Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow your mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.
Speaker 1: The Vault hangs open. Time to venture into the Black Void.
Speaker 1: That's right, venturing down into the void for this one.
Speaker 1: This is an episode. Now this technically this episode in
Speaker 1: the next Vault episode came out in March and March
Speaker 1: twenty nine, two eighteen. Some of you might be saying,
Speaker 1: whoa hold on, that's not even a year ago, even
Speaker 1: though it is from last year. Well, the reason we
Speaker 1: were rerunning these is because these are deep sea episodes.
Speaker 1: These are underwater episodes. And uh, I have a a
Speaker 1: fiction podcast project that's launching on the thirty feet here.
Speaker 1: Everyone here is so excited. Yeah, yeah, we're all super excited.
Speaker 1: It's titled Transgenesis. And so it seemed appropriate to feature
Speaker 1: some stuff to Blow your mind Vault episodes that dealt
Speaker 1: with the deep ocean. And this episode, of course, concerns
Speaker 1: the real history of deep sea exploration, which is a
Speaker 1: more difficult proposition than you might imagine. In this age
Speaker 1: of deep sea submersibles and James Cameron and all that,
Speaker 1: the early deep sea explorers were We're going into some
Speaker 1: some hairy stuff. Yeah, this is this is a weird odyssey,
Speaker 1: uh that we explore with the bathosphere. Uh. So join
Speaker 1: us for this vault Vault episode and the next vault episode.
Speaker 1: And if you wanted to get a taste of Transgenesis
Speaker 1: before it comes out, head on over to Transgenesis Dot Show.
Speaker 1: We hope you enjoyed this vault episode of stuff to
Speaker 1: blow your mind. On the Earth at night in moonlight,
Speaker 1: I can always imagine the yellow of sunshine, the scarlet
Speaker 1: of invisible blossoms. But here, when the searchlight was off,
Speaker 1: yellow and orange and red were unthinkable. The blue, which
Speaker 1: filled all space admitted no thought of other colors. The
Speaker 1: return trip was made in forty three minutes, an average
Speaker 1: of one foot every two seconds. Twice during the ascent
Speaker 1: I was ware of one or more indefinite large bodies
Speaker 1: moving about at a distance. On the way down. I
Speaker 1: had accredited them to an over excited imagination, but after
Speaker 1: having the experience repeated on several deep dives, I am
Speaker 1: sure that I did see shadowy shapes of large and
Speaker 1: very real living creatures. What they were I can only
Speaker 1: guess and live in hopes of seeing them closer on
Speaker 1: some future descent. What this great creature was I cannot say.
Speaker 1: A first and most reasonable guests would be a small
Speaker 1: whale or blackfish. We know that whales have a special
Speaker 1: chemical adjustment of the blood which makes it possible for
Speaker 1: them to dive a mile or more and come up
Speaker 1: without getting the bends. So this paltry depth of two thousand,
Speaker 1: four hundred and fifty feet would be nothing for any
Speaker 1: similarly equipped cetacean. Or less likely, it may have been
Speaker 1: a whale shark, which is known to reach a length
Speaker 1: of forty feet. Whatever it was, it appeared and vanished
Speaker 1: so unexpectedly and showed so dimly that it was quite unidentifiable,
Speaker 1: except as a large living creature. Welcome to stuff to
Speaker 1: blow your mind from. How stuff weren't dot Com? Hey,
Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff to blow your mind. My name is
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb, and I'm jere McCormick. And Robert, what were
Speaker 1: those readings from? Uh? Those were the words of William
Speaker 1: Beebe in his biography half Mile Down, Half Mile Down.
