Speaker 1: On the Earth at night in moonlight, I can always
Speaker 1: imagine the yellow of sunshine, the scarlet of invisible blossoms.
Speaker 1: But here, when the searchlight was off, yellow and orange
Speaker 1: and red were unthinkable. The blue, which filled all space
Speaker 1: admitted no thought of other colors. The return trip was
Speaker 1: made in forty three minutes, an average of one foot
Speaker 1: every two seconds. Twice during the ascent I was aware
Speaker 1: of one or more indefinite large bodies moving about at
Speaker 1: a distance. On the way down, I had accredited them
Speaker 1: to an over excited imagination, but after having the experience
Speaker 1: repeated on several deep dives, I am sure that I
Speaker 1: did see shadowy shapes of large and very real living creatures.
Speaker 1: What they were I can only guess, and live in
Speaker 1: hopes of seeing them closer on some future descent. What
Speaker 1: this great creature was I cannot say. A first and
Speaker 1: most reasonable guests would be a small whale or blackfish.
Speaker 1: We know that whales have a special chemical justment of
Speaker 1: the blood which makes it possible for them to dive
Speaker 1: a mile or more and come up without getting the bends.
Speaker 1: So this paltry depth of two thousand, four hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty feet would be nothing for any similarly equipped cetacean,
Speaker 1: or less likely, it may have been a whale shark,
Speaker 1: which is known to reach a length of forty feet.
Speaker 1: Whatever it was, it appeared and vanished so unexpectedly and
Speaker 1: showed so dimly that it was quite unidentifiable except as
Speaker 1: a large living creature. Welcome to Stuff to Blow your
Speaker 1: Mind from How Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, welcome to
Speaker 1: stuff to blow your mind. My name is Robert Lamb,
Speaker 1: and I'm jere McCormick. And Robert. What were those readings from? Uh?
Speaker 1: Those were the words of William Beebe in his biography
Speaker 1: Half Mile Down, Half Mile Down. William Beebe was an
Speaker 1: American naturalist who lived from eighteen seventy seven to nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty two. And he was a fabulous writer. He was. Yes,
Speaker 1: we were talking about this a little bit before we
Speaker 1: went on. Area we have we have I guess two
Speaker 1: major areas to look to his biography Half Mile Down,
Speaker 1: which was certainly aimed at more of a general public audience,
Speaker 1: but even in his writings to a scientific audience. I
Speaker 1: admire the sort of directness and clarity of his writing.
Speaker 1: I was looking at a report of his from his
Speaker 1: underwater expeditions that he delivered in proceedings of the National
Speaker 1: Academy of Sciences in the nineteen thirties, and it's wonderfully
Speaker 1: written for a scientific paper. Yeah, I was. I was
Speaker 1: reading so many of these accounts whilst listening to some
Speaker 1: ambient electronic music, and it really I was getting chill
Speaker 1: bumps at times when he's talking about descending into the
Speaker 1: dark and seeing these various bioluminescent creatures come into his
Speaker 1: line of vision, creatures that had had never been seen before,
Speaker 1: and in some cases as well discussed creatures that have
Speaker 1: not been seen or captured since. Now that is spooky.
Speaker 1: So Robert, tell me, what does the main thing about
Speaker 1: William BB's career we're gonna be focusing on today, Well,
Speaker 1: we're gonna be talking about the bathosphere. The bathosphere which
Speaker 1: is a Greek for deep sphere, which was the which
Speaker 1: this was these basically the submersible deep ball, the deep
Speaker 1: ball that that he used on the just groundbreaking trips
Speaker 1: into the deep because prior to this, uh, this was
Speaker 1: in the nineteen thirties. Prior to this, subs could only
Speaker 1: get down about three hundred and eighty three feet or
Speaker 1: hundred and sixteen meters or so, and uh An armored
Speaker 1: dive suits were only good for about five twenty five
Speaker 1: ft or a hundred sixty But the Bathosphere reached an
Speaker 1: astonishing three thousand and twenty eight feet or nine two points.
Speaker 1: That record was set in nineteen thirty four, and it
Speaker 1: remained the record till nineteen forty nine. And that record
Speaker 1: was set by William Beebe and his collaborator Otis Barton,
Speaker 1: who together did many dives in the steel Ball, going
Speaker 1: deep into the depths off Bermuda and in starting in
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty. So we'll tell the story of the Bathosphere
Speaker 1: more as we go on, But I guess first we
Speaker 1: should talk about why why are we doing the Bathosphere today?
Speaker 1: How did this come up? Well? I mean, on one hand,
Speaker 1: it's it's a perfect topic because it deals with the
Speaker 1: ocean and the deep mysteries of the ocean, which we
Speaker 1: come back around to again and again on stuff to
Speaker 1: blow your mind. I've been working on a lot lately,
Speaker 1: A lot, yeah, a lot, like and part of that
Speaker 1: is due to I do have a side project I've
Speaker 1: been working on here at work that does concern deep
Speaker 1: sea themes. Also, I've recently finished reading Peter watts novel Starfish,
Speaker 1: which is a wonderful sort of cyberpunk sci fi novel
Speaker 1: from several years back that takes takes place in the
Speaker 1: deep ocean. Peter Watts the author of blind Side. Yes,
Speaker 1: but he wrote Starfish many years before. Correct. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: was his first big splash. You could say uh and
Speaker 1: then uh and then also Joe, You and I recently
Speaker 1: attended the exhibit Unseen Ocean at the American Museum of
Speaker 1: Natural History in New York City, which is running March twelfth,
Speaker 1: two thousand eighteen, through January six, two thousand and nineteen.
Speaker 1: This was a really cool special exhibit. I really liked it,
Speaker 1: and it got into a thing that's really hard to
Speaker 1: explain in a in an interesting way, but it did it.
