WEBVTT - From the Vault: Bathysphere, Part 1 0:00:05.760 --> 0:00:07.520 Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow your mind. My 0:00:07.600 --> 0:00:10.720 name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday. 0:00:10.840 --> 0:00:14.040 The Vault hangs open. Time to venture into the Black Void. 0:00:14.240 --> 0:00:16.640 That's right, venturing down into the void for this one. 0:00:16.680 --> 0:00:19.959 This is an episode. Now this technically this episode in 0:00:19.960 --> 0:00:24.200 the next Vault episode came out in March and March 0:00:24.280 --> 0:00:27.520 twenty nine, two eighteen. Some of you might be saying, 0:00:27.560 --> 0:00:30.280 whoa hold on, that's not even a year ago, even 0:00:30.280 --> 0:00:32.519 though it is from last year. Well, the reason we 0:00:32.520 --> 0:00:34.879 were rerunning these is because these are deep sea episodes. 0:00:34.920 --> 0:00:38.879 These are underwater episodes. And uh, I have a a 0:00:38.880 --> 0:00:43.400 fiction podcast project that's launching on the thirty feet here. 0:00:43.760 --> 0:00:46.920 Everyone here is so excited. Yeah, yeah, we're all super excited. 0:00:46.920 --> 0:00:50.720 It's titled Transgenesis. And so it seemed appropriate to feature 0:00:50.720 --> 0:00:52.880 some stuff to Blow your mind Vault episodes that dealt 0:00:52.920 --> 0:00:56.120 with the deep ocean. And this episode, of course, concerns 0:00:56.240 --> 0:01:00.360 the real history of deep sea exploration, which is a 0:01:00.520 --> 0:01:03.520 more difficult proposition than you might imagine. In this age 0:01:03.520 --> 0:01:06.080 of deep sea submersibles and James Cameron and all that, 0:01:07.000 --> 0:01:11.200 the early deep sea explorers were We're going into some 0:01:11.200 --> 0:01:14.920 some hairy stuff. Yeah, this is this is a weird odyssey, 0:01:15.080 --> 0:01:19.240 uh that we explore with the bathosphere. Uh. So join 0:01:19.360 --> 0:01:21.959 us for this vault Vault episode and the next vault episode. 0:01:22.000 --> 0:01:25.080 And if you wanted to get a taste of Transgenesis 0:01:25.120 --> 0:01:28.800 before it comes out, head on over to Transgenesis Dot Show. 0:01:29.040 --> 0:01:31.679 We hope you enjoyed this vault episode of stuff to 0:01:31.680 --> 0:01:36.440 blow your mind. On the Earth at night in moonlight, 0:01:36.520 --> 0:01:40.000 I can always imagine the yellow of sunshine, the scarlet 0:01:40.040 --> 0:01:43.759 of invisible blossoms. But here, when the searchlight was off, 0:01:44.360 --> 0:01:48.840 yellow and orange and red were unthinkable. The blue, which 0:01:48.920 --> 0:01:52.880 filled all space admitted no thought of other colors. The 0:01:52.960 --> 0:01:56.080 return trip was made in forty three minutes, an average 0:01:56.120 --> 0:01:59.600 of one foot every two seconds. Twice during the ascent 0:01:59.680 --> 0:02:02.480 I was ware of one or more indefinite large bodies 0:02:02.520 --> 0:02:05.320 moving about at a distance. On the way down. I 0:02:05.360 --> 0:02:08.880 had accredited them to an over excited imagination, but after 0:02:08.960 --> 0:02:12.400 having the experience repeated on several deep dives, I am 0:02:12.480 --> 0:02:15.400 sure that I did see shadowy shapes of large and 0:02:15.560 --> 0:02:18.600 very real living creatures. What they were I can only 0:02:18.639 --> 0:02:21.440 guess and live in hopes of seeing them closer on 0:02:21.480 --> 0:02:25.800 some future descent. What this great creature was I cannot say. 0:02:26.160 --> 0:02:28.799 A first and most reasonable guests would be a small 0:02:28.880 --> 0:02:32.320 whale or blackfish. We know that whales have a special 0:02:32.400 --> 0:02:35.600 chemical adjustment of the blood which makes it possible for 0:02:35.639 --> 0:02:37.760 them to dive a mile or more and come up 0:02:37.800 --> 0:02:41.520 without getting the bends. So this paltry depth of two thousand, 0:02:41.560 --> 0:02:44.079 four hundred and fifty feet would be nothing for any 0:02:44.160 --> 0:02:47.520 similarly equipped cetacean. Or less likely, it may have been 0:02:47.560 --> 0:02:49.520 a whale shark, which is known to reach a length 0:02:49.520 --> 0:02:52.600 of forty feet. Whatever it was, it appeared and vanished 0:02:52.639 --> 0:02:56.880 so unexpectedly and showed so dimly that it was quite unidentifiable, 0:02:56.960 --> 0:03:06.240 except as a large living creature. Welcome to stuff to 0:03:06.280 --> 0:03:15.320 blow your mind from. How stuff weren't dot Com? Hey, 0:03:15.480 --> 0:03:17.280 Welcome to stuff to blow your mind. My name is 0:03:17.360 --> 0:03:19.680 Robert Lamb, and I'm jere McCormick. And Robert, what were 0:03:19.680 --> 0:03:23.240 those readings from? Uh? Those were the words of William 0:03:23.320 --> 0:03:27.160 Beebe in his biography half Mile Down, Half Mile Down. 0:03:27.240 --> 0:03:30.960 William Beebe was an American naturalist who lived from eighteen 0:03:31.040 --> 0:03:33.840 seventy seven to nineteen sixty two, and he was a 0:03:33.880 --> 0:03:37.680 fabulous writer, he was. Yes, we were talking about this 0:03:37.680 --> 0:03:39.520 a little bit before we went on area we have 0:03:39.720 --> 0:03:42.320 we have I guess two major areas to look to 0:03:42.720 --> 0:03:45.840 his biography Half Mile Down, which was certainly aimed at 0:03:45.880 --> 0:03:49.000 more of a general public audience, but even in his 0:03:49.120 --> 0:03:52.800 writings to a scientific audience, I admire the sort of 0:03:53.000 --> 0:03:55.720 directness and clarity of his writing. I was looking at 0:03:55.760 --> 0:03:58.840 a report of his from his underwater expeditions that he 0:03:58.880 --> 0:04:02.200 delivered in proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 0:04:02.240 --> 0:04:06.480 the nineteen thirties, and it's wonderfully written for a scientific paper. Yeah, 0:04:06.520 --> 0:04:08.840 I was. I was reading so many of these accounts 0:04:09.560 --> 0:04:14.040 whilst listening to some ambient electronic music, and it really 0:04:14.120 --> 0:04:16.520 I was getting chill bumps at times when he's talking 0:04:16.560 --> 0:04:20.760 about descending into the dark and seeing these various bioluminescent 0:04:20.839 --> 0:04:24.560 creatures uh come into his line of vision, creatures that 0:04:24.600 --> 0:04:26.760 had had never been seen before, and in some cases 0:04:27.000 --> 0:04:29.680 as well discussed creatures that have not been seen or 0:04:29.720 --> 0:04:33.440 captured since. Now that is spooky. So, Robert, tell me, 0:04:33.520 --> 0:04:36.040 what does the main thing about William BB's career we're 0:04:36.040 --> 0:04:38.440 gonna be focusing on today. Well, we're gonna be talking 0:04:38.440 --> 0:04:43.440 about the Bathisphere, the bathisphere, which is Greek for deep sphere, 0:04:44.320 --> 0:04:48.360 which was the which this was these basically the submersible 0:04:48.839 --> 0:04:51.919 deep ball, the deep ball that that he used on 0:04:51.960 --> 0:04:56.440 the just groundbreaking trips into the deep. Because prior to this, uh, 0:04:56.720 --> 0:04:59.440 this was in the nineteen thirties. Prior to this, subs 0:04:59.480 --> 0:05:01.760 could only get down about three hundred and eighty three 0:05:01.760 --> 0:05:06.279 feet or a hundred and sixteen meters or so, and 0:05:06.400 --> 0:05:09.120 uh and armored dive suits were only good for about 0:05:09.200 --> 0:05:12.359 five twenty five ft or a hundred and sixty But 0:05:12.440 --> 0:05:17.080 the Bathosphere reached an astonishing three thousand and twenty eight 0:05:17.080 --> 0:05:21.640 feet or nine two points. That record was set in 0:05:21.720 --> 0:05:24.839 nineteen thirty four, and it remained the record till nineteen 0:05:24.960 --> 0:05:28.200 forty nine. And that record was set by William Beebe 0:05:28.320 --> 0:05:32.960 and his collaborator Otis Barton, who together did many dives 0:05:33.040 --> 0:05:35.960 in the steel ball, going deep into the depths off 0:05:36.200 --> 0:05:39.640 Bermuda and in starting in nineteen thirty. So we'll tell 0:05:39.680 --> 0:05:41.720 the story of the Bathosphere more as we go on, 0:05:41.760 --> 0:05:44.320 but I guess first we should talk about why why 0:05:44.320 --> 0:05:47.000 are we doing the Bathosphere today? How did this come up? Well, 0:05:47.040 --> 0:05:48.799 I mean on