Speaker 1: William Beebe was an American naturalist who lived from eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy seven to nineteen sixty two, and he was a
Speaker 1: fabulous writer, he was. Yes, we were talking about this
Speaker 1: a little bit before we went on area we have
Speaker 1: we have I guess two major areas to look to
Speaker 1: his biography Half Mile Down, which was certainly aimed at
Speaker 1: more of a general public audience, but even in his
Speaker 1: writings to a scientific audience, I admire the sort of
Speaker 1: directness and clarity of his writing. I was looking at
Speaker 1: a report of his from his underwater expeditions that he
Speaker 1: delivered in proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in
Speaker 1: the nineteen thirties, and it's wonderfully written for a scientific paper. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was. I was reading so many of these accounts
Speaker 1: whilst listening to some ambient electronic music, and it really
Speaker 1: I was getting chill bumps at times when he's talking
Speaker 1: about descending into the dark and seeing these various bioluminescent
Speaker 1: creatures uh come into his line of vision, creatures that
Speaker 1: had had never been seen before, and in some cases
Speaker 1: as well discussed creatures that have not been seen or
Speaker 1: captured since. Now that is spooky. So, Robert, tell me,
Speaker 1: what does the main thing about William BB's career we're
Speaker 1: gonna be focusing on today. Well, we're gonna be talking
Speaker 1: about the Bathisphere, the bathisphere, which is Greek for deep sphere,
Speaker 1: which was the which this was these basically the submersible
Speaker 1: deep ball, the deep ball that that he used on
Speaker 1: the just groundbreaking trips into the deep. Because prior to this, uh,
Speaker 1: this was in the nineteen thirties. Prior to this, subs
Speaker 1: could only get down about three hundred and eighty three
Speaker 1: feet or a hundred and sixteen meters or so, and
Speaker 1: uh and armored dive suits were only good for about
Speaker 1: five twenty five ft or a hundred and sixty But
Speaker 1: the Bathosphere reached an astonishing three thousand and twenty eight
Speaker 1: feet or nine two points. That record was set in
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty four, and it remained the record till nineteen
Speaker 1: forty nine. And that record was set by William Beebe
Speaker 1: and his collaborator Otis Barton, who together did many dives
Speaker 1: in the steel ball, going deep into the depths off
Speaker 1: Bermuda and in starting in nineteen thirty. So we'll tell
Speaker 1: the story of the Bathosphere more as we go on,
Speaker 1: but I guess first we should talk about why why
Speaker 1: are we doing the Bathosphere today? How did this come up? Well,
Speaker 1: I mean on one hand, it's it's a perfect topic
Speaker 1: because it deals with the ocean and the deep mysteries
Speaker 1: of the ocean, which we come back around to again
Speaker 1: and again on stuff to blow your mind. I've been
Speaker 1: working on a lot lately, A lot, Yeah, a lot.
Speaker 1: And part of that is due to I do have
Speaker 1: a side project I've been working on here at work
Speaker 1: that does concern uh, deep sea themes. Also, I've recently
Speaker 1: finished reading Peter watts novel Starfish, which is a wonderful
Speaker 1: sort of cyberpunk sci fi novel from several years back
Speaker 1: that takes takes place in the deep ocean. Peter Watts
Speaker 1: the author of blind Side, Yes, but he wrote Starfish
Speaker 1: many years before. Correct. Yeah, this was his first big splash.
Speaker 1: You could say, uh and then uh and then also Joe,
Speaker 1: you and I recently attended the exhibit Unseen Oceans at
Speaker 1: the American Museum of Natural History in New York City,
Speaker 1: which is running March twelfth, two thousand eighteen, through January six,
Speaker 1: two thousand and nineteen. This was a really cool special exhibit.
Speaker 1: I really liked it, and it got into a thing
Speaker 1: that's really hard to explain in a in an interesting way,
Speaker 1: but it did it. It got into the character of plankton,
Speaker 1: like making you feel that like plankton has personality. There
Speaker 1: are different types of plankton, and those types matter and
Speaker 1: their interesting, Like there are even these tiny zeno moreph
Speaker 1: some plankton. Yes, it's easy to I feel like we
Speaker 1: we often have this sort of science biology textbook approach
Speaker 1: to plankton where they are a little more than a
Speaker 1: little side note at the beginning, and it's just like,
Speaker 1: these are these are small creatures. Don't worry about them.
Speaker 1: Larger or more interesting creatures eat them. But of course
Speaker 1: they're they're extremely vital and uh. And when you start
Speaker 1: keying in on individual plankton specimens, there is this rich diversity. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's 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 documentary is showing us footage of
Speaker 1: what 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 Cousteau 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 him.
Speaker 1: Than they know from him himself. Well maybe for for
Speaker 1: today's like younger generations, but but he had a long
Speaker 1: 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 Jacques Cousto himself. But I saw
Speaker 1: a countless cartoon and puppet French accent, you know, underwater
Speaker 1: explorer type characters that were I don't mean like they
Speaker 1: were attacking Jacques Custo, were making fun of him, But
Speaker 1: I don't know, he seemed like a very parodyable character
Speaker 1: in American culture, right. And of course today we have
Speaker 1: James Cameron, who who's whose contribution to deeps exploration is
Speaker 1: a is is real? Yeah. Um but but but as
Speaker 1: as far as William Beebe goes in the bathosphere, like,
Speaker 1: this is a story that I feel isn't as celebrated
Speaker 1: in pop culture. It's it's it's certainly remembered in in
Speaker 1: his story of marine biology and our exploration of the seas.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's not it's not something that's forgotten. Before
Speaker 1: we did 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 PB 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 dropping 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. Yeah, and we're only scratching
Speaker 1: the surface on it. Well, maybe the best understand Bob'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 Bathosphere 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 of the out of the deep was really
Speaker 1: not out of the realm of possibility. That's something I'd
Speaker 1: like to emphasize. It was not just fanciful to imagine.
