The Deep-Sea Podcast
A couple of deep-sea scientists talk everything deep sea! Interesting facts, recent news, myth-busting and interviews with the most interesting people we know.
Listen on:
Episodes
Friday Sep 03, 2021
Friday Sep 03, 2021
https://www.armatusoceanic.com/podcast/016-biodiscovery
We are in desperate need for new bioactive compounds. Superbugs are on the rise as evolution finds a way of thwarting our antibiotics. We are also continually on the hunt for compounds that can fight disease, ease suffering or get your teeth super white. The natural world has been experimenting for millions of years and has come up with solutions far more elegant than we could come up with.
Don pops by to make us aware of bioprospecting. The ocean, and in particular the deep ocean, may be the best place to look for new compounds but is this a threat to the ocean? It is often mentioned alongside seabed trawling, climate change and mining as a threat to the deep ocean. Should we call it bioprospecting or biodiscovery and what’s the difference? If most of the world’s ocean belongs to everyone, who owns a discovery? How do we ensure that developed nations, who are better equipped to benefit from a discovery, don’t leave developing nations out? Are companies really patenting naturally occurring compounds? If we find something exciting, what is the process for it becoming the next wonder drug?
While they both agree that looking for new compounds in the deep sea sounds good, Alan and Thom are soon stumped by the complexities of actually making that happen in a fair and sustainable way. Luckily, they can call on Professor Marcel Jaspars, head of the Marine Biodiscovery Centre to help us through the practicalities of biodiscovery but also its political and ethical complexities.
As ever there will be a roundup of current news. The sex-lives of giant squid, are they monogamous? India launches its Deep Ocean Mission with the intention of starting deep-sea mining and we ponder why large surface predators would dive very deep.
Feel free to get in touch with us with questions or you own tales from the high seas on:
podcast@armatusoceanic.com
We are also on
Twitter: @ArmatusO
Facebook: ArmatusOceanic
Instagram: @armatusoceanic
Read the show notes and find out more about us at:
www.armatusoceanic.com
Glossary
Benthopelagic - Living and feeding near the bottom as well as in midwaters or near the surface but also the depth zone about 100 metres off the bottom at all depths below the edge of the continental shelf.
Endothermy – Animals that regulate their body temperature (we used to call this ‘warm blooded’)
Geomagnetic – The Earth’s magnetic field e.g., magnetic north.
Mantle – The muscular tube that makes up a squids body.
Mesopelagic – Open water fish between about 200 and 1,000 metres (approximately 650 and 3,300 ft) down.
SoFAR channel - sound fixing and ranging channel. The SOFAR channel acts as a waveguide for sound, and low frequency sound waves within the channel may travel thousands of miles before dissipating.
Vertical migration – Every night, mesopelagic fish come shallower to feed. This is the largest migration on Earth and it happens every day.
Links
Giant squid could be monogamous
Article:
Paper (paywall):
Bone and wood eating worms of the Antarctic
India’s Deep-Ocean Mission approved
Deep diving large marine predators
Are whales making these depressions in the deep seabed?
Take two clams and call me in the morning (paywall)
United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea
The Convention on Biological Diversity
The Nagoya Protocol
The Deepest of Ironies (paywall)
Evolving Perspectives On The International Seabed Area’s Genetic Resources: Fifteen Years After The ‘Deepest Of Ironies’ (paywall)
Who owns marine biodiversity? Contesting the world order through the ‘common heritage of humankind’ principle
Corporate control and global governance of marine genetic resources
Polymers: Secrets from the deep sea
Ocean Biodiversity Information System (OBIS)
Ocean Tool for Public Understanding and Science (OcToPUS)
Deep sea at the Chelsea Flower Show
Song of the Ocean – Global Virtual Performance 2021
Sharing the Benefits of the Ocean (loads of wider reading here)
Credits
Theme – Hadal Zone Express by Märvel
Logo image
Far Below the Sea Blooms – Chelsea Flower Show, Marcel Jaspars
One of Thom and Alan’s cultures
Hidden track
Someone To Watch Over Me
by Ira and George Gershwin; Linda Keene; Henry Levine and his Strictly from Dixie Jazz Band
Humpback Whale (Megaptera Novaeangliae) – BBC sound archive
Monday Aug 23, 2021
Monday Aug 23, 2021
https://www.armatusoceanic.com/podcast/015-space-pt2
We hunker down behind the blast doors and quickly record part 2 of our space episode before 426 manages to get through. That’ll make more sense once you hear the episode, or maybe it won’t! I may have gotten carried away on the sound design on this one.
We are still exploring the parallels between space and deep-ocean exploration. It feels like technology and access is really accelerating in both spheres. Don calls in to teach us about the amount of water in our solar system and the potential new job title – Planetary Oceanographer.