one hand, it's it's a perfect topic 0:05:48.960 --> 0:05:52.159 because it deals with the ocean and the deep mysteries 0:05:52.160 --> 0:05:55.160 of the ocean, which we come back around to again 0:05:55.200 --> 0:05:57.520 and again on stuff to blow your mind. I've been 0:05:57.560 --> 0:05:59.840 working on a lot lately, A lot, Yeah, a lot. 0:06:00.040 --> 0:06:01.560 And part of that is due to I do have 0:06:01.600 --> 0:06:03.440 a side project I've been working on here at work 0:06:03.480 --> 0:06:08.799 that does concern uh, deep sea themes. Also, I've recently 0:06:08.800 --> 0:06:13.640 finished reading Peter watts novel Starfish, which is a wonderful 0:06:13.800 --> 0:06:17.360 sort of cyberpunk sci fi novel from several years back 0:06:17.400 --> 0:06:20.640 that takes takes place in the deep ocean. Peter Watts 0:06:20.640 --> 0:06:23.320 the author of blind Side, Yes, but he wrote Starfish 0:06:23.320 --> 0:06:26.680 many years before. Correct. Yeah, this was his first big splash. 0:06:26.720 --> 0:06:29.520 You could say, uh and then uh and then also Joe, 0:06:29.560 --> 0:06:33.320 you and I recently attended the exhibit Unseen Oceans at 0:06:33.360 --> 0:06:35.760 the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, 0:06:36.279 --> 0:06:40.239 which is running March twelfth, two thousand eighteen, through January six, 0:06:40.520 --> 0:06:43.560 two thousand and nineteen. This was a really cool special exhibit. 0:06:43.560 --> 0:06:45.440 I really liked it, and it got into a thing 0:06:45.480 --> 0:06:49.080 that's really hard to explain in a in an interesting way, 0:06:49.120 --> 0:06:51.760 but it did it. It got into the character of plankton, 0:06:52.440 --> 0:06:55.840 like making you feel that like plankton has personality. There 0:06:55.839 --> 0:06:59.240 are different types of plankton, and those types matter and 0:06:59.279 --> 0:07:02.080 their interesting, Like there are even these tiny zeno moreph 0:07:02.120 --> 0:07:05.680 some plankton. Yes, it's easy to I feel like we 0:07:05.680 --> 0:07:09.080 we often have this sort of science biology textbook approach 0:07:09.160 --> 0:07:12.200 to plankton where they are a little more than a 0:07:12.240 --> 0:07:15.320 little side note at the beginning, and it's just like, 0:07:15.520 --> 0:07:17.680 these are these are small creatures. Don't worry about them. 0:07:17.760 --> 0:07:19.800 Larger or more interesting creatures eat them. But of course 0:07:19.800 --> 0:07:23.160 they're they're extremely vital and uh. And when you start 0:07:24.000 --> 0:07:30.239 keying in on individual plankton specimens, there is this rich diversity. Uh, 0:07:30.320 --> 0:07:32.880 it's on par with anything you would find in other 0:07:33.240 --> 0:07:36.080 regions of the animal kingdom. I mean, in a very 0:07:36.120 --> 0:07:38.160 real way. They're sort of the ground floor of the 0:07:38.320 --> 0:07:41.360 entire biosphere. And so you do find not only just 0:07:41.440 --> 0:07:46.480 sort of interesting but also forgettable preycare creatures. You find 0:07:46.600 --> 0:07:50.960 fascinating predators and parasites. But another great thing about this 0:07:51.040 --> 0:07:53.920 exhibit is that it tells the story of people who 0:07:53.960 --> 0:07:57.160 have tried to illuminate the depths of the ocean. I mean, 0:07:57.440 --> 0:08:01.360 we we see Nature documentary is showing us footage of 0:08:01.400 --> 0:08:05.080 what happens under the sea. And because you've seen that footage, 0:08:05.120 --> 0:08:07.720 now you might have this sense like, Okay, we finally 0:08:07.720 --> 0:08:09.760 figured out what the oceans are, like, we know what's 0:08:09.760 --> 0:08:13.520 down there. It's you know, it's it's finally conquered territory. 