Speaker 1: Back then, you had no reason necessarily to doubt stories
Speaker 1: of sea monsters, right, yeah, I mean because ultimately, what
Speaker 1: did we know of the of the depths or even
Speaker 1: the greater expanses of the sea. We did not know
Speaker 1: about whole continents out there, so uh, it would seem
Speaker 1: entirely poss well, you would have giant sea creatures, and
Speaker 1: in fact, we saw giants sea creatures in the forms
Speaker 1: of of spouting whales and various carcassus occasionally drift up
Speaker 1: to shore exactly right. So, most of the time in
Speaker 1: human history was a time when people could not look
Speaker 1: beneath the ocean. They didn't they didn't really have any
Speaker 1: idea other than what sailors might have said they saw
Speaker 1: coming up to the surface. Every now and then. But
Speaker 1: that was just a peak, that was just what came
Speaker 1: up to the surface. I mean, what's deep down there?
Speaker 1: Who the heck knows. So one example of the kinds
Speaker 1: of beliefs that used to be so plausible about the
Speaker 1: creatures that lived in the deep. I want to reference
Speaker 1: a passage that's quoted in Chet van Deuser's book Sea
Speaker 1: Monsters on Medieval and Renaissance Maps, which Robert, this is
Speaker 1: a book you loaned me and it's fantastic. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: this is what. This is a wonderful book, wonderful content,
Speaker 1: and there's so many rich illustrations from these old maps. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're they're wonderful. Now. Originally this quote is from the
Speaker 1: Knuskusa or the King's Mirror, which is a thirteen injury
Speaker 1: old Norse educational text. So it's got it's written in
Speaker 1: the form of a dialogue, and it's got characters talking
Speaker 1: to each other about things in the world, and we
Speaker 1: come to this passage talking about marine life. So here
Speaker 1: it is quote there is a fish not yet mentioned,
Speaker 1: which it is scarcely advisable to speak about on account
Speaker 1: of its size, which to most men will seem incredible.
Speaker 1: There are moreover, but very few who can tell anything
Speaker 1: definite about it, inasmuch as it is rarely seen by men,
Speaker 1: for it almost never approaches the shore or appears where
Speaker 1: fishermen can see it. And I doubt that this sort
Speaker 1: of fish is very plentiful in the sea. In our
Speaker 1: language it is usually called the kraken. I can say
Speaker 1: nothing definite as to its length in els, for on
Speaker 1: those occasions when men have seen it, it has appeared
Speaker 1: more like an island than a fish. Nor have I
Speaker 1: heard that one has ever been caught or found dead.
Speaker 1: It seems likely that there are but two in all
Speaker 1: the ocean, and that these beget no offspring, for I
Speaker 1: believe it is always the same ones that appear. Nor
Speaker 1: would it be well for other fishes if they were
Speaker 1: as numerous as other whales, seeing that they are so
Speaker 1: immense and needs so much food. It is said that
Speaker 1: when these fishes want something to eat, they are in
Speaker 1: the habit of giving forth a violent belch, which brings
Speaker 1: up so much food, that all sorts of fish in
Speaker 1: the neighborhood, both large and small, will rush up in
Speaker 1: hopes of getting nourishment and good fair. Meanwhile, the monster
Speaker 1: keeps its mouth open, and inasmuch as its opening is
Speaker 1: about as wide as a sound or fiord, the fishes
Speaker 1: cannot help crowding in great numbers. But as soon as
Speaker 1: its mouth and belly are full, the monster closes its
Speaker 1: mouth and thus catches and shuts in all the fishes
Speaker 1: that just previously had rushed in eagerly to seek food.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, that is a fabulous description. Yeah, and that's
Speaker 1: an amazing hunting strategy. Yeah, I offhand, I can't think
Speaker 1: of a real world organism that actually employs something like that. Well,
Speaker 1: there's sort of, um, there are versions in much smaller scales. Now,
Speaker 1: obviously you've got like the snapping turtle with the fake
Speaker 1: worm lure in its mouth and it will wait for
Speaker 1: the fish to sneak in to get the food and
Speaker 1: then clamp shut. But those artificial lures, right, But what
Speaker 1: we have here is like this creature has eaten so
Speaker 1: much sea life and then it vomits that sea life up,
Speaker 1: which brings in greater populations of sea life, which it
Speaker 1: then it just then just sucks all of that down. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But I want to emphasize again, this sounds ridiculous to us,
Speaker 1: but we're living after Darwin. We know a lot more.