When an incredible piece of tech grants us access to an exciting new frontier, it can be hard to manage all the different things we would like to do. Alan relays how, on his expeditions, data is first shared with the host nations and then access is requested.
When samples or access to a vehicle is limited, how can we ensure that resources are shared fairly? We have seen it lead to disagreements on ships. With something as singular and precious as a Mars rover, how are its objectives planned? Evan Hilgemann, mechanical engineer and Curiosity Rover driver with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab (JLP) joins us to share how a rover is managed. We chat about the parallels between exploring mars and exploring the deep sea, the similar issues we face, what we can learn from each other and most excitingly, where is technology heading on both fronts! It turns out fleets of distributed intelligence rovers on the moon or a steam-punk rover on Venus aren’t all that farfetched. These are exciting times.
Feel free to get in touch with questions or you own tales from the high seas on:
podcast@armatusoceanic.com
We are also on
Twitter: @ArmatusO
Facebook: ArmatusOceanic
Instagram: @armatusoceanic
Read the show notes and find out more about us at:
www.armatusoceanic.com
Glossary
Autonomous - Something which can get on with things without human control
AUV - Autonomous Underwater Vehicle
Distributed intelligence – a very fuzzy term but basically multiple ‘stupid’ elements working together to do complex processing or make complex decisions.
Hadal - Areas more than 6000 m deep, mainly the deep-ocean trenches
JPL - NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
ROV - Remotely Operated Vehicle
Transect - A quantitative survey of an area. You fly a set path and quantify everything on it.
Links
Evan’s Twitter: @evanhilgemann
Evan’s Newsletter
Steampunk rover article
Steampunk rover video
Credits
Theme – Hadal Zone Express by Märvel
Logo image
Curiosity rover – NASA
World's Largest Ball of Twine, Darwin, Minnesota - postcard
Thursday Aug 12, 2021
Thursday Aug 12, 2021
Sorry for the lateness of the episode, we were rather ambitious with this one. Thom and Alan get access to a sound stage and get to actually record the podcast in the same room for the first time. In recent news there seems to be some pop-culture discoveries, the Eye of Sauron and Spongebob and Patrick have been found in the deep sea. Finally, we try not to get too depressed about ocean warming and deep-sea mining buy considering our own energy budgets.
The topic for this double episode is, as ever, the deep sea. But this time we are talking about the deep sea… Innnnnn Spaaaaaaaace! It turns out there is deep sea outside of earth, even in our solar system. The ice-covered moons of the gas giants likely contain liquid water. How likely are they to contain deep-sea life completely independent from the life that originated on earth? What are the best candidates for alien life in our solar system? What could that life be like and why does our own deep ocean provide a perfect test bed? Thom chats with astrobiologist Kevin Peter Hand, author of Alien Oceans: The search for life in the depths of space, and director of NASA’s Ocean Worlds Lab.
How will we explore these alien deep seas? It turns out that the early versions of the vehicles which may some day explore these ocean worlds are already in development. Thom chats with Casey Machado, Research Engineer at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution about the Orpheus AUV, the first generation of such vehicle and a new asset for the exploration of our own deep ocean.
It turns out space is big, too big for a single podcast. Look out for episode 2 next week.
Feel free to get in touch with us with questions or you own tales from the high seas on:
podcast@armatusoceanic.com
We are also on
Twitter: @ArmatusO
Facebook: ArmatusOceanic
Instagram: @armatusoceanic
Read the show notes and find out more about us at:
www.armatusoceanic.com
Glossary
Astronomical unit - the distance between the Earth and the Sun
AUV: Autonomous Underwater Vehicle
Hadal - Areas more than 6000 m deep, mainly the deep-ocean trenches
K strategist - an organism that has few offspring but invests a lot of resources and energy into them, e.g. whale
Molar concentration - one mole (6.02214076×1023 particles) of substance in a litre of solution.
R strategist - an organism that has many 'cheap' offspring, e.g. salmon
ROV – Remotely Operated Vehicle
Links
Undersea volcano looks like the Eye of Sauron
Spongebob and Patrick at almost 2000 m
Temperature impact on deep-sea biodiversity
Sign up for the DOSI newsletter
The Ocean Worlds Lab
The buoyant rover for under ice exploration
Alien Oceans: The Search for Life in the Depths of Space
The very bad day, the loss of Nereus
WHOI Hadex website
Orpheus
Friday Jul 02, 2021
Friday Jul 02, 2021
https://www.armatusoceanic.com/podcast/013-submarine-special
Thom thought he had the podcast to himself, but it turns out the professor is back after 88 days at sea. It’s time for our submarine, or human occupied vehicle (HOV) if you’re posh, special. First we reunite ‘Vegemite and Haggis’ and talk to submarine pilot Tim Macdonald about his and Alan’s undersea adventures around Australia. Manganese nodule fields, gothic cathedrals, and an undersea UFO.