0:08:13.680 --> 0:08:17.200 And in many ways it is, it has been and 0:08:17.240 --> 0:08:20.880 still remains the most mysterious thing about planet Earth. It 0:08:20.960 --> 0:08:24.720 is not conquered territory. There's so much we haven't seen 0:08:24.800 --> 0:08:28.320 and we don't know about the deep oceans. Yeah, and 0:08:28.320 --> 0:08:29.960 and you know that one of the interesting things, one 0:08:29.960 --> 0:08:31.640 of the one of the reasons we're talking about William 0:08:31.640 --> 0:08:35.800 Beebe here today is that when you think about pioneers 0:08:35.840 --> 0:08:40.280 in deep sea exploration, unless this is a topic that 0:08:40.320 --> 0:08:44.680 you've read extensively about before or whatnot, and some of 0:08:44.720 --> 0:08:48.280 the key names that come to mind are probably Jacques Cousteau, right, 0:08:48.559 --> 0:08:52.960 And indeed, Jacques Cousteau did a lot uh in the 0:08:53.040 --> 0:08:59.240 area of exploring our season, popularizing our understanding of the seas. 0:08:59.440 --> 0:09:01.559 He's one of those figures that I think many people 0:09:01.600 --> 0:09:05.680 of our generation actually know more directly from parody of him. 0:09:05.760 --> 0:09:08.960 Than they know from him himself. Well maybe for for 0:09:09.000 --> 0:09:11.600 today's like younger generations, but but he had a long 0:09:11.679 --> 0:09:16.200 running television series narrated by Rod Serling. Oh yeah, well, 0:09:16.240 --> 0:09:18.160 I just mean that, I know, I grew up not 0:09:18.240 --> 0:09:20.640 really knowing anything about Jacques Cousto himself. But I saw 0:09:20.679 --> 0:09:25.760 a countless cartoon and puppet French accent, you know, underwater 0:09:25.880 --> 0:09:29.600 explorer type characters that were I don't mean like they 0:09:29.600 --> 0:09:31.920 were attacking Jacques Custo, were making fun of him, But 0:09:32.200 --> 0:09:34.960 I don't know, he seemed like a very parodyable character 0:09:35.080 --> 0:09:37.560 in American culture, right. And of course today we have 0:09:37.679 --> 0:09:44.080 James Cameron, who who's whose contribution to deeps exploration is 0:09:44.120 --> 0:09:48.160 a is is real? Yeah. Um but but but as 0:09:48.200 --> 0:09:51.160 as far as William Beebe goes in the bathosphere, like, 0:09:51.200 --> 0:09:54.240 this is a story that I feel isn't as celebrated 0:09:54.280 --> 0:09:59.480 in pop culture. It's it's it's certainly remembered in in 0:09:59.840 --> 0:10:03.520 his story of marine biology and our exploration of the seas. 0:10:03.800 --> 0:10:06.960 I mean, it's not it's not something that's forgotten. Before 0:10:07.000 --> 0:10:10.160 we did this exhibit, I knew pretty much nothing about this. Yeah. Yeah, 0:10:10.240 --> 0:10:13.080 but I think where I started really discovering it was 0:10:13.320 --> 0:10:17.120 was in reading Starfish, in which Peter Watts makes several 0:10:17.160 --> 0:10:21.360 mentions of PB and his contributions and his sightings, not 0:10:21.520 --> 0:10:22.800 just a quick note. This is going to be a 0:10:22.840 --> 0:10:25.760 two parter. We started recording it and we were just 0:10:25.800 --> 0:10:27.640 going way too long. So we went ahead and made 0:10:27.640 --> 0:10:30.440 the decision let's cut it into UH and UH and 0:10:30.520 --> 0:10:32.560 spread it out over the course of a week instead 0:10:32.600 --> 0:10:35.840 of dropping like a nearly two hour episode right in 0:10:35.880 --> 0:10:37.600 your lap. Well, I mean there's a lot of deep 0:10:37.600 --> 0:10:39.600 sea out there, right, that's right. I can't blame us 0:10:39.600 --> 0:10:41.800 for talking forever on that. Yeah, and we're only scratching 0:10:41.840 --> 0:10:46.439 the surface on it. Well, maybe the best understand Bob's contributions. 0:10:46.600 --> 0:10:49.400 It helps to turn our eyes to the past and 0:10:49.480 --> 0:10:54.199 to look at what humanities knowledge of the deepest parts 0:10:54.200 --> 0:10:56.760 of the ocean, or even not the deepest, even the 0:10:56.800 --> 0:11:01.559 deeper parts of the ocean was like before the Bathosphere expedition, 0:11:02.000 --> 0:11:05.200 and so what we knew and what the process of 0:11:05.240 --> 0:11:08.200 exploring the deep sea was like. So Robert, will you 0:11:08.400 --> 0:11:11.440 come along with me to the age of sea monsters? Yes, yes, 0:11:11.520 --> 0:11:14.559 here they'd be dragons. So, given how little we know 0:11:14.800 --> 0:11:18.200 about the deep ocean, just think about how mysterious the 0:11:18.240 --> 0:11:21.679 depths were before just about a hundred years ago, or 0:11:21.720 --> 0:11:24.959 in even earlier times when less was known about biology 0:11:25.000 --> 0:11:27.760 in general, that you could extrapolate to the deep ocean, 0:11:28.280 --> 0:11:31.400 when stories of sea monsters the size of whole islands 0:11:31.520 --> 0:11:33.360 rising out of the out of the deep was really 0:11:33.400 --> 0:11:36.280 not out of the realm of possibility. That's something I'd 0:11:36.280 --> 0:11:40.439 like to emphasize. It was not just fanciful to imagine. 