Speaker 1: We're living after Darwin, and 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, sea cucumber,
Speaker 1: I guess the sea cucumber two but to 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 sea dogs, et cetera. 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 alright, we're back now. Of course, as we've
Speaker 1: said that, over time, there has been this steady increasing
Speaker 1: catalog of some knowledge about undersea life. There's still a
Speaker 1: lot we don't know, but we know a lot more
Speaker 1: than we used to. And one of the earliest major
Speaker 1: explorations of marine biology was that of Aristotle in the
Speaker 1: fourth century BC. In his Biology or This History of
Speaker 1: of Animal Life, Aristotle got a lot wrong, like, for example,
Speaker 1: he said the octopus is a stupid creature, for it
Speaker 1: will approach a man's hand if it be lowered in
Speaker 1: the water. Now, on the other hand, Aristotle, for his time,
Speaker 1: if you consider his limitations, got an astonishing amount. Right.
Speaker 1: For example, he correctly determined that whales and dolphins were
Speaker 1: not fish, and he made lots of other extremely astute classifications. So,
Speaker 1: uh filed this away under Aristotle occasionally says things that
Speaker 1: sound dumb to us, but was not dumb. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel like we've hashedne this before on other topics. Uh.
Speaker 1: From our advantage point, it's easy to to say, ah,
Speaker 1: you really screwed that up Aristotle. But really, given what
Speaker 1: he had to work with, his his understanding of the
Speaker 1: natural world was amazing. Yeah, I just mean think about
Speaker 1: Aristotle's the research methods available to him now. A lot
Speaker 1: of what he did he probably he probably got a
Speaker 1: lot of information by like talking to fisher folk and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. But he also I think some people
Speaker 1: have said, you know, it really looks from some of
Speaker 1: his statements like Aristotle performed dissections, so he must have
Speaker 1: had some access to specimens. And it's not so easy
Speaker 1: to always get specimens in the ancient world, Like how
Speaker 1: how do you collect them? You just like throw some
Speaker 1: nets and hope you get some good stuff. Yeah, especially
Speaker 1: this is especially important considering that you have other historians
Speaker 1: and writers of the ancient world who were very much
Speaker 1: going on second, third, and fourth hand accounts of what
Speaker 1: was going on elsewhere in the world. And and and
Speaker 1: that's where we see some of these more ridiculous notions
Speaker 1: of of even terrestrial monsters and creatures. Totally, it's like
Speaker 1: it's through a glass darkly on in like four ways, right,
Speaker 1: So you're getting it second hand. You know that you
Speaker 1: heard a story from somebody who heard a story who
Speaker 1: also was not really beneath the waves when he or
Speaker 1: she saw this thing, but just saw something poke up
Speaker 1: from the surface. I mean, there's so many levels of
Speaker 1: removed from the actual biological reality that it's not hard
Speaker 1: to understand where these myths about sea monsters come from.
Speaker 1: So to explore the idea of ways of understanding the
Speaker 1: deep sea, like the research methods available to us before
Speaker 1: recent times, and like the invention of modern technology like
Speaker 1: sonar and other stuff. Uh, there were I want to
Speaker 1: say they were basically two broad methods for studying the
Speaker 1: deepest parts of the ocean, and for a little mythological flare.
Speaker 1: I want I want to give them some mythological names
Speaker 1: to help us keep them organized. So one I want
Speaker 1: to call the Ebisu method, So Ebisu is the Japanese
Speaker 1: luck odd, often depicted as a jolly fisherman with a
Speaker 1: bright red bream on his line. He's always got a
Speaker 1: fishing pole. So the Ebissue method is to use some
Speaker 1: kind of method to pull creatures up from the deep
Speaker 1: to the surface so you can study them go fishing basically, okay.
Speaker 1: And the other one I want to call the Gilgamesh method,
Speaker 1: because Gilgamesh, of course, is the protagonist of the four
Speaker 1: thousand year old Mesopotamian work known as the Epic of Gilgamesh.
Speaker 1: And if you'll recall from the Epic of Gilgamesh and
Speaker 1: the second half of the story Gilgamesh, he gets obsessed
Speaker 1: with finding the secret of eternal life. And in Tablet eleven,
Speaker 1: he receives a tip that there is a plant at
Speaker 1: the bottom of the ocean covered in prickling thorns, which
Speaker 1: if you pull it up from the ocean old grant
Speaker 1: you eternal life. And so, to read from the Andrew
Speaker 1: George translation quote, heavy stones he tied to his feet,
Speaker 1: and they pulled him down to the ocean below. He
Speaker 1: took the plant and pulled it up and lifted it.
