:46:26,080
Speaker 1: a healthy ecosystem. Yeah, lots of nooks and crannies, you know,

835
00:46:26,560 --> 00:46:29,200
Speaker 1: they think of it if if it's a speedboat like

836
00:46:29,239 --> 00:46:32,880
Speaker 1: all you know streamlined doesn't have eight toilets on it,

837
00:46:33,360 --> 00:46:36,280
Speaker 1: how attractive is that going to be versus a toilet

838
00:46:36,320 --> 00:46:39,040
Speaker 1: barge there's just nothing but toilets. It's gonna there, It's

839
00:46:39,080 --> 00:46:41,400
Speaker 1: gonna be so much more room to hide in that. Uh.

840
00:46:41,400 --> 00:46:43,759
Speaker 1: This is a quote from this particular paper quote. This

841
00:46:43,800 --> 00:46:46,960
Speaker 1: study supports the notion that REX enhance local diversity and

842
00:46:47,040 --> 00:46:51,840
Speaker 1: biomass within the habitat mosaic of their location and habitat complexity.

843
00:46:51,920 --> 00:46:54,880
Speaker 1: Maybe an important mechanism for this, as demonstrated by the

844
00:46:54,960 --> 00:47:00,200
Speaker 1: large spatial variability in the assemblages documented here. To get

845
00:47:00,200 --> 00:47:02,840
Speaker 1: those smooth boats out of here. Yeah, I mean, I

846
00:47:02,880 --> 00:47:06,080
Speaker 1: guess for the most part, though, vessels are not going

847
00:47:06,160 --> 00:47:08,600
Speaker 1: to be that streamline like. They're gonna have a lot

848
00:47:08,640 --> 00:47:11,560
Speaker 1: of nooks and crannies. They're going to have a number

849
00:47:11,560 --> 00:47:15,200
Speaker 1: of compartments, right, certainly the larger vessels. Now, on the

850
00:47:15,239 --> 00:47:18,400
Speaker 1: other hand, we've mentioned already that there, you know, a

851
00:47:18,440 --> 00:47:23,040
Speaker 1: shipwreck is not always a net positive for undersea biodiversity,

852
00:47:23,160 --> 00:47:25,600
Speaker 1: that it can be very negative and not just the

853
00:47:25,640 --> 00:47:30,240
Speaker 1: initial impact. Like one example that I was reading about,

854
00:47:30,560 --> 00:47:33,400
Speaker 1: as summarized in that book by spat and Henderson earlier

855
00:47:33,960 --> 00:47:39,000
Speaker 1: was about a fishing vessel that sank in nine on

856
00:47:39,040 --> 00:47:42,720
Speaker 1: a on a coral reef in the Central Pacific Ocean.

857
00:47:42,800 --> 00:47:45,560
Speaker 1: This was around the Palmyra a Toll and this was

858
00:47:46,120 --> 00:47:48,640
Speaker 1: described in a study by work at All in two

859
00:47:48,680 --> 00:47:50,919
Speaker 1: thousand and eight, and they showed that by the year

860
00:47:50,920 --> 00:47:53,200
Speaker 1: two thousand five, after this thing went down, so this

861
00:47:53,280 --> 00:47:56,120
Speaker 1: is what like fourteen years later, there had been a

862
00:47:56,160 --> 00:47:59,440
Speaker 1: phase shift in the ecosystem. So you had a naturally

863
00:47:59,480 --> 00:48:03,759
Speaker 1: pretty verse coral ecosystem that had been taken over by

864
00:48:03,800 --> 00:48:09,720
Speaker 1: this aggressive organism called Rhodactus rhodostoma. And basically the author's

865
00:48:09,800 --> 00:48:12,280
Speaker 1: come to the conclusion that you know, when the ship

866
00:48:12,360 --> 00:48:16,480
Speaker 1: came down, it it just obviously caused physical disturbance when

867
00:48:16,480 --> 00:48:18,359
Speaker 1: it sank on the reef, but then there were also

868
00:48:18,520 --> 00:48:21,160
Speaker 1: changes in what kind of nutrients were available in the

869
00:48:21,160 --> 00:48:24,480
Speaker 1: water and in pollutants that the boat was leaching out

870
00:48:24,520 --> 00:48:28,480
Speaker 1: into the water, and this favored this new aggressive invasive