0:11:40.520 --> 0:11:44.720 Back then, you had no reason necessarily to doubt stories 0:11:44.760 --> 0:11:49.480 of sea monsters, right, yeah, I mean because ultimately, what 0:11:49.840 --> 0:11:51.840 did we know of the of the depths or even 0:11:51.840 --> 0:11:54.199 the greater expanses of the sea. We did not know 0:11:54.520 --> 0:11:59.320 about whole continents out there, so uh, it would seem 0:11:59.400 --> 0:12:02.280 entirely poss well, you would have giant sea creatures, and 0:12:02.320 --> 0:12:05.160 in fact, we saw giants sea creatures in the forms 0:12:05.200 --> 0:12:10.440 of of spouting whales and various carcassus occasionally drift up 0:12:10.440 --> 0:12:13.400 to shore exactly right. So, most of the time in 0:12:13.520 --> 0:12:17.320 human history was a time when people could not look 0:12:17.440 --> 0:12:19.640 beneath the ocean. They didn't they didn't really have any 0:12:19.679 --> 0:12:23.200 idea other than what sailors might have said they saw 0:12:23.360 --> 0:12:25.280 coming up to the surface. Every now and then. But 0:12:25.360 --> 0:12:27.040 that was just a peak, that was just what came 0:12:27.120 --> 0:12:29.040 up to the surface. I mean, what's deep down there? 0:12:29.360 --> 0:12:32.400 Who the heck knows. So one example of the kinds 0:12:32.400 --> 0:12:34.800 of beliefs that used to be so plausible about the 0:12:34.800 --> 0:12:37.640 creatures that lived in the deep. I want to reference 0:12:37.679 --> 0:12:40.800 a passage that's quoted in Chet van Deuser's book Sea 0:12:40.840 --> 0:12:43.760 Monsters on Medieval and Renaissance Maps, which Robert, this is 0:12:43.760 --> 0:12:46.120 a book you loaned me and it's fantastic. Oh yeah, 0:12:46.120 --> 0:12:48.240 this is what. This is a wonderful book, wonderful content, 0:12:48.320 --> 0:12:52.160 and there's so many rich illustrations from these old maps. Yeah, 0:12:52.200 --> 0:12:55.920 they're they're wonderful. Now. Originally this quote is from the 0:12:56.000 --> 0:13:00.360 Knuskusa or the King's Mirror, which is a thirteen injury 0:13:00.480 --> 0:13:03.800 old Norse educational text. So it's got it's written in 0:13:03.800 --> 0:13:06.920 the form of a dialogue, and it's got characters talking 0:13:06.920 --> 0:13:09.360 to each other about things in the world, and we 0:13:09.440 --> 0:13:12.920 come to this passage talking about marine life. So here 0:13:12.960 --> 0:13:16.600 it is quote there is a fish not yet mentioned, 0:13:16.640 --> 0:13:19.480 which it is scarcely advisable to speak about on account 0:13:19.480 --> 0:13:22.600 of its size, which to most men will seem incredible. 0:13:22.920 --> 0:13:25.880 There are moreover, but very few who can tell anything 0:13:25.920 --> 0:13:29.320 definite about it, inasmuch as it is rarely seen by men, 0:13:29.679 --> 0:13:32.680 for it almost never approaches the shore or appears where 0:13:32.679 --> 0:13:35.320 fishermen can see it. And I doubt that this sort 0:13:35.320 --> 0:13:37.840 of fish is very plentiful in the sea. In our 0:13:37.920 --> 0:13:41.400 language it is usually called the kraken. I can say 0:13:41.400 --> 0:13:44.120 nothing definite as to its length in els, for on 0:13:44.160 --> 0:13:47.080 those occasions when men have seen it, it has appeared 0:13:47.080 --> 0:13:50.079 more like an island than a fish. Nor have I 0:13:50.160 --> 0:13:52.480 heard that one has ever been caught or found dead. 0:13:52.880 --> 0:13:55.480 It seems likely that there are but two in all 0:13:55.600 --> 0:13:59.240 the ocean, and that these beget no offspring, for I 0:13:59.240 --> 0:14:02.439 believe it is always the same ones that appear. Nor 0:14:02.480 --> 0:14:04.679 