Speaker 1: The heavy stones he cut loose from his feet and
Speaker 1: the sea cast him up on its shore. So the
Speaker 1: idea is Gilgamesh, he weighs himself down, he goes to
Speaker 1: the very bottom of the ocean, he cuts up this plant,
Speaker 1: and then he cuts himself loose. So the Gilgamesh method,
Speaker 1: I'm going to say, is to dive as deep as
Speaker 1: you can into the dark world and see what you
Speaker 1: can see. But of course you also have to be
Speaker 1: able to come back and report what you've seen. Right,
Speaker 1: Not not all of us are Gilgamesh. Right, it seemed
Speaker 1: like he could hold his breath for a long time
Speaker 1: and withstand some crushing compression. They probably didn't necessarily understand
Speaker 1: at the time, But so people have been accidentally practicing
Speaker 1: versions of the Ebisome method for thousands of years. Right.
Speaker 1: So of course the easiest thing is that sometimes dead
Speaker 1: organisms from the deep sea will wash up on the
Speaker 1: shore in various states of decomposition, and people could look
Speaker 1: at that and say, oh, I wonder what this is.
Speaker 1: But we still see this all the time. I feel
Speaker 1: like only a few months will go go go by
Speaker 1: before there's another, uh weird dead thing that's washed upon
Speaker 1: the beach, and various websites will will start speculating as
Speaker 1: to what it was, and generally they'll say, Oh, it's
Speaker 1: probably unsty, it's probably a dinosaur. I mean, I'm torn
Speaker 1: because I I love a good beach monster and I
Speaker 1: hate the Daily Mail, and the latter is the best
Speaker 1: place 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 ebisume 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 the 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 Atam or the Problems, Aristotle actually
Speaker 1: gives the earliest description I'm aware of of deep diving technology.
Speaker 1: And so this is going to be a version of
Speaker 1: the diving bell. And he's talking about divers who fish
Speaker 1: for sponges on the sea floor, and he discusses all
Speaker 1: kinds of weird practices these divers used to make the
Speaker 1: deep more tolerable, and these include fastening sponges around their ears,
Speaker 1: or cutting slits in their own ears and nostrils. And
Speaker 1: in this section, Aristotle writes that quote. In order that
Speaker 1: these fissures of sponges may be supplied with a facility
Speaker 1: of respiration, a kettle is let down to them, not
Speaker 1: filled with water, but with air, which constantly assists the
Speaker 1: submerged demand. It is forcibly kept upright in its descent
Speaker 1: in order that it may be sent down at an
Speaker 1: equal level all around, to prevent the air from escaping
Speaker 1: and the water from entering. Now, if you never like
Speaker 1: played this game in the bath as a kid, you
Speaker 1: can make a simple diving bell just by taking a
Speaker 1: cup or a bowl or something and turning it upside
Speaker 1: down and then pressing it straight down into the water
Speaker 1: and not letting it wobble. And what it'll do is
Speaker 1: it will keep a bubble of air trapped underneath the cup.
Speaker 1: And you could if you were a tiny diver, swim
Speaker 1: up in there or stay in there and breathe down
Speaker 1: at the bottom. But this comes with a lot of risks,
Speaker 1: right like if it gets tipped over slightly, the air
Speaker 1: can escape and uh, and of course you're still going
Speaker 1: to be dealing with all kinds of weird pressure problems. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is this is one of those things that we
Speaker 1: we all experiment with in the bathtub. I feel I've
Speaker 1: observed I've observed my my son doing this as well,
Speaker 1: but he has not reached the conclusion, hey, why don't
Speaker 1: we take one of these to the ocean. But I
Speaker 1: can I can imagine that this idea has been around
Speaker 1: as long as we've had bowls, essentially as long as
Speaker 1: we've had even just coconut husks or something to that effect. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's hard to know for sure because Aristotle doesn't make
Speaker 1: it clear who invented this technique, and he doesn't make
Speaker 1: it clear how long it's been around or how common
Speaker 1: it was. He just mentions that some divers can do this,
Speaker 1: So we don't know where it comes from or how
Speaker 1: far it was taken in the ancient world. But here
Speaker 1: is a really weird connection. I came across. According to
Speaker 1: medieval legend, Aristotle's student Alexander the Great was his own
Speaker 1: kind of great undersea adventurer and pioneer of the school
Speaker 1: of Gilgamesh. Robert, had you ever come across the Alexander
Speaker 1: the Great as deep sea explorer before? I don't believe
Speaker 1: I had, though the William Beebe makes reference to it
Speaker 1: in his book Half Mile Down. Yeah. Uh. So. There
Speaker 1: are a lot of versions of this legend, and and
Speaker 1: to be very clear, these are pretty much definitely false.