Speaker 1: It got into the character of plankton, like making you
Speaker 1: feel that like plankton has personality. There are different types
Speaker 1: of plankton, and those types matter and they're interesting, Like
Speaker 1: there are even these tiny zeno moreph some plankton. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's easy to I feel like we we often have
Speaker 1: this sort of science biology textbook approach to plankton, where
Speaker 1: they are a little more than a little side note
Speaker 1: at the beginning, and it's just like, these are these
Speaker 1: are small creatures, don't worry about them. Larger or more
Speaker 1: interesting creatures eat them. But of course they're they're extremely
Speaker 1: vital and uh. And when you start keying in on
Speaker 1: individual plankton specimens, there is this rich diversity. Uh, it's
Speaker 1: on on par with anything you would find in other
Speaker 1: regions of the animal kingdom. I mean, in a very
Speaker 1: real way. They're sort of the ground floor of the
Speaker 1: entire biosphere. And so you do find not only just
Speaker 1: sort of interesting but also forgettable preycare creatures. You find
Speaker 1: fascinating predators and parasites. But another great thing about this
Speaker 1: exhibit is that it tells the story of people who
Speaker 1: have tried to illuminate the depths of the ocean. I mean,
Speaker 1: we we see nature documentaries showing us footage of what
Speaker 1: happens under the sea. And because you've seen that footage,
Speaker 1: now you might have this sense like, Okay, we finally
Speaker 1: figured out what the oceans are, like, we know what's
Speaker 1: down there. It's you know, it's it's finally conquered territory.
Speaker 1: And in many ways it is it has been and
Speaker 1: still remains the most mysterious thing about planet Earth. It
Speaker 1: is not conquered territory. There's so much we haven't seen,
Speaker 1: and we don't know about the deep oceans. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: and you know that one of the interesting things, one
Speaker 1: of the one of the reasons we're talking about William
Speaker 1: Beebe here today is that when you think about pioneers
Speaker 1: in deep sea exploration, unless this is a topic that
Speaker 1: you've read extensively about before or whatnot, and some of
Speaker 1: the key names that come to mind are probably Jacques Cousteau, right,
Speaker 1: And indeed, Jacques Custo did a lot uh in the
Speaker 1: area of exploring our season, popularizing our understanding of the seas.
Speaker 1: He's one of those figures that I think many people
Speaker 1: of our generation actually know more directly from parody of
Speaker 1: him than they know from him himself. Well maybe for
Speaker 1: for today's like younger generations, but but he had a
Speaker 1: long running television series narrated by Rod Serling. Oh yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I just mean that, I know, I grew up not
Speaker 1: really knowing anything about Jacque Custo himself, but I saw
Speaker 1: countless cartoon and puppet French accent, you know, underwater explorer
Speaker 1: type characters that were I don't mean like they were
Speaker 1: attacking Jacques Custo, were making fun of him, but I
Speaker 1: don't know. He seemed like a very parodiable character in
Speaker 1: American culture, right. And of course today we have James Cameron,
Speaker 1: who who's whose contribution to deep see exploration is a
Speaker 1: is is real. Um. But but but as as far
Speaker 1: as William Beebe goes in the bathisphere, like, this is
Speaker 1: a story that I feel isn't as celebrated in pop culture.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's certainly remembered in the in the history
Speaker 1: of marine biology and our exploration of the seas. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's not it's not something that's forgotten. Before we did
Speaker 1: this exhibit, I knew pretty much nothing about this. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: But I think where I started really discovering it was
Speaker 1: was in reading Starfish, in which Peter Watts makes several
Speaker 1: mentions of BB and his contributions and his sightings not
Speaker 1: just a quick note. This is going to be a
Speaker 1: two parter. We started recording it and we were just
Speaker 1: going way too long. So we went ahead and made
Speaker 1: the decision let's cut it into UH and UH and
Speaker 1: spread it out over the course of a week instead
Speaker 1: of draping like a nearly two hour episode right in
Speaker 1: your lap. Well, I mean there's a lot of deep
Speaker 1: sea out there, right, that's right. I can't blame us
Speaker 1: for talking forever on that and we're only scratching the
Speaker 1: surface on it. Well, maybe the best understand Baby's contributions.
Speaker 1: It helps to turn our eyes to the past and
Speaker 1: to look at what humanities knowledge of the deepest parts
Speaker 1: of the ocean, or even not the deepest, even the
Speaker 1: deeper parts of the ocean was like before the Bathmosphere expedition,
Speaker 1: And so what we knew and what the process of
Speaker 1: exploring the deep sea was like. So, Robert, will you
Speaker 1: come along with me to the age of sea monsters? Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: here they'd be dragons. So, given how little we know
Speaker 1: about the deep ocean, just think about how mysterious the
Speaker 1: depths were before just about a hundred years ago, or
Speaker 1: in even earlier times when less was known about biology
Speaker 1: in general, that you could extrapolate to the deep ocean,
Speaker 1: when stories of sea monsters, the size of whole islands
Speaker 1: rising out the out of the deep was really not
Speaker 1: out of the realm of possibility. That's something I'd like
Speaker 1: to emphasize. It was not just fanciful to imagine back then,
Speaker 1: you had no reason necessarily to doubt stories of sea monsters, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean because ultimately, what did we know of the
Speaker 1: of the depths or even the greater expanses of the sea.
Speaker 1: We did not know about whole continents out there, So uh,
Speaker 1: it would seem entirely possible that you would have giant
Speaker 1: sea creatures. And in fact, we saw giant sea creatures
Speaker 1: in the forms of of spouting whales and various carcasses
Speaker 1: that occasionally drift up to shore exactly right. So most
Speaker 1: of the time in human history was a time when
Speaker 1: people could not look beneath the ocean. They didn't they
Speaker 1: didn't really have any idea other than what sailors might
Speaker 1: have said they saw coming up to the surface every
Speaker 1: now and then. But that was just a peak. That
Speaker 1: was just what came up to the surface. I mean,
Speaker 1: what's deep down there? Who the heck knows. So one
Speaker 1: example of the kinds of beliefs it used to be
Speaker 1: so plausible about the creatures that lived in the deep.