Life starts to imitate art. We chat with sci-fi author John Quentin who Alan has been consulting with while he writes his next book: The Galathea Legacy, about deep-ocean plastic pollution taking place at the site of the Galathea Expedition trawls in the Philippine Trench. A site which Alan and Tim recently dived… forcing John to tweak the draft as he strives for realism.
We then speak with Patrick Lahey and Frank Lombardo of Triton Submarines, a bespoke submarine manufacturer, about privately owned submersibles. Initially as luxury pleasure craft but we soon find out that there is a wide range of reasons why someone would want their own sub. Throughout their careers they have had many incredible experiences, like seeing a sixgill shark give birth and communicating with bioluminescent organisms.
The podcast wouldn’t be complete without checking in with Don Walsh. He tells us about the large commercial tourist submarines which have now produced more tourist submariners than the US navy.
It’s a packed episode but we sneak some news in there too. Deep-sea fishes have more variation in body shape than shallow-water fishes. A new species, genus, and family of brittle star from a lineage dating back to the Jurassic. Coelacanth can live up to a century and Mesobot, a new method for studying open water animals.
Glossary
Autonomous vehicle: A vehicle that doesn’t need a human pilot
Brittle star: Related to sea stars, they have very flexible whip-like arms. Echinoderms of the class Ophiuroidea
Globular: Globe-like, spherical
Human Occupied Vehicle (HOV): Another term for a submarine
Hypoxic: Insufficient oxygen
Thrusters: the propellers on an underwater vehicle that allow it to move
Links
Deep-sea fish have a lot more body shape variation than shallow fish
Deep-sea fish are confused by complex structures
New family of brittle star
Coelacanth can live to a century
John’s upcoming book The Galathea Legacy
Triton submersibles
Atlantis tourist subs
The hidden track is real, Thom did say ‘anus’ on TV. You can see us and a lot of our guests, and experience the Five Deeps Expedition, in Expedition Deep Ocean on Discovery+
Friday Jun 04, 2021
Friday Jun 04, 2021
Natural history collections, huge archives of carefully curated specimens, are an invaluable tool for the scientific community. They are also a place where the public get to interact with active research and meet scientists. Forget what you’d imagine working in a museum to be like, no two days are the same and both the collections and the talented people who work with them are in constant demand. One day your helping design new swimwear based on shark skin, the next settling an argument at a fishing competition.
If you’re wondering what jobs are out there in science or just curious to know what goes on behind the scenes at a museum, this episode has some surprises for you.
Alan is still away at sea, so Thom is joined again by Dr Heather Ritchie to tacked some deep-sea news, seabed mapping, secrets revealed by snailfish genes and wandering sponges are all hot off the presses. Don also drops in with an example of when you don’t want to collect biology, on the hull of your vessel as biofouling.
Feel free to get in touch with us with questions or you own tales from the high seas on:
podcast@armatusoceanic.com
Read the show notes and find out more about us at:
www.armatusoceanic.com
Links
𝐸𝑢𝑟𝑦𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑛𝑒𝑠 𝑎𝑡𝑎𝑐𝑎𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑠𝑖𝑠 description
Bathymetry from The Five Deeps Published
The Yap Trench snailfish
Wandering sponges
James taking care of the beetles during lockdown
Microplastics in deep-sea fish
James talking about deep-sea fish.
CT scanning reveals anglerfish meal
Shark nostril research
Cookie-cutter shark bites
Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa – deep sea video
The Fishes of New Zealand
Glossary
Authority – The scientist who describes a species
Snailfish – Members of the Liparidae, the deepest living fishes
TMAO - Trimethylamine N-oxide, a molecule that is involved in pressure adaptation
Taxonomy – The science of classifying living things
Type – A specimen that is formally associated with the scientific name
Holotype – The singular definitive example of a species
CT scanning – Computerised Tomography Scanning. Basically, a 3D x-ray
Sequence – A part of the genetic code that we can compare between samples
Isotopes – When atoms of the same element vary in their mass
Otolith – The ear bones of fishes
Friday May 07, 2021
Friday May 07, 2021
Alan is stranded out in the Pacific and Thom is left to present a show on genetics, a topic so confusing to him it may as well be magic. Luckily, friends of the show are on hand. Dr Heather Ritchie is tricked into co-hosting and we talk to Dr Johanna Weston about the things we can learn about the deep sea from genetic analysis.
Alan has found a way to get audio logs to us (pretty sure a Holtzman Wave isn’t a thing) and shares what he has been up to out at sea – it turns out, a lot! Listen in for lots of exclusives. This includes an interview with sub-pilot Tim Macdonald from inside the Limiting Factor at over 10,000 m depth. We are pretty sure this is the world deepest interview. The Deep-Sea Podcast lives up to its name, the deepest podcast around.
In recent news we discuss how our immune system doesn’t recognise deep-sea bacteria (and how that may be a good thing) and Thom gushes about his