would it be well for other fishes if they were 0:14:04.679 --> 0:14:07.719 as numerous as other whales, seeing that they are so 0:14:07.800 --> 0:14:11.040 immense and needs so much food. It is said that 0:14:11.080 --> 0:14:13.760 when these fishes want something to eat, they are in 0:14:13.800 --> 0:14:17.120 the habit of giving forth a violent belch, which brings 0:14:17.200 --> 0:14:19.840 up so much food, that all sorts of fish in 0:14:19.880 --> 0:14:23.160 the neighborhood, both large and small, will rush up in 0:14:23.280 --> 0:14:27.160 hopes of getting nourishment and good fair. Meanwhile, the monster 0:14:27.320 --> 0:14:30.320 keeps its mouth open, and inasmuch as its opening is 0:14:30.360 --> 0:14:33.720 about as wide as a sound or fiord, the fishes 0:14:33.760 --> 0:14:37.040 cannot help crowding in great numbers. But as soon as 0:14:37.080 --> 0:14:39.680 its mouth and belly are full, the monster closes its 0:14:39.720 --> 0:14:43.000 mouth and thus catches and shuts in all the fishes 0:14:43.080 --> 0:14:46.360 that just previously had rushed in eagerly to seek food. 0:14:46.760 --> 0:14:49.600 Oh wow, that is a fabulous description. Yeah, and that's 0:14:49.600 --> 0:14:53.560 an amazing hunting strategy. Yeah, I offhand, I can't think 0:14:53.760 --> 0:14:58.320 of a real world organism that actually employs something like that. Well, 0:14:58.360 --> 0:15:04.480 there's sort of, um, there are versions in much smaller scales. Now, 0:15:04.480 --> 0:15:07.000 obviously you've got like the snapping turtle with the fake 0:15:07.040 --> 0:15:08.960 worm lure in its mouth and it will wait for 0:15:09.000 --> 0:15:11.400 the fish to sneak in to get the food and 0:15:11.400 --> 0:15:14.240 then clamp shut. But those artificial lures, right, But what 0:15:14.360 --> 0:15:16.360 we have here is like this creature has eaten so 0:15:16.440 --> 0:15:19.600 much sea life and then it vomits that sea life up, 0:15:19.640 --> 0:15:23.000 which brings in greater populations of sea life, which it 0:15:23.080 --> 0:15:26.000 then it just then just sucks all of that down. Yeah. 0:15:26.040 --> 0:15:29.400 But I want to emphasize again, this sounds ridiculous to us, 0:15:29.680 --> 0:15:32.120 but we're living after Darwin. We know a lot more. 0:15:32.160 --> 0:15:34.680 We're living after Darwin, and we're living after you know, 0:15:35.080 --> 0:15:37.560 submarines going down and looking at well, what kind of 0:15:37.600 --> 0:15:39.920 sea life is there? Really, we still don't know a 0:15:39.960 --> 0:15:43.640 whole lot, but we know enough that this doesn't seem plausible. 0:15:43.920 --> 0:15:46.720 But if you were armed with only what an educated 0:15:46.800 --> 0:15:50.520 Norwegian courtier knew about deep sea life in the thirteenth century, 0:15:50.800 --> 0:15:54.840 how would you argue against these accounts? Indeed? And uh, 0:15:54.880 --> 0:15:57.200 you know this is there's another point that chet VanDuzer 0:15:57.280 --> 0:16:00.400 makes in his book is that like in the ancient world, 0:16:00.480 --> 0:16:03.360 it was it was often assumed that anything that existed 0:16:04.160 --> 0:16:07.840 on the surface likely had a counterpart beneath the waves 0:16:07.920 --> 0:16:09.840 and the mirror world. And I mean the names stick 0:16:09.920 --> 0:16:12.680 with us, the sea lion, the sea cow, sea cucumber, 0:16:14.120 --> 0:16:16.400 I guess the sea cucumber two but to see Hamburger. 0:16:17.040 --> 0:16:20.000 But basically, when you start looking at all these fabulous beasts, 0:16:20.000 --> 0:16:21.280 and I think we alluded to this a little bit 0:16:21.320 --> 0:16:27.080 in our Aquatic Humanoids episode episodes, Uh, you find all 0:16:27.120 --> 0:16:31.920 these various just ridiculous sea dogs, et cetera. Literally the 0:16:31.960 --> 0:16:34.280 idea that whatever we have here there must be a 0:16:34.320 --> 0:16:38.040 counterpart beneath the waves, and I mean to a certain extent, 0:16:38.080 --> 0:16:40.040 there's there's a bit of truth in that, just the 0:16:40.120 --> 0:16:43.480 idea that that whatever diversity we have on the surface, 0:16:43.760 --> 0:16:46.800 that diversity must