871
00:48:28,520 --> 00:48:32,759
Speaker 1: species taking over the natural, diverse coral habitat. And in

872
00:48:32,840 --> 00:48:34,880
Speaker 1: light of the study, Spade in Henderson say, you know,

873
00:48:34,920 --> 00:48:37,200
Speaker 1: maybe we shouldn't be so quick to think, yeah, sinking

874
00:48:37,239 --> 00:48:40,279
Speaker 1: a ship that's great for for the undersea life. Yeah,

875
00:48:40,320 --> 00:48:44,279
Speaker 1: because basically, if you're sinking it into an existing ecosystem,

876
00:48:44,320 --> 00:48:47,480
Speaker 1: you could destabilize that ecosystem. Yeah. And so this is

877
00:48:47,560 --> 00:48:50,319
Speaker 1: yet another case where it seems like people may have

878
00:48:50,400 --> 00:48:52,760
Speaker 1: been too quick to rush to judgment on the idea

879
00:48:52,880 --> 00:48:55,960
Speaker 1: that forming an artificial reef is always just great, and

880
00:48:56,480 --> 00:48:59,360
Speaker 1: that like maybe we should hesitate to mess with undersea

881
00:48:59,560 --> 00:49:02,160
Speaker 1: or just understand maybe we should hesitate to mess with

882
00:49:02,239 --> 00:49:04,839
Speaker 1: ecosystems at all if we can help it. Now, coming

883
00:49:04,880 --> 00:49:09,280
Speaker 1: back to my own experience, is smirkling around a shipwreck

884
00:49:10,200 --> 00:49:12,080
Speaker 1: certainly one of the things that I was looking for

885
00:49:12,160 --> 00:49:15,080
Speaker 1: something that I'm just generally looking for if I'm just

886
00:49:15,160 --> 00:49:19,120
Speaker 1: walking around in the surf anywhere, morphine, well moreph Yeah,

887
00:49:19,120 --> 00:49:20,560
Speaker 1: I want to find the morphine. I want to find

888
00:49:20,560 --> 00:49:23,279
Speaker 1: that Spanish gold. But I also want to see an octopus,

889
00:49:23,840 --> 00:49:27,080
Speaker 1: because that is a creature that can appreciate nooks and

890
00:49:27,120 --> 00:49:29,799
Speaker 1: cran I mean, the octopus is kind of like you

891
00:49:29,800 --> 00:49:33,000
Speaker 1: would expect some kind of named kracking at the bottom

892
00:49:33,040 --> 00:49:35,320
Speaker 1: of the ocean to be guarding the gold and the shipwreck,

893
00:49:35,480 --> 00:49:39,040
Speaker 1: much like smell the dragon guards his pile of gold

894
00:49:39,080 --> 00:49:42,560
Speaker 1: in the lonely mountain, right. I mean they are kind

895
00:49:42,560 --> 00:49:44,319
Speaker 1: of like dragons of the sea, and they like their

896
00:49:44,400 --> 00:49:47,840
Speaker 1: their layers that they like their middens absolutely. So I

897
00:49:48,239 --> 00:49:51,880
Speaker 1: was reading a section from a book about octopuses and ships. Well,

898
00:49:51,920 --> 00:49:54,440
Speaker 1: the book isn't about octopuses and shipwrecks. The book is

899
00:49:54,480 --> 00:49:58,160
Speaker 1: just about the octopus. It's called Octopus the Oceans, Intelligent

900
00:49:58,200 --> 00:50:03,760
Speaker 1: Invertebrate from teen by Anderson Mather and Would timber Press,

901
00:50:03,840 --> 00:50:06,239
Speaker 1: and the authors here writing about how octopuses often do

902
00:50:06,360 --> 00:50:09,840
Speaker 1: and habit ship precks. They say octopuses can be shy,

903
00:50:09,920 --> 00:50:12,680
Speaker 1: and they tend to seek out shelter and enclosures in

904
00:50:12,760 --> 00:50:15,200
Speaker 1: whatever forms they can find, and this often means in

905
00:50:15,280 --> 00:50:19,319
Speaker 1: objects and structures made by human hands. So octopuses can

906
00:50:19,400 --> 00:50:21,920
Speaker 1: sometimes be found living or at least hiding, and everything

907
00:50:21,960 --> 00:50:25,719
Speaker 1: from beer bottles to ancient wine jars those mp A

908
00:50:25,880 --> 00:50:28,400
Speaker 1: we were talking about in the wrecks of Roman galleons.