Speaker 1: I want to reference a passage that's quoted in Chet
Speaker 1: van Deuser's book Sea Monsters on Medieval and Renaissance Maps,
Speaker 1: which Robert this is a book you loaned me and
Speaker 1: it's fantastic. Oh yeah, this is what. This is a
Speaker 1: wonderful book, wonderful content. And there's so many rich illustrations
Speaker 1: from these old maps. Yeah, they're they're wonderful. Now. Originally,
Speaker 1: this quote is from the Kona Skusa or the King's Mirror,
Speaker 1: which is a thirteenth century Old Norse educational text. So
Speaker 1: it's got it's written in the form of a dialogue,
Speaker 1: and it's got characters talking to each other about things
Speaker 1: in the world, and we come to this passage talking
Speaker 1: about marine life. So here it is quote. There is
Speaker 1: a fish not yet mentioned, which it is scarcely advisable
Speaker 1: to speak about, on account of its size, which to
Speaker 1: most men will seem incredible. There are, moreover, but very
Speaker 1: few who can tell anything definite about it, inasmuch as
Speaker 1: it is rarely seen by men, for it almost never
Speaker 1: approaches the shore or appears where fisher and can see it.
Speaker 1: And I doubt that this sort of fish is very
Speaker 1: plentiful in the sea. In our language it is usually
Speaker 1: called the kraken. I can say nothing definite as to
Speaker 1: its length in els, for on those occasions when men
Speaker 1: have seen it it has appeared more like an island
Speaker 1: than a fish, Nor have I heard that one has
Speaker 1: ever been caught or found dead. It seems likely that
Speaker 1: there are but two in all the ocean, and that
Speaker 1: these beget no offspring, for I believe it is always
Speaker 1: the same ones that appear. Nor would it be well
Speaker 1: for other fishes if they were as numerous as other whales,
Speaker 1: Seeing that they are so immense and needs so much food.
Speaker 1: It is said that when these fishes want something to eat,
Speaker 1: they are in the habit of giving forth a violent belch,
Speaker 1: which brings up so much food that all sorts of
Speaker 1: fish in the neighborhood, both large and small, will rush
Speaker 1: up in hopes of getting nourishment and good fair. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the monster keeps its mouth open, and inasmuch as its
Speaker 1: opening is about as wide as a sound or fiord,
Speaker 1: the fishes cannot help crowding in great numbers. But as
Speaker 1: soon as its mouth and belly are full, the monster
Speaker 1: closes its mouth, and thus catches and shuts in all
Speaker 1: the fishes that just previously had rushed in eagerly to
Speaker 1: seek food. Oh wow, that is a fabulous description. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's an amazing hunting strategy. Yeah, I offhand, I
Speaker 1: can't think of a real world organism that actually employs
Speaker 1: something like that. Well, there's sort of, um, there are
Speaker 1: versions in much smaller scales. Now, obviously you've got like
Speaker 1: the snapping turtle with the fake worm lure in its
Speaker 1: mouth and it will wait for the fish to sneak
Speaker 1: in to get the food and then clamp shut. But
Speaker 1: those artificial lures, right, But what we have here is
Speaker 1: like this creature has eaten so much sea life and
Speaker 1: then it vomits that sea life up, which brings in
Speaker 1: greater populations of sea life, which it then it just
Speaker 1: then just sucks all of that down. Yeah, but I
Speaker 1: want to emphasize again this sounds ridiculous to us, but
Speaker 1: we're living after Darwin. We know a lot more. We're
Speaker 1: living after dar one name. We're living after you know,
Speaker 1: submarines going down and looking at, well, what kind of
Speaker 1: sea life is there? Really, we still don't know a
Speaker 1: whole lot, but we know enough that this doesn't seem plausible.
Speaker 1: But if you were armed with only what an educated
Speaker 1: Norwegian courtier knew about deep sea life in the thirteenth century,
Speaker 1: how would you argue against these accounts? Indeed, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know this is there's another point that chet VanDuzer
Speaker 1: makes in his book is that like in the ancient world,
Speaker 1: it was it was often assumed that anything that existed
Speaker 1: on the surface likely had a counterpart beneath the waves
Speaker 1: and the mirror world. And I mean the names stick
Speaker 1: with us, the sea lion, the sea cow, ce cucumber,
Speaker 1: I guess the cea cucumber two, but the see hamburger.
Speaker 1: But basically, when you start looking at all these fabulous beasts,
Speaker 1: and I think we alluded to this a little bit
Speaker 1: in our Aquatic Humanoids episode episodes, Uh, you find all
Speaker 1: these various just ridiculous like sea dogs, etcetera. Literally the
Speaker 1: idea that whatever we have here there must be a
Speaker 1: counterpart beneath the waves. And I mean, to a certain extent,
Speaker 1: there's there's a bit of truth in that, just the
Speaker 1: idea that that whatever diversity we have on the surface,
Speaker 1: that diversity must be represented beneath the waves. But of course,
Speaker 1: in reality it's even it's even greater than that. The
Speaker 1: vast majority of the planet's biodiversity is in the ocean. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's just so much ocean, and there are so many
Speaker 1: ecological niches to fill within it. All right, we're gonna
Speaker 1: take a quick break and then we'll jump right back in.
Speaker 1: Thank thank you, thank you. All right, we're back now.
Speaker 1: Of course, as we've said that, over time there has
Speaker 1: been this steady increasing catalog of some knowledge about undersea life.
Speaker 1: There's still a lot we don't know, but we know
Speaker 1: a lot more than we used to. And one of
Speaker 1: the earliest major explorations of marine biology was that of
Speaker 1: Aristotle in the fourth century BC. In his Biology or
Speaker 1: This History of of Animal Life, Aristotle got a lot wrong, like,
Speaker 1: for example, he said the octopus is a stupid creature,
Speaker 1: for it will approach a man's hand if it be
Speaker 1: lowered in the water. Now, on the other hand, Aristotle,
Speaker 1: for his time, if you consider his limitations, got an
Speaker 1: astonishing amount right. For example, he correctly determined that whales
Speaker 1: and dolphins were not fish, and he made lots of
Speaker 1: other extremely astute classifications. So, uh, filed this away under.