Speaker 1: Maybe some versions of them are inspired by something that
Speaker 1: roughly happened, but but as told, they're definitely false. So
Speaker 1: the oldest version I think is the one about how
Speaker 1: while Alexander the Great was laying siege to the city
Speaker 1: of Tear in Lebanon, he had divers swimming underwater to
Speaker 1: either remove or to put in place boom defenses. And
Speaker 1: a boom defenses something you would put in in a
Speaker 1: harbor or a channel, that's like a huge chain or
Speaker 1: object that you would place underwater to prevent the passage
Speaker 1: of ships. It recalls something Terry and Lanister does in
Speaker 1: the Battle of Blackwater Bay. Remember that I don't remember that.
Speaker 1: I remember all the fire obviously, but I don't remember
Speaker 1: the use of chains too. Yeah, in the book, he
Speaker 1: puts a big chain across the water and this prevents
Speaker 1: the ships from getting past, And this is an actual technique.
Speaker 1: So in some versions of the story, I think Alexander
Speaker 1: is trying to get rid of boom defenses, and some
Speaker 1: of he's trying to put them in place. But in
Speaker 1: any case, he's got divers working for him. And in
Speaker 1: one version of the story, written by a seventh century
Speaker 1: Arab historian and quoted in the History of Underwater Exploration
Speaker 1: by Richard F. Marks, Alexander wants to go underwater, either
Speaker 1: to help with this task or to see how it's
Speaker 1: coming along. So he has his workmen build him a
Speaker 1: huge wooden box with glass windows that are sealed with
Speaker 1: resin and wax to keep the water out. And then
Speaker 1: the room at this box is weighed down with iron
Speaker 1: and lead and stone and then lowered into the water
Speaker 1: between two ships, with Alexander and a couple of his
Speaker 1: secretaries inside the box. And then from inside this sealed
Speaker 1: room they can look out the glass windows and see
Speaker 1: what's happening deep underwater in the ocean quote. Thanks to
Speaker 1: the transparency of the glass and the limpidity of the water.
Speaker 1: Alexander and his two companions were able to see the
Speaker 1: marine monsters and a species of demon having the head
Speaker 1: of a ferocious beast attached to a human body. Some
Speaker 1: of them carried axes, others saws, and still others hammers,
Speaker 1: so they looked like workman. Alexander and his two secretaries
Speaker 1: drew careful pictures of these monsters. Then they pulled the line,
Speaker 1: and at this signal, the men on the ships drew
Speaker 1: up the case. The king stepped out and was carried
Speaker 1: back to Alexandria. Well, you know, hearing that, I I
Speaker 1: feel that Alexander deserved to be frightened a little bit,
Speaker 1: since he was really kind of micromanaging on all this.
Speaker 1: He really should have learned to delegate a bit more. Well,
Speaker 1: what I like about the story is that it does
Speaker 1: imply some kind of scientific observation. It's just observation of
Speaker 1: demons instead of real wildlife. But there's actually there are
Speaker 1: other funny versions of this. There's a totally different version
Speaker 1: of Alexander as Gilgamesh that I came across in this
Speaker 1: illustrated manuscript. It's an early fifteenth century German manuscript telling
Speaker 1: a story of how Alexander goes down to the bottom
Speaker 1: of the ocean and a diving bell and he trusts
Speaker 1: so this would be not a not an encased room
Speaker 1: with glass windows, but like a regular diving bell. So
Speaker 1: a bell upturned in the water that's got an air
Speaker 1: bubble in it. And he goes down and uh. He
Speaker 1: entrusts his loyal mistress to watch over the chain that
Speaker 1: can pull the bell back up to the surface. And unfortunately,
Speaker 1: while she's watching the chain, her lover gets her to
Speaker 1: run off with him and abandoned Alexander and throw the
Speaker 1: chain into the sea. Not good for alex I like
Speaker 1: the theme of this though, because it basically it portrays
Speaker 1: Alexander the Great is indeed a great individual who can
Speaker 1: do great things and go places that no other man
Speaker 1: can go. But in doing so, there's a there there's
Speaker 1: there's an inherent weakness. Well, use this technology, it's not
Speaker 1: just like magic super strength. He can swim to the
Speaker 1: bottom of the ocean. He builds a technological marvel to
Speaker 1: get him down there, but in doing so he neglects
Speaker 1: his mistress. Right, Yeah, and I've got an illustration here, Robert.
Speaker 1: You can look at that's got alex down in this
Speaker 1: in this bubble. He's looking very unhappy. He's got a
Speaker 1: big mustache, and he appears to be frowning and scowling
Speaker 1: at the surface where his mistress and her lover are
Speaker 1: cavorting in this ship. And then meanwhile in the background
Speaker 1: there are these gigantic fish swimming by that I guess
Speaker 1: he's not even noticing because he's angry. Yeah, and but
Speaker 1: at least they do look like real fish and not
Speaker 1: visions from hell. I believe the example that the William
Speaker 1: Beebe draws on is the idea that uh that that
Speaker 1: Alexander the Great uh observes a fish that is so
Speaker 1: large that it takes days for it to pass him by.