909
00:50:29,120 --> 00:50:32,320
Speaker 1: And there's even research showing that they like age to

910
00:50:32,440 --> 00:50:36,120
Speaker 1: beer bottles better when they're covered in barnacles and other growths,

911
00:50:36,160 --> 00:50:39,520
Speaker 1: more than they like fresh beer bottles, presumably because the

912
00:50:39,600 --> 00:50:42,919
Speaker 1: older beer bottles that get covered in stuff let less

913
00:50:43,000 --> 00:50:46,879
Speaker 1: light through and it feels more like a solid, rocky shelter. Oh, yeah,

914
00:50:46,920 --> 00:50:48,560
Speaker 1: of course. And then also, I mean a number of

915
00:50:48,800 --> 00:50:51,960
Speaker 1: you know, the the octopus have the ability to to

916
00:50:52,160 --> 00:50:57,680
Speaker 1: mimic um the the the surface like naturally occurring surfaces. Yes,

917
00:50:57,840 --> 00:51:00,560
Speaker 1: probably not glass bottles. Yeah, And I think I should

918
00:51:00,600 --> 00:51:04,120
Speaker 1: say it's a coincidence that these containers I mentioned held alcohol.

919
00:51:04,320 --> 00:51:07,720
Speaker 1: Octopuses apparently sometimes also chill out in crab and lobster

920
00:51:07,840 --> 00:51:10,120
Speaker 1: traps and stuff, which is great because that's shelter and

921
00:51:10,320 --> 00:51:13,759
Speaker 1: it's a buffet. But there's a section of the book

922
00:51:13,840 --> 00:51:17,280
Speaker 1: where one of the author's Roland Anderson, is writing about

923
00:51:17,360 --> 00:51:22,759
Speaker 1: his own experiences with octopuses and shipwrecks. So Anderson is

924
00:51:22,800 --> 00:51:26,160
Speaker 1: writing about how you know, he explores uh shipwrecks like

925
00:51:26,280 --> 00:51:30,160
Speaker 1: off the uh the Puget Sound area, and these shipwrecks

926
00:51:30,160 --> 00:51:34,080
Speaker 1: often contain giant Pacific octopuses, which can be huge. These

927
00:51:34,120 --> 00:51:37,319
Speaker 1: are like some of the biggest octopuses. They live. They

928
00:51:37,320 --> 00:51:40,120
Speaker 1: live to become as big as four hundred pounds sometimes

929
00:51:40,239 --> 00:51:43,320
Speaker 1: or dred and eight ms. And uh, I want to

930
00:51:43,360 --> 00:51:46,640
Speaker 1: read a quote here. He tells a particular story quote

931
00:51:47,080 --> 00:51:49,400
Speaker 1: Once while diving on the wreck of the clipper ship

932
00:51:49,480 --> 00:51:53,040
Speaker 1: Warhawk in Discovery Bay off Puget Sound. I saw the

933
00:51:53,080 --> 00:51:56,520
Speaker 1: greatest number of giant Pacific octopuses I'd ever seen on

934
00:51:56,520 --> 00:52:00,160
Speaker 1: one dive. This full rigged sailing ship caught five air

935
00:52:00,200 --> 00:52:02,600
Speaker 1: and went down in eighteen eighty three, and all that

936
00:52:02,640 --> 00:52:05,680
Speaker 1: remained were the skeletal ribs of the ship's starboard side

937
00:52:05,719 --> 00:52:09,120
Speaker 1: protruding from the sand bottom, and a hundred foot long

938
00:52:09,280 --> 00:52:12,319
Speaker 1: or thirty meter long pile of ballast rocks. Next to

939
00:52:12,360 --> 00:52:16,200
Speaker 1: the ribs. Eight giant Pacific octopuses were living in the

940
00:52:16,239 --> 00:52:19,680
Speaker 1: ballast pile, perhaps because there was little else to make

941
00:52:19,680 --> 00:52:22,560
Speaker 1: a din out of nearby in the bay, only vast

942
00:52:22,600 --> 00:52:26,439
Speaker 1: expanses of sand and mud. These octopuses made dens where

943
00:52:26,480 --> 00:52:28,960
Speaker 1: they could, even though they were closer to each other

944
00:52:29,000 --> 00:52:31,200
Speaker 1: than they would have liked. Instead of just a home,