Speaker 1: Aristotle occasionally says things that sound dumb to us, but
Speaker 1: was not dumb. Yeah, yeah, I feel like we've touched
Speaker 1: on this before on other topics. Uh. From our advantage point,
Speaker 1: it's easy to to say Oh, yeah, you really screwed
Speaker 1: that after Aristotle. But really, given what he had to
Speaker 1: work with, his his understanding of the natural world was amazing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I just mean think about Aristotle's the research methods available
Speaker 1: to him. Now, A lot of what he did he
Speaker 1: probably he probably got a lot of information by like
Speaker 1: talking to fisher folk and stuff like that. But he
Speaker 1: also I think some people have said, you know, it
Speaker 1: really looks from some of his statements like Aristotle performed dissections,
Speaker 1: So we must have had some access to specimens. And
Speaker 1: it's not so easy to always get specimens in the
Speaker 1: ancient world, Like how how do you collect them? Do
Speaker 1: you just like throw some nets and hope you get
Speaker 1: some good stuff? Yeah? Especially this is especially important considering
Speaker 1: that you have other historians and writers of the ancient
Speaker 1: world who are very much going on second, third, and
Speaker 1: fourth hand accounts of what was going on elsewhere in
Speaker 1: the world. And and and that's where we see some
Speaker 1: of these more ridiculous notions of of even terrestrial monsters
Speaker 1: and creatures. Totally, it's like it's through a glass darkly
Speaker 1: on in like four ways, right, So you're getting it secondhand.
Speaker 1: You know that you heard a story from somebody who
Speaker 1: heard a story who also was not really beneath the
Speaker 1: waves when he or she saw this thing, but just
Speaker 1: saw something poke up from the surface. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: so many levels of removed from the actual biological reality
Speaker 1: that it's not hard to understand where these myths about
Speaker 1: sea monsters come from. So to explore the idea of
Speaker 1: ways of understanding the deep sea, like the research methods
Speaker 1: available to us before recent times, and like the invention
Speaker 1: of modern technology like sonar and other stuff. Uh, there
Speaker 1: were I want to say they were basically two broad
Speaker 1: methods for studying the deepest parts of the ocean, and
Speaker 1: for a little mythological flare, I want I want to
Speaker 1: give them some mythological names to help us keep them organized.
Speaker 1: So one I want to call the Ebisu method. So
Speaker 1: Ebisu is the Japanese luck god, often depicted as a
Speaker 1: jolly fisherman with a bright red bream on his line.
Speaker 1: He's always got a fishing pole. So the Ebissue method
Speaker 1: is to use some kind of method to pull creatures
Speaker 1: up from the deep to the surface so you can
Speaker 1: study them go fishing basically, okay. And the other one
Speaker 1: I want to call the Gilgamesh method. Because Gilgamesh, of course,
Speaker 1: is the protagonist of the four thousand year old Mesopotamian
Speaker 1: work known as the Epic of Gilgamesh. And if you'll
Speaker 1: recall and from the Epic of Gilgamesh and the second
Speaker 1: half of the story Gilgamesh, he gets obsessed with finding
Speaker 1: the secret of eternal life. And in Tablet eleven, he
Speaker 1: receives a tip that there is a plant at the
Speaker 1: bottom of the ocean covered in prickling thorns, which if
Speaker 1: you pull it up from the ocean old grant you
Speaker 1: eternal life. And so, to read from the Andrew George translation,
Speaker 1: quote heavy stones, he tied to his feet, and they
Speaker 1: pulled him down to the ocean below. He took the
Speaker 1: plant and pulled it up and lifted it. The heavy
Speaker 1: stones he cut loose from his feet, and the sea
Speaker 1: cast him up on its shore. So the idea is Gilgamesh,
Speaker 1: he weighs himself down, he goes to the very bottom
Speaker 1: of the ocean, he cuts up this plant, and then
Speaker 1: he cuts himself loose. So the Gilgamesh method, I'm going
Speaker 1: to say is to dive as deep as you can
Speaker 1: into the dark world and see what you can see.
Speaker 1: But of course you also have to be able to
Speaker 1: come back and report what you've seen. Right, Not not
Speaker 1: all of us are Gilgamesh. Right, it seemed like he
Speaker 1: could hold his breath for a long time and withstand
Speaker 1: some crushing compression. They probably didn't necessarily understand at the time,
Speaker 1: But so people have been accidentally practicing versions of the
Speaker 1: Ebisome method for thousands of years. Right. So of course
Speaker 1: the easiest thing is that sometimes dead organisms from the
Speaker 1: deep sea will wash up on the shore in various
Speaker 1: states of decomposition, and people could look at that and say,
Speaker 1: I wonder what this is. Yeah, but we still see
Speaker 1: this all the time. I feel like only a few
Speaker 1: months will go go go by before there's another, uh
Speaker 1: weird dead thing that's washed upon the beach, and various
Speaker 1: websites will will start speculating as to what it was,
Speaker 1: and generally they'll say, Oh, it's probably uh nessy, it's
Speaker 1: probably a dinosaur. Yea monster. I mean, I'm torn because
Speaker 1: I I love a good beach monster and I hate
Speaker 1: the Daily Mail, and the latter is the best place
Speaker 1: to go for the former. You you will always get.
Speaker 1: The beach monster is interpreted in various ways, but I mean,
Speaker 1: beach monster is a wild, grotesque and often classified as
Speaker 1: monsters that don't really exist, can show us some things
Speaker 1: about the deep ocean. Uh. The other thing would be
Speaker 1: accidental ebisome method practicing just through fishing. People are throwing
Speaker 1: nets in order to catch some fish to eat, but
Speaker 1: they pull up something interesting by accident. Now, whether you're
Speaker 1: practicing that this method on purpose or by accident, there
Speaker 1: are definitely limits to what you can learn through it,
Speaker 1: and will explore some of those limits in a bit.