Speaker 1: So another equally outrageous uh or perhaps just uh exaggerated
Speaker 1: example of what life might be underwater. And that's the
Speaker 1: feeling I'm getting from all of these accounts. It sounds
Speaker 1: like less an example of, Hey, somebody went underwater and
Speaker 1: they saw this, but more of almost like a science
Speaker 1: fictional scenario. What would it be like if I could
Speaker 1: go underwater and see the things that are down there?
Speaker 1: And then to build that I have to base it
Speaker 1: on what do I believe exist under the water? Well,
Speaker 1: I would say much in the same way that the
Speaker 1: science fiction of space encouraged people to become real astronauts
Speaker 1: and want to explore. I think maybe some of this
Speaker 1: ancient and medieval science fiction about the underwater realms may
Speaker 1: have inspired people to want to actually build real diving
Speaker 1: bell technology and go down there, and that that is
Speaker 1: what have been really happened. Genuine scientific interest in the
Speaker 1: ocean depths and the real use of diving technologies like
Speaker 1: the diving bell showed up again in more recent decades,
Speaker 1: specifically starting around the sixteenth century. You you start to
Speaker 1: see people messing with diving bells. How deep can we go? Uh?
Speaker 1: Some of this was just for purely commercial reasons, like
Speaker 1: people wanted to salvage shipwrecks and get rich and all that,
Speaker 1: but also there was a genuine spirit about of exploration
Speaker 1: about the deep ocean, to get down there and see
Speaker 1: what you could see. But of course, as we mentioned,
Speaker 1: diving bells have a lot of limitations. All right, on
Speaker 1: that note, we're gonna take a quick break and when
Speaker 1: we come back, we're gonna discuss the the pre bb
Speaker 1: world of deep sea exploration. Just a little bit more.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Thank alright, we're back. So we've talked about
Speaker 1: ancient investigation into the nature of the deep sea, both
Speaker 1: real and mythological, in the form of the Ebisum method
Speaker 1: like fishing, pulling things up and seeing what they're like,
Speaker 1: and the Gilgamesh method diving down and seeing what you
Speaker 1: can see yourself. And in the nineteenth century, the Ebba
Speaker 1: zoom method, by way of the biological dredge, was very
Speaker 1: popular for naturalists, zoologists, socianographers, all these people trying to
Speaker 1: understand what existed in the hidden deep. And one practitioner
Speaker 1: of this method, the biological dredge, was the British naturalist
Speaker 1: Edward Forbes. Now Forbes was a naturalist from the Isle
Speaker 1: of Man. He was reportedly a very likable dude. People
Speaker 1: people took a shine to him. But in in eighteen
Speaker 1: forty one, Edward Forbes was on a journey aboard a
Speaker 1: surveying ship called the h MS Beacon in the Mediterranean
Speaker 1: Sea and during this voyage they would dredge the water.
Speaker 1: So what you have to imagine there is like a
Speaker 1: bag or a bucket type contraption that you would drag
Speaker 1: along the bottom of the ocean from behind a ship,
Speaker 1: and then when you drag it along and scoop some
Speaker 1: stuff up, then you'd pull it back up and see
Speaker 1: what you caught. All right. I have conducted the very
Speaker 1: same sort of investigation in the surf with my son.
Speaker 1: Just drag a bucket, get a bunch of sand, and
Speaker 1: then you dump it out and see what you manage
Speaker 1: to catch. And sometimes you do find an interesting organism. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what have you found that way? Oh? They are we
Speaker 1: always call them sand fleas, but they're not actual sand fleas.
Speaker 1: They're little isopods. I can't remember this specific species name offhand,
Speaker 1: but depending on the sort of on the Florida beach
Speaker 1: you go to, you can find a number of these.
Speaker 1: Aren't they the jumping ones? They don't jump. They burrow
Speaker 1: really quickly, so basically, if you if you are able
Speaker 1: to scoop underneath them, they can't dig away from you. Oh,
Speaker 1: I see. And then most of them are really small,
Speaker 1: but you can find something that are the size of
Speaker 1: really like the size of your thumb. They're pretty fun.
Speaker 1: That's cool, though, I thought you were referring to things
Speaker 1: I have actually seen that. I don't know if their
Speaker 1: fleas or what I should look up what these organisms are.
Speaker 1: One time we were up on the northwest coast, I believe,
Speaker 1: a beach in Oregon, and the beach was just covered
Speaker 1: in what appeared to be jumping fleas. There these little
Speaker 1: like white, pale fleas that would jump all over you.