945
00:52:31,400 --> 00:52:36,440
Speaker 1: this was an octopus condominium. Interesting but but also interesting

946
00:52:36,920 --> 00:52:40,440
Speaker 1: points out that it's it's forcing these creatures to live

947
00:52:40,760 --> 00:52:44,000
Speaker 1: in closer proximity to one another. Yeah, so even then,

948
00:52:44,239 --> 00:52:47,280
Speaker 1: like it's providing them with something that they like, which

949
00:52:47,320 --> 00:52:50,359
Speaker 1: is the shelter, but it's also maybe messing with what

950
00:52:50,400 --> 00:52:53,799
Speaker 1: they would be naturally doing. And shipwrecks can be such

951
00:52:53,840 --> 00:52:58,040
Speaker 1: desirable habitats that octopuses will sometimes fight over them. Uh,

952
00:52:58,160 --> 00:53:00,319
Speaker 1: did Robert, did you ever see the video the two

953
00:53:00,360 --> 00:53:03,120
Speaker 1: octopuses fighting over who got to stay in the shipwreck

954
00:53:03,280 --> 00:53:09,759
Speaker 1: from last year? So? Okay. On April some in Oa

955
00:53:09,880 --> 00:53:12,440
Speaker 1: A scientists were observing a sea floor scene in the

956
00:53:12,480 --> 00:53:15,120
Speaker 1: Gulf of Mexico about six thousand feet or about one

957
00:53:15,640 --> 00:53:18,719
Speaker 1: hundred meters deep, and there was an octopus of the

958
00:53:18,800 --> 00:53:24,480
Speaker 1: species muse Octopus john sonnianus, which tried to enter a

959
00:53:24,600 --> 00:53:28,160
Speaker 1: sea floor shipwreck, presumably to make a din, but the

960
00:53:28,200 --> 00:53:32,160
Speaker 1: cavity of the shipwreck was already occupied by another octopus

961
00:53:32,200 --> 00:53:36,400
Speaker 1: of the same species. The two octopuses start fighting, but

962
00:53:36,600 --> 00:53:39,080
Speaker 1: the intruder seems to be on the losing end, and

963
00:53:39,120 --> 00:53:42,320
Speaker 1: then it seems to grab hold of part of the wreckage,

964
00:53:42,600 --> 00:53:44,960
Speaker 1: and it looks like it's trying to pull at it,

965
00:53:45,040 --> 00:53:47,640
Speaker 1: as if to rip it off. I'm not sure that's

966
00:53:47,640 --> 00:53:50,160
Speaker 1: exactly what happened. What's happening, That's just what it looks like.

967
00:53:50,520 --> 00:53:52,920
Speaker 1: And you can hear one of the scientists who's watching

968
00:53:52,920 --> 00:53:55,200
Speaker 1: on the intercom saying, guys, if you could have your

969
00:53:55,239 --> 00:53:57,759
Speaker 1: creatures stopped tearing apart of the shipwreck. That would be great,

970
00:53:58,800 --> 00:54:01,440
Speaker 1: But what happens after the fight is the most interesting.

971
00:54:01,480 --> 00:54:03,840
Speaker 1: The defeated octopus, who did not get to make it

972
00:54:03,920 --> 00:54:07,279
Speaker 1: din in the shipwreck, retreats and then settles down in

973
00:54:07,320 --> 00:54:10,840
Speaker 1: the mud and then starts writhing and wriggling all of

974
00:54:10,920 --> 00:54:13,960
Speaker 1: its arms at once in churning up a cloud of sediment.

975
00:54:14,360 --> 00:54:16,279
Speaker 1: And I'm like, what's going on here? Like is it

976
00:54:16,320 --> 00:54:19,319
Speaker 1: trying to bury itself and hide or is this an

977
00:54:19,320 --> 00:54:23,120
Speaker 1: expression of anger and frustration like when somebody punches a wall.