Speaker 1: One surprising thing to learn is that, according to some reports,
Speaker 1: ancient people's actually did practice versions of the Gilgamesh method
Speaker 1: as well. So, going back to Aristotle in his three
Speaker 1: sixty BC work Problem at Um or the Problems, Aristotle
Speaker 1: actually gives the earliest description I'm aware of of deep
Speaker 1: diving technology. And so this is going to be a
Speaker 1: version of the diving bell. And he's talking about divers
Speaker 1: who fish for sponges on the sea floor, and he
Speaker 1: discusses all kinds of weird practices these divers used to
Speaker 1: make the deep more tolerable, and these include fastening sponges
Speaker 1: around their ears or cutting slits in their own ears
Speaker 1: and nostrils. And in this section Aristotle writes that quote.
Speaker 1: In order that these fissures of sponges may be supplied
Speaker 1: with a facility of respiration, a kettle is let down
Speaker 1: to them, not filled with water, but with air, which
Speaker 1: constantly assists the submerged demand. It is forcibly kept upright
Speaker 1: in its descent in order that it may be sent
Speaker 1: down at an equal level all around, to prevent the
Speaker 1: air from escaping and the water from entering. Now, if
Speaker 1: you never like played this game in the bath as
Speaker 1: a kid, you can make a simple diving bell just
Speaker 1: by taking a cup or a bowl or something and
Speaker 1: turning it upside down and then pressing it straight down
Speaker 1: into the water and not letting it wobble. And what
Speaker 1: it'll do is it will keep a bubble of air
Speaker 1: trapped underneath the cup. And you could, if you were
Speaker 1: a tiny diver, swim up in there or stay in
Speaker 1: there and breathe down at the bottom. But this comes
Speaker 1: with a lot of risks, right, like, if it gets
Speaker 1: tipped over slightly, the air can escape and uh, and
Speaker 1: of course you're still going to be dealing with all
Speaker 1: kinds of weird pressure problems. Yeah, this is this is
Speaker 1: one of those things that we all experiment within the bathtub.
Speaker 1: I feel I've observed I've observed my my son doing
Speaker 1: this as well, but he has not reached the conclusion, Hey,
Speaker 1: why don't we take one of these to the ocean.
Speaker 1: But I can I can imagine that this idea has
Speaker 1: been around as long as we've had bowls, essentially as
Speaker 1: long as we've had even just coconut husks or something
Speaker 1: to that effect. Yeah, it's hard to know for sure
Speaker 1: because Aristotle doesn't make it clear who invented this technique,
Speaker 1: and he doesn't make it clear how long it's been
Speaker 1: around or how common it was. He just mentions that
Speaker 1: some divers can do this, So we don't know where
Speaker 1: it comes from or how far it was taken in
Speaker 1: the ancient world. But here is a really weird connection
Speaker 1: I came across. According to medieval legend, Aristotle's student Alexander
Speaker 1: the Great was his own kind of great undersea adventurer
Speaker 1: and pioneer of the school of Gilgamesh. Robert, had you
Speaker 1: ever come across the the Alexander the Grade as deep
Speaker 1: sea explorer before? I don't believe ev I had, though
Speaker 1: the William Beebe makes reference to it in his book
Speaker 1: Half mile down. Yeah. Uh So there are a lot
Speaker 1: of versions of this legend, and and to be very clear,
Speaker 1: these are pretty much definitely false. Maybe some versions of
Speaker 1: them are inspired by something that roughly happened, but but
Speaker 1: as told, they're definitely false. So the oldest version I
Speaker 1: think is the one about how while Alexander the Great
Speaker 1: was laying siege to the city of Tier in Lebanon,
Speaker 1: he had divers swimming underwater to either remove or to
Speaker 1: put in place boom defenses. And a boom defenses something
Speaker 1: you would put in in a harbor or a channel
Speaker 1: that's like a huge chain or object that you would
Speaker 1: place underwater to prevent the passage of ships. It recalls
Speaker 1: something Terry and Lanister does in the Battle of Blackwater Bay.
Speaker 1: Remember that. Oh I don't remember that. I remember all
Speaker 1: the fire obviously, but I don't remember the use of
Speaker 1: chains too. Yeah. In the book, he puts a big
Speaker 1: chain across the water and this prevents the ships from
Speaker 1: getting past. And this is an act tool technique. So
Speaker 1: in some versions of the story, I think Alexander is
Speaker 1: trying to get rid of boom defenses and somebody's trying
Speaker 1: to put them in place. But in any case, he's
Speaker 1: got divers working for him, and in one version of
Speaker 1: the story written by a seventh century Arab historian and
Speaker 1: quoted in the History of Underwater Exploration by Richard F. Marks,
Speaker 1: Alexander wants to go underwater, either to help with this
Speaker 1: task or to see how it's coming along. So he
Speaker 1: has his workmen build him a huge wooden box with
Speaker 1: glass windows that are sealed with resin and wax to
Speaker 1: keep the water out. And then the room at this
Speaker 1: box is weighed down with iron and lead and stone
Speaker 1: and then lowered into the water between two ships, with
Speaker 1: Alexander and a couple of his secretaries inside the box.
Speaker 1: And then from inside this sealed room they can look
Speaker 1: out the glass windows and see what's happening deep underwater
Speaker 1: in the ocean quote. Thanks to the transparency of the
Speaker 1: glass and the limpidity of the water, Alexander and his
Speaker 1: two companions were able to see the marine monsters and
Speaker 1: a specieas of demon, having the head of a ferocious
Speaker 1: beast attached to a human body. Some of them carried axes,
Speaker 1: others saws, and still others hammers, so they looked like workman.
Speaker 1: Alexander and his two secretaries drew careful pictures of these monsters.
Speaker 1: Then they pulled the line and at this signal, the
Speaker 1: men on the ships drew up the case. The king
Speaker 1: stepped out and was carried back to Alexandria. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: hearing that, I I feel that Alexander deserved to be
Speaker 1: frightened a little bit, since he was really kind of
Speaker 1: micromanaging on all this. He really should have learned to
Speaker 1: delegate a bit more. Well, what I like about the
Speaker 1: story is that it does imply some kind of scientific observation.
Speaker 1: It's just observation of demons instead of real wildlife. But
Speaker 1: there's actually there there are other funny versions of this.