be represented beneath the waves. But of course, 0:16:46.800 --> 0:16:49.920 in reality it's even it's even greater than that. The 0:16:50.640 --> 0:16:55.600 vast majority of the planet's biodiversity is in the ocean. Well, yeah, 0:16:55.680 --> 0:16:57.560 there's just so much ocean and there are so many 0:16:57.600 --> 0:17:00.600 ecological niches to fill within it. All right, we're gonna 0:17:00.640 --> 0:17:02.760 take a quick break and then we'll jump right back in. 0:17:04.200 --> 0:17:08.320 Thank Thank alright, we're back now. Of course, as we've 0:17:08.480 --> 0:17:12.040 said that, over time, there has been this steady increasing 0:17:12.080 --> 0:17:15.119 catalog of some knowledge about undersea life. There's still a 0:17:15.160 --> 0:17:16.880 lot we don't know, but we know a lot more 0:17:16.880 --> 0:17:19.480 than we used to. And one of the earliest major 0:17:19.520 --> 0:17:22.879 explorations of marine biology was that of Aristotle in the 0:17:22.880 --> 0:17:27.000 fourth century BC. In his Biology or This History of 0:17:27.000 --> 0:17:30.880 of Animal Life, Aristotle got a lot wrong, like, for example, 0:17:30.920 --> 0:17:33.919 he said the octopus is a stupid creature, for it 0:17:33.920 --> 0:17:36.199 will approach a man's hand if it be lowered in 0:17:36.200 --> 0:17:40.240 the water. Now, on the other hand, Aristotle, for his time, 0:17:40.280 --> 0:17:44.000 if you consider his limitations, got an astonishing amount. Right. 0:17:44.720 --> 0:17:47.880 For example, he correctly determined that whales and dolphins were 0:17:47.960 --> 0:17:52.640 not fish, and he made lots of other extremely astute classifications. So, 0:17:53.080 --> 0:17:56.320 uh filed this away under Aristotle occasionally says things that 0:17:56.400 --> 0:17:59.160 sound dumb to us, but was not dumb. Yeah. Yeah, 0:17:59.160 --> 0:18:02.520 I feel like we've hashedne this before on other topics. Uh. 0:18:03.040 --> 0:18:05.199 From our advantage point, it's easy to to say, ah, 0:18:05.480 --> 0:18:08.560 you really screwed that up Aristotle. But really, given what 0:18:08.640 --> 0:18:12.520 he had to work with, his his understanding of the 0:18:12.600 --> 0:18:16.000 natural world was amazing. Yeah, I just mean think about 0:18:16.040 --> 0:18:19.680 Aristotle's the research methods available to him now. A lot 0:18:19.720 --> 0:18:22.480 of what he did he probably he probably got a 0:18:22.480 --> 0:18:25.280 lot of information by like talking to fisher folk and 0:18:25.320 --> 0:18:28.320 stuff like that. But he also I think some people 0:18:28.359 --> 0:18:30.320 have said, you know, it really looks from some of 0:18:30.359 --> 0:18:34.320 his statements like Aristotle performed dissections, so he must have 0:18:34.359 --> 0:18:36.960 had some access to specimens. And it's not so easy 0:18:37.040 --> 0:18:39.960 to always get specimens in the ancient world, Like how 0:18:40.000 --> 0:18:42.119 how do you collect them? You just like throw some 0:18:42.240 --> 0:18:44.880 nets and hope you get some good stuff. Yeah, especially 0:18:45.400 --> 0:18:49.040 this is especially important considering that you have other historians 0:18:49.040 --> 0:18:51.320 and writers of the ancient world who were very much 0:18:51.359 --> 0:18:54.480 going on second, third, and fourth hand accounts of what 0:18:55.240 --> 0:18:57.439 was going on elsewhere in the world. And and and 0:18:57.520 --> 0:19:00.000 that's where we see some of these more ridiculous notions 0:19:00.320 --> 0:19:05.600 of of even terrestrial monsters and creatures. Totally, it's like 0:19:05.680 --> 0:19:08.920 it's through a glass darkly on in like four ways, right, 0:19:08.960 --> 0:19:11.600 So you're getting it second hand. You know that you 0:19:11.760 --> 0:19:14.920 heard a story from somebody who heard a story who 0:19:15.000 --> 0:19:17.439 also was not really beneath the waves when he or 0:19:17.480 --> 0:19:19.960 she saw this thing, but just saw something poke up 0:19:19.960 --> 0:19:22.800 from the surface. I mean, there's so many levels of 0:19:22.840 --> 0:19:26.480 removed from the actual biological reality that it's not hard 0:19:26.600 --> 0:19:30.640 to understand where these myths about sea monsters come from. 0:19:30.680 --> 0:19:34.800 So to explore the idea of ways of understanding the 0:19:34.880 --> 0:19:38.040 deep sea, like the research methods available to us before 0:19:38.359 --> 0:19:41.320 recent times, and like the invention of modern technology like 0:19:41.400 --> 0:19:44.280 sonar and other stuff. Uh, there were I want to 0:19:44.280 --> 0:19:47.639 say they were basically two broad methods for studying the 0:19:47.680 --> 0:19:50.840 deepest parts of the ocean, and for a little mythological flare. 