Speaker 1: It was kind of horrible. Yeah, and I think I
Speaker 1: believe those more accurately sand fleas. And for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: and I have talked to other it wasn't just my family,
Speaker 1: I've talked to other people, and I've asked him, well,
Speaker 1: what did you call these things when you were a
Speaker 1: kid going to the beach, and the like, Oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: we call those sand fleas. So but again they're they're
Speaker 1: more technically a variety of issopod. 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: move 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: pages discussing the powerful compression effects of vast amounts of water.
Speaker 1: So he explains that at four thousand fathoms, the pressure
Speaker 1: of the ocean would be about seven hundred and fifty atmospheres,
Speaker 1: and he considers that just intolerable. Quote at vast depths. Therefore,
Speaker 1: it is generally supposed that vegetable and animal life has
Speaker 1: known to us could not possibly exist, And though some
Speaker 1: recent soundings of the North Seas at the depth of
Speaker 1: one thousand, two hundred and sixty fathoms would seem to
Speaker 1: oppose this opinion. Yet the paucity and uncertainty of these
Speaker 1: trials leave the question still in doubt, and we may,
Speaker 1: in the meantime adhere to the general belief that the
Speaker 1: extreme depressions of the ocean, like the extreme elevations of
Speaker 1: the land, are barren and lifeless solitudes. All right, So
Speaker 1: in this case, he's drawing upon just the idea that
Speaker 1: the water pressure would be too great for life as
Speaker 1: 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 portions of the ocean,
Speaker 1: that that's where most of the life is. That is
Speaker 1: where that's where you encounter all of the plankton, the
Speaker 1: creatures that feed upon the plankton, uh, creatures that depend
Speaker 1: upon 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 something 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 the time of Forbes
Speaker 1: caught life forms from depths of below three fathoms. Page
Speaker 1: alludes to this. Nevertheless, it was supported by some for
Speaker 1: several decades, but later biologists and oceanographers eventually just beat
Speaker 1: this zombie down like that. It didn't survive all that
Speaker 1: much longer. And one of the many researchers to assist
Speaker 1: in knocking down the zombie a zoic hypothesis was the
Speaker 1: Scottish naturalist Charles Wyville. Thompson, and in an eighteen seventy
Speaker 1: three report called The Depths of the Sea, Thompson published
Speaker 1: the results of his own dredging expeditions in the seas
Speaker 1: north of Scotland. So, while dredging to a depth of
Speaker 1: six d and fifty fathoms, he discovered all kinds of
Speaker 1: invertebrate organisms that Forbes had missed. And I'm not sure
Speaker 1: of the reason, but one thing I've read that may
Speaker 1: or may not be true is that later investigators had
Speaker 1: better dredging equipment than Forbes, which was less likely to
Speaker 1: spill the things it caught on the way back up
Speaker 1: to the surface. You can imagine this would be a problem.
Speaker 1: You're like trying to pull up the stuff you caught,
Speaker 1: and it's just like going all over the place. Yeah,
Speaker 1: your bucket isn't big enough for 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 oceanographic research expeditions of all time about
Speaker 1: the deep sea, which was the Challenger Expedition beginning in
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy two, which did a lot of stuff. It's
Speaker 1: 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 EBB 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 and in pressure,
Speaker 1: and so maybe a better analogy is like imagining an
Speaker 1: alien adallite 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: ebissue 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: What 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 because I think we're out of time
Speaker 1: here today. So that is going to be the next
Speaker 1: episode where we primarily discussed the bathosphere and the work
Speaker 1: of William bb correct. But yeah, before we close out today,
Speaker 1: I just want to try to imagine what it's like
Speaker 1: to be in an oceanographer or a marine biologists mindset
Speaker 1: before we get to the bathosphere. Leaving off at the
Speaker 1: end of everything we've discussed today, right, so, you you've
Speaker 1: been stuck on the surface of the water. You just
Speaker 1: can't 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 a cess to all of this life
Speaker 1: that you want to study and and always performing these
Speaker 1: kind of like random samplings is the only way to
Speaker 1: get at it. Yeah. And then even as these various
Speaker 1: technologies do come on online, which I alluded to earlier,
Speaker 1: you you don't have the ability to really get into
Speaker 1: the depths. There are depths of the ocean that are
Speaker 1: just beyond your ability to venture into. Yeah, 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 sampling in the ebissue 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 Mind,
Speaker 1: Dot com, many of which have involved the ocean, in
Speaker 1: many cases the deep ocean. Then you can find them there.
Speaker 1: You also find blog post links out to our various
Speaker 1: social media accounts as well. Huge thanks as always to
Speaker 1: our excellent audio producers Alex Williams and Tory Harrison. If
Speaker 1: you would like to get in touch with us to
Speaker 1: let us know feedback on this episode or any other,
Speaker 1: to suggest a topic for a future episode, or just
Speaker 1: to say hi, you can email us at blow the
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