Speaker 1: There's a totally different version of Alexander as Gilgamesh that
Speaker 1: I came across in this illustrated manuscript. It's an early
Speaker 1: fifteenth century German manuscript telling a story of how Alexander
Speaker 1: goes down to the bottom of the ocean in a
Speaker 1: diving bell and he trusts so this would be not
Speaker 1: a not an encased room with glass windows, but like
Speaker 1: a regular diving bell, So a bell upturned in the
Speaker 1: water that's got an air bubble in it, and he
Speaker 1: goes down and uh, he entrusts his loyal mistress to
Speaker 1: watch over the chain that can pull the bell back
Speaker 1: up to the surface, and unfortunately, while she's watching the chain,
Speaker 1: her lover gets her to run off with him and
Speaker 1: abandoned Alexander and throw the chain into the sea. Not
Speaker 1: good for alex I like the theme of this though,
Speaker 1: because it basically it portrays Alexander the Great is indeed
Speaker 1: a great individual who can do great things and go
Speaker 1: places the northern man can go. But in doing so
Speaker 1: there's a there, there's there's an inherent weakness. Well, use
Speaker 1: this technology. It's not just like magic super strength. He
Speaker 1: can swim to the bottom of the ocean. He builds
Speaker 1: a technological marvel to get him down there, but in
Speaker 1: doing so he neglects his mistress. Right, Yeah, And I've
Speaker 1: got an illustration here, Robert, you can look at that's
Speaker 1: got alex down in this in this bubble. He's looking
Speaker 1: very unhappy. He's got a big mustache, and he appears
Speaker 1: to be frowning and scowling at the surface where his
Speaker 1: mistress and her lover are cavorting in this ship. And
Speaker 1: then meanwhile in the background there are these gigantic fish
Speaker 1: swimming by that I guess he's not even noticing because
Speaker 1: he's angry. Yeah, and but at least they do look
Speaker 1: like real fish and not visions from hell. I believe
Speaker 1: the example that the William Beebe draws on is the
Speaker 1: idea that uh that that Alexander the Great uh observes
Speaker 1: a fish that is so large that it takes days
Speaker 1: for it to pass him by. So another equally outrageous
Speaker 1: uh or perhaps just uh exaggerated example of what life
Speaker 1: might be underwater. And that's the feeling I'm getting from
Speaker 1: all of these accounts. It sounds like less an example of, Hey,
Speaker 1: somebody went underwater and they saw this, but more of
Speaker 1: almost like a science fictional scenario. What would it be
Speaker 1: like if I could go underwater and see the things
Speaker 1: that are down there, and in to build that I
Speaker 1: have to base it on what do I believe exists
Speaker 1: under the water. Well, I would say much in the
Speaker 1: same way that the science fiction of space encouraged people
Speaker 1: to become real astronauts and want to explore I think
Speaker 1: maybe some of this ancient and medieval science fiction about
Speaker 1: the underwater realms may have inspired people to want to
Speaker 1: actually build real diving bell technology and go down there
Speaker 1: and that that is what eventually happened. Genuine scientific interest
Speaker 1: in the ocean depths and the real use of diving
Speaker 1: technologies like the diving bell showed up again in more
Speaker 1: recent decades, specifically starting around the sixteenth century. You you
Speaker 1: start to see people messing with diving bells. How deep
Speaker 1: can we go? Uh? Some of this was just for
Speaker 1: purely commercial reasons, like people wanted to salvage shipwrecks and
Speaker 1: get rich and all that, but also there was a
Speaker 1: genuine spirit about of exploration about the deep ocean, to
Speaker 1: get down there and see what you could see. But
Speaker 1: of course, as we mentioned, diving bells have a lot
Speaker 1: of limitations. All right, on that note, we're going to
Speaker 1: take a quick break, and when we come back, we're
Speaker 1: gonna discuss the the pre bb world of deep sea
Speaker 1: exploration just a little bit more. Thank thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1: All right, we're back. So we've talked about ancient investigation
Speaker 1: into the nature of the deep sea, both real and mythological,
Speaker 1: in the form of the Abi zoom method like fishing,
Speaker 1: pulling things up and seeing what they're like, and the
Speaker 1: Gilgamesh method diving down and seeing what you can see
Speaker 1: yourself and in the nineteenth century the eb zoom method
Speaker 1: by way of the biological dredge, was very popular for naturalists, zoologists, socianographers,
Speaker 1: all these people trying to understand what existed in the
Speaker 1: hidden deep. And one practitioner of this method, the biological dredge,
Speaker 1: was the British naturalist Edward Forbes. Now Forbes was a
Speaker 1: naturalist from the Isle of Man. He was reportedly a
Speaker 1: very likable dude. People took a shine to him. But
Speaker 1: in in eighteen forty one, Edward Forbes was on a
Speaker 1: journey aboard a surveying ship called the h MS Beacon
Speaker 1: in the Mediator Rainy and see, and during this voyage
Speaker 1: they would dredge the water. So what you have to
Speaker 1: imagine there is like a bag or a bucket type
Speaker 1: contraption that you would drag along the bottom of the
Speaker 1: ocean from behind the ship. And then when you drag
Speaker 1: it along and scoop some stuff up, then you pull
Speaker 1: it back up and see what you caught. All right.
Speaker 1: I have conducted the very same sort of investigation in
Speaker 1: the surf with my son. Just drag a bucket, get
Speaker 1: a bunch of sand, and then you dump it out
Speaker 1: and see what you manage to catch, and sometimes you
Speaker 1: do find an interesting organism. Yeah, what have you found
Speaker 1: that way? Oh? They are we always call them sand fleas,
Speaker 1: but they're not actual sand fleas. They're little iceopods. I
Speaker 1: can't remember this specific species name offhand, but depending on
Speaker 1: the sort of on the Florida beach you go to,
Speaker 1: you can find a number of these. Aren't they the
Speaker 1: jumping ones? They don't jump, They burrow really quickly, so basically,
Speaker 1: if you if you were able to scoop underneath them,
Speaker 1: they can't dig away from you. I see. And most
Speaker 1: of them are really small, but you can find something
Speaker 1: that are the size of a real look the size
Speaker 1: of your thumb. They're pretty fun. That's cool, though, I
Speaker 1: thought you were referring to things I have actually seen that.