0:19:50.840 --> 0:19:52.760 I want I want to give them some mythological names 0:19:52.760 --> 0:19:56.040 to help us keep them organized. So one I want 0:19:56.080 --> 0:19:59.440 to call the Ebisu method, So Ebisu is the Japanese 0:19:59.560 --> 0:20:02.720 luck odd, often depicted as a jolly fisherman with a 0:20:02.760 --> 0:20:05.639 bright red bream on his line. He's always got a 0:20:05.640 --> 0:20:08.239 fishing pole. So the Ebissue method is to use some 0:20:08.320 --> 0:20:10.720 kind of method to pull creatures up from the deep 0:20:10.880 --> 0:20:15.199 to the surface so you can study them go fishing basically, okay. 0:20:15.840 --> 0:20:18.800 And the other one I want to call the Gilgamesh method, 0:20:19.280 --> 0:20:22.360 because Gilgamesh, of course, is the protagonist of the four 0:20:22.400 --> 0:20:26.119 thousand year old Mesopotamian work known as the Epic of Gilgamesh. 0:20:26.160 --> 0:20:28.639 And if you'll recall from the Epic of Gilgamesh and 0:20:28.680 --> 0:20:32.080 the second half of the story Gilgamesh, he gets obsessed 0:20:32.200 --> 0:20:36.240 with finding the secret of eternal life. And in Tablet eleven, 0:20:36.480 --> 0:20:38.919 he receives a tip that there is a plant at 0:20:38.960 --> 0:20:42.320 the bottom of the ocean covered in prickling thorns, which 0:20:42.359 --> 0:20:44.280 if you pull it up from the ocean old grant 0:20:44.280 --> 0:20:47.520 you eternal life. And so, to read from the Andrew 0:20:47.560 --> 0:20:51.720 George translation quote, heavy stones he tied to his feet, 0:20:52.000 --> 0:20:55.399 and they pulled him down to the ocean below. He 0:20:55.440 --> 0:20:58.199 took the plant and pulled it up and lifted it. 0:20:58.680 --> 0:21:01.479 The heavy stones he cut loose from his feet and 0:21:01.520 --> 0:21:04.719 the sea cast him up on its shore. So the 0:21:04.760 --> 0:21:07.560 idea is Gilgamesh, he weighs himself down, he goes to 0:21:07.600 --> 0:21:09.879 the very bottom of the ocean, he cuts up this plant, 0:21:09.880 --> 0:21:13.200 and then he cuts himself loose. So the Gilgamesh method, 0:21:13.200 --> 0:21:14.960 I'm going to say, is to dive as deep as 0:21:14.960 --> 0:21:17.320 you can into the dark world and see what you 0:21:17.359 --> 0:21:19.200 can see. But of course you also have to be 0:21:19.240 --> 0:21:21.679 able to come back and report what you've seen. Right, 0:21:21.720 --> 0:21:24.160 Not not all of us are Gilgamesh. Right, it seemed 0:21:24.200 --> 0:21:25.800 like he could hold his breath for a long time 0:21:25.840 --> 0:21:29.960 and withstand some crushing compression. They probably didn't necessarily understand 0:21:29.960 --> 0:21:33.920 at the time, But so people have been accidentally practicing 0:21:34.040 --> 0:21:36.840 versions of the Ebisome method for thousands of years. Right. 0:21:36.880 --> 0:21:39.840 So of course the easiest thing is that sometimes dead 0:21:39.920 --> 0:21:42.080 organisms from the deep sea will wash up on the 0:21:42.119 --> 0:21:45.280 shore in various states of decomposition, and people could look 0:21:45.320 --> 0:21:47.000 at that and say, oh, I wonder what this is. 0:21:47.440 --> 0:21:50.800 But we still see this all the time. I feel 0:21:50.800 --> 0:21:53.399 like only a few months will go go go by 0:21:53.440 --> 0:21:57.800 before there's another, uh weird dead thing that's washed upon 0:21:57.840 --> 0:22:02.679 the beach, and various websites will will start speculating as 0:22:02.720 --> 0:22:05.000 to what it was, and generally they'll say, Oh, it's 0:22:05.040 --> 0:22:09.879