978
00:54:25,080 --> 00:54:27,200
Speaker 1: It's one of those many times you look at octopus

979
00:54:27,280 --> 00:54:30,480
Speaker 1: behavior and you see some kind of maybe a little

980
00:54:30,480 --> 00:54:36,160
Speaker 1: bit unsettling type of display of intelligence or something emotional

981
00:54:36,280 --> 00:54:38,600
Speaker 1: or social that you're not expecting to see out of

982
00:54:38,640 --> 00:54:42,200
Speaker 1: such an alien creature. Yeah, a degree of complexity there,

983
00:54:42,239 --> 00:54:45,680
Speaker 1: for sure. But shipwrecks, of course, probably make great sites

984
00:54:45,719 --> 00:54:49,160
Speaker 1: for an octopus for multiple reasons. The octopus loves shelter

985
00:54:49,800 --> 00:54:52,719
Speaker 1: to make itself an enclosed in the wreck also functions

986
00:54:52,719 --> 00:54:56,000
Speaker 1: as a food oasis, attracting prey organisms for the octopus

987
00:54:56,040 --> 00:54:59,120
Speaker 1: to eat, especially in areas of otherwise like fairly boring,

988
00:54:59,200 --> 00:55:02,799
Speaker 1: unoccupied andy or muddy seafloor. If you haven't seen this

989
00:55:02,920 --> 00:55:05,279
Speaker 1: video of the octopus is fighting over the shipwreck. It's

990
00:55:05,280 --> 00:55:07,040
Speaker 1: worth a look. You can you can google it. It's

991
00:55:07,080 --> 00:55:09,640
Speaker 1: pretty easy to find alright. So I feel like these

992
00:55:09,680 --> 00:55:14,880
Speaker 1: examples do illuminate the you know, the benefits as well

993
00:55:14,920 --> 00:55:20,440
Speaker 1: as the disadvantages of shipwrecks. How they can offer a

994
00:55:20,520 --> 00:55:26,520
Speaker 1: number of organisms new territory, new uh, new layers, and

995
00:55:26,600 --> 00:55:32,280
Speaker 1: also eventually a new mini ecosystem in which to thrive,

996
00:55:32,760 --> 00:55:35,000
Speaker 1: but also all the downsides that can come with that.

997
00:55:35,080 --> 00:55:37,319
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm reminded again of the dim moon eyed

998
00:55:37,400 --> 00:55:41,080
Speaker 1: fish that says, what does all this vaingloriousness down here? Yeah,

999
00:55:41,200 --> 00:55:45,400
Speaker 1: apparently what it does is attract chemosynthetic food webs and

1000
00:55:45,480 --> 00:55:50,080
Speaker 1: tube worms and leech oil. Now, certainly we could we

1001
00:55:50,080 --> 00:55:53,040
Speaker 1: we could easily do an entire episode on on oil

1002
00:55:53,080 --> 00:55:58,880
Speaker 1: spills loan not only to two marine environments, but coast

1003
00:55:58,920 --> 00:56:02,160
Speaker 1: coastal environments. Well oh yeah, I was reading a Scientific

1004
00:56:02,200 --> 00:56:06,360
Speaker 1: American article about how the deep Water Horizon oil spill

1005
00:56:06,480 --> 00:56:09,480
Speaker 1: may have altered some of these shipwreck ecosystems in the

1006
00:56:09,520 --> 00:56:13,080
Speaker 1: surrounding area because like oil spills could speed the corrosion

1007
00:56:13,160 --> 00:56:16,200
Speaker 1: of shipwrecks. Interest and of course affect the wild left

1008
00:56:16,200 --> 00:56:20,239
Speaker 1: directly right, and then if there's anything within those shipwrecks

1009
00:56:20,320 --> 00:56:22,759
Speaker 1: that could leach out due to that corrosion, it's kind

1010
00:56:22,760 --> 00:56:25,319
Speaker 1: of a domino effect, it would see right. So I'd

1011
00:56:25,360 --> 00:56:27,560
Speaker 1: say we touched on several things today that we could

1012
00:56:27,600 --> 00:56:30,319
Speaker 1: return to, much like a shipwreck from which we have

1013
00:56:30,440 --> 00:56:33,879
Speaker 1: not recovered yet, all of the sunken Spanish gold, yeah,

1014
00:56:34,000 --> 00:56:36,600
Speaker 1: or the the odd atomic weapon here and there, that

1015
00:56:36,719 --> 00:56:39,200
Speaker 1: sort of thing. It would be interesting if you had

1016
00:56:39,440 --> 00:56:43,399
Speaker 1: like a god's eye view of everything, and you could

1017
00:56:43,440 --> 00:56:45,719
Speaker 1: you could essentially look at a list of all the

1018
00:56:45,840 --> 00:56:49,480
Speaker 1: things that have been lost and remain lost on at

1019
00:56:49,520 --> 00:56:52,239
Speaker 1: the bottom of the ocean. What would that that list

1020
00:56:52,320 --> 00:56:55,000
Speaker 1: consist of. I think this is where some troue nerd

1021
00:56:55,080 --> 00:56:57,040
Speaker 1: out there would make a joke about the second season

1022
00:56:57,040 --> 00:57:01,440
Speaker 1: a firefly or something, Yeah, because because they actually filmed

1023
00:57:01,480 --> 00:57:05,560
Speaker 1: it and then saw on DVD down in Davy Jones Locker,

1024
00:57:05,960 --> 00:57:09,520
Speaker 1: Davy Jones locker, or We're an octopus just lords over

1025
00:57:09,600 --> 00:57:13,120
Speaker 1: it next to its uh its stash of morphine gold

1026
00:57:13,160 --> 00:57:18,560
Speaker 1: coins or Robert this has been fun. Yeah, this, this,

1027
00:57:18,560 --> 00:57:21,520
Speaker 1: this has been fun. I feel like the shipwrecked territory.

1028
00:57:21,640 --> 00:57:24,640
Speaker 1: On one hand, maybe seemed like it was going to

1029
00:57:24,760 --> 00:57:27,800
Speaker 1: be like a little more straightforward, But I do feel

1030
00:57:27,840 --> 00:57:31,360
Speaker 1: like we discussed some dimensions to the disruption of shipwrecks

1031
00:57:32,040 --> 00:57:35,440
Speaker 1: that maybe hadn't been as obvious to a number of listeners.

1032
00:57:35,520 --> 00:57:37,960
Speaker 1: Now certainly we know that we we we have some

1033
00:57:38,040 --> 00:57:40,560
Speaker 1: divers out there who listened to the show. We would

1034
00:57:40,560 --> 00:57:43,520
Speaker 1: of course love to hear from anyone who has experience

1035
00:57:44,040 --> 00:57:47,160
Speaker 1: uh diving down to ship reps rex and observing the

1036
00:57:47,240 --> 00:57:52,120
Speaker 1: kind of ecosystems that that thrive and at these locations.

1037
00:57:52,600 --> 00:57:54,960
Speaker 1: We'd also love to hear from just anybody with with

1038
00:57:55,040 --> 00:57:59,520
Speaker 1: nautical experience and experience dealing with barnacles and chip worms

1039
00:57:59,560 --> 00:58:02,000
Speaker 1: and what of view. So that's it for this episode.

1040
00:58:02,000 --> 00:58:03,440
Speaker 1: In the meantime, if you want to check out other

1041
00:58:03,480 --> 00:58:05,240
Speaker 1: episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind, head on over

1042
00:58:05,280 --> 00:58:07,400
Speaker 1: to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That's where

1043
00:58:07,440 --> 00:58:11,280
Speaker 1: we find all the episodes. You can also click on

1044
00:58:11,440 --> 00:58:14,560
Speaker 1: the merchandise store at the top of that page and

1045
00:58:14,600 --> 00:58:17,120
Speaker 1: you can buy some stick or some shirts. Uh. This

1046
00:58:17,160 --> 00:58:18,960
Speaker 1: is a great way to support the show, And if

1047
00:58:18,960 --> 00:58:20,880
Speaker 1: you want to support the show without spending any money

1048
00:58:20,960 --> 00:58:23,840
Speaker 1: at all, you can simply rate and review us wherever

1049
00:58:23,920 --> 00:58:25,920
Speaker 1: you have the power to do so. We'd like to

1050
00:58:26,000 --> 00:58:30,320
Speaker 1: encourage you again to look up and subscribe to our

1051
00:58:30,320 --> 00:58:33,960
Speaker 1: new show Invention. That's another great way to help us

1052
00:58:34,000 --> 00:58:36,640
Speaker 1: out and you get a whole another show in the

1053
00:58:36,640 --> 00:58:40,840
Speaker 1: Bargain publishes every Monday. Each episode is a is a

1054
00:58:40,880 --> 00:58:44,120
Speaker 1: look at a particular invention, how it changed the world,

1055
00:58:44,400 --> 00:58:47,800
Speaker 1: and and how that change came about. Huge thanks, as

1056
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Speaker 1: always to our wonderful audio producers Alex Williams and Tari Harrison.

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