Speaker 1: I don't know if their fleas or what. I should
Speaker 1: look up what these organisms are. One time we were
Speaker 1: up on the Northwest coast, I believe, a beach in Oregon,
Speaker 1: and the beach was just covered in what appeared to
Speaker 1: be jumping fleas. There these little like white, pale fleas
Speaker 1: that would jump all over you. It was kind of horrible. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think I believe those are more accurately sand fleas,
Speaker 1: and for whatever reason, and I've talked to other it
Speaker 1: wasn't just my family. I've talked to other people, and
Speaker 1: I've asked him, well, what did you call these things
Speaker 1: when you were a kid going to the beach, and like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: we call those sand fleas. So but again they're they're
Speaker 1: more technically a variety of iopod. Well, Forbes was playing
Speaker 1: this game, the Drag the Bucket game, at much much
Speaker 1: deeper than just in the surf, and catching much more
Speaker 1: than just sand fleas. So Forbes noticed though as you
Speaker 1: play this game, as you you go through the Mediterranean
Speaker 1: Sea on the beacon dredging the bottom, that as you
Speaker 1: moved deeper and deeper into deeper waters, the dredge came
Speaker 1: up with fewer types of organisms. So you can see
Speaker 1: where the reasoning probably went from there. Right, the lower
Speaker 1: down you go, the less life there is. So. Extrapolating
Speaker 1: from his observations, in eighteen forty three, Forbes proposed what
Speaker 1: came to be known as the abyssess theory or the
Speaker 1: a zoic hypothesis, and this specifically said that below three
Speaker 1: hundred fathoms, which is about five hundred and fifty meters
Speaker 1: or eighteen hundred feet, the oceans were completely dead. Now
Speaker 1: this makes a certain kind of sense, right, Like a
Speaker 1: lot of false hypotheses, it has this sense of truthiness.
Speaker 1: It feels right, and other contemporary scientists backed Forbes up.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to quote from an eighteen sixty three
Speaker 1: text book by the Scottish geologist David Page, in which
Speaker 1: Page is discussing the powerful compression effects of vast amounts
Speaker 1: of water. So he explains that at four thousand fathoms,
Speaker 1: the pressure of the ocean would be about seven hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty atmospheres, and he considers that just intolerable at
Speaker 1: vast depths. Therefore, it is generally supposed that vegetable and
Speaker 1: animal life as known to us could not possibly exist,
Speaker 1: And though some recent soundings of the North Seas at
Speaker 1: the depth of one thousand, two hundred and sixty fathoms
Speaker 1: would seem to oppose this opinion, yet the paucity and
Speaker 1: uncertainty of these trials leave the question still in doubt,
Speaker 1: and we may, in the meantime adhere to the general
Speaker 1: belief that the extreme depressions of the ocean, like the
Speaker 1: extreme elevations of the land are barren and lifeless solitudes.
Speaker 1: All right. So in this case, he's drawing upon just
Speaker 1: the idea that the water pressure would be too great
Speaker 1: for life as we know it to exist. I mean truthie, right, Like,
Speaker 1: if you're under seven fifty atmospheres, couldn't possibly be a
Speaker 1: thing to survive? That? Right? Okay, Yeah, I can I
Speaker 1: can see where that that idea could had a certain
Speaker 1: amount of truthiness to it. Uh. Now, certainly we know
Speaker 1: that that that that the sunlit poor of the ocean,
Speaker 1: that's where most of the life is. That is where
Speaker 1: that's where you encounter all of the plankton, the creatures
Speaker 1: that feed upon the plankton, uh, creatures that depend upon
Speaker 1: the sunlight, and then the creatures that consume those organisms
Speaker 1: that is going to be found in the upper ocean.
Speaker 1: But another thing they could have reasoned is, I wonder
Speaker 1: what happens to all those organisms in the sunlit area
Speaker 1: when they die? And then if they're gonna if they're
Speaker 1: gonna be packing some good chemical energy with them after
Speaker 1: they die, wouldn't someone want to take advantage of that exactly?
Speaker 1: And then you you also have to begin to say, well,
Speaker 1: if everything is if all the life is up here
Speaker 1: in the sunlit ocean, then isn't the dark ocean? Isn't
Speaker 1: that a great place to say, go hide out? Is
Speaker 1: it a great place? Just maybe set up as your
Speaker 1: main base of operations? Right? So, really, this hypothesis should
Speaker 1: have been a nonstarter. Forbes was completely wrong, uh, since
Speaker 1: many dredging experiments had already at a time of Forbes
Speaker 1: caught life forms from depths of below three hundred fathoms.
Speaker 1: Page alludes to this. Nevertheless, it was supported by some
Speaker 1: for several decades, but later biologists and oceanographers eventually just
Speaker 1: beat this zombie down like that. It didn't survive all
Speaker 1: that much longer. And one of the many researchers to
Speaker 1: assist in knocking down the zombie a zoic hypothesis was
Speaker 1: the Scottish naturalist Charles Wyville Thompson, and in an eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy three report called the Depths of the Sea, Thompson
Speaker 1: published the results of his own dredging expeditions in the
Speaker 1: seas north of Scotland. So while dredging to a depth
Speaker 1: of six hundred and fifty fathoms, he discovered all kinds
Speaker 1: of invertebrate organisms that Forbes had missed, and I'm not
Speaker 1: sure of the reason, but one thing I've read that
Speaker 1: may or may not be true is that later investigators
Speaker 1: had better dredging equipment than Forbes, which was less likely
Speaker 1: to spill the things it caught on the way back
Speaker 1: up to the surface. You can imagine this would be
Speaker 1: a problem. You're like trying to pull up the stuff
Speaker 1: you caught, and it's just like going all to the place. Yeah,
Speaker 1: your bucket isn't big enough, or you're not handling the
Speaker 1: bucket properly, and run into all sorts of problems. Now,
Speaker 1: Thompson would also go on to head up one of
Speaker 1: the most important ocean a graphic research expeditions of all
Speaker 1: time about the deep sea, which was the Challenger Expedition
Speaker 1: beginning in eighteen seventy two, which did a lot of stuff.
Speaker 1: It's circumnavigated the globe on a ship called the HMS Challenger,
Speaker 1: and it collected an absolute wealth of scientific observation, much
Speaker 1: of which is still relevant today. They catalog more than
Speaker 1: four thousand new species. They did soundings in the ocean
Speaker 1: all over the world and came up with the general
Speaker 1: shape of Earth's ocean basins, and they discovered ocean features
Speaker 1: like the mid Atlantic Ridge and the Challenger Deep, which
Speaker 1: is of course named for the expedition. But still as
Speaker 1: wonderful as all this knowledge was, there were still limits
Speaker 1: imposed by the fact that they were using what we
Speaker 1: what I've been calling the eb zoom method. They're they're
Speaker 1: pulling stuff up from the bottom. Like imagine trying to
Speaker 1: study the Amazon rainforest by flying over it in an
Speaker 1: airplane and dragging a bucket along the forest floor behind you,
Speaker 1: and then reeling it up and seeing what you've got
Speaker 1: in the bucket. Like, you see some problems already, but
Speaker 1: also a factor in the differences in the conditions of
Speaker 1: the deep ocean and the surface where we want to
Speaker 1: study the things we pull up from the bottom, that
Speaker 1: that's a problem too, Right, You've got massive changes in light,
Speaker 1: in temperature, which is a big one, in and pressure.
Speaker 1: And so maybe a better analogy is like imagining an
Speaker 1: alien satellite studying us by scooping us up in a
Speaker 1: net and then pulling us up into outer space to
Speaker 1: have a look. Right. Sometimes organisms dredged up from the
Speaker 1: deep ocean can be kept alive if you keep them refrigerated,
Speaker 1: but other times they're just going to be killed or
Speaker 1: even reduced to google in the process of removing them
Speaker 1: from their natural environment. One interesting fact is that many
Speaker 1: deep secret creatures are actually able to withstand lower pressure
Speaker 1: on the surface, and others are not. For example, I
Speaker 1: found a blog post by a marine biologist named Dr
Speaker 1: Craig McClain who wrote, quote, I've tried to collect a
Speaker 1: particularly gelatinous red sea cucumber several times. Each time at
Speaker 1: the surface. When I pulled a collection canister off the
Speaker 1: r O V. The canister is filled with thick red
Speaker 1: kool aid, which I presume is the remains of the
Speaker 1: red sea cucumber. So there are these limitations to the
Speaker 1: epissue method. If you want to keep pulling stuff up
Speaker 1: from the bottom to study it at the top, you're
Speaker 1: always going to have a sort of cap on what
Speaker 1: sorts of scientific progress you're able to make. So would
Speaker 1: there ever be a better way to study the deep
Speaker 1: other than these incredibly dangerous and limited power diving bells?
Speaker 1: Would a true Gilgamesh method arise? Ah, well, Joe, a
Speaker 1: true Gilgamesh will arise, but he's gonna have to wait
Speaker 1: till next episode. I think we're out of time here today.
Speaker 1: So that is going to be the next episode where
Speaker 1: we primarily discussed the bathosphere and the work of William B.
Speaker 1: B Correct. But yeah, before we close out today, I
Speaker 1: just want to try to imagine what it's like to
Speaker 1: be in an oceanographer or marine biologists mindset before we
Speaker 1: get to the bath sphere. Leaving off at the end
Speaker 1: of everything we've discussed today, right, so, you you've been
Speaker 1: stuck on the surface of the water. You just can't
Speaker 1: really dive down and see what's beneath the ocean yourself,
Speaker 1: or at least not very well. And so you're you're
Speaker 1: limited to these methods of dragging buckets along or trawling
Speaker 1: with nets, or trying to scoop stuff up from the
Speaker 1: from the sea floor. What what is that like to have,
Speaker 1: like not have access to all of this life that
Speaker 1: you want to study and and always performing these kind
Speaker 1: of like random samplings is the only way to get
Speaker 1: at it. Yeah. And then even as these various technologies
Speaker 1: do come on online, which I alluded to earlier, you
Speaker 1: you don't have the ability to really get into the depths.
Speaker 1: There are depths of the ocean that are just beyond
Speaker 1: your ability to venture into. Yeah, and and you can't
Speaker 1: you can't explore and see it the way it's supposed
Speaker 1: to be, right or I mean supposed to be the
Speaker 1: way it naturally is. To study, you must destroy if
Speaker 1: you're going to be saying ampling in the ebissome method, right,
Speaker 1: And but then how do you explore it yourself without
Speaker 1: destroying yourself? Essentially? And that that is where the bathmosphere
Speaker 1: comes in. Next time on Stuff to Blow Your Mind,
Speaker 1: it's almost like nature doesn't want us to explore the
Speaker 1: deep sea. Yeah, it's almost like it's a warning or
Speaker 1: it's almost like we're we're fragile flesh creatures that have
Speaker 1: have evolved only to thrive within a very slim portion
Speaker 1: of our own environment. Uh. So hey, we're gonna we
Speaker 1: are going to leave you now. Uh. If you want
Speaker 1: to check out other episodes of Stuff to Blow your
Speaker 1: Mind dot com, many of which have involved the ocean,
Speaker 1: and in many cases the deep ocean, then you can
Speaker 1: find them there. You also find blog post links out
Speaker 1: to our various social media accounts as well. Huge thanks
Speaker 1: as always to our excellent audio producers Alex Williams and
Speaker 1: Tory Harrison. If you would like to get in touch
Speaker 1: with us to let us know feedback on this episode
Speaker 1: or any other, to suggest a topic for a future episode,
Speaker 1: or just to say hi. You can email us at
Speaker 1: blow the Mind at how stuff works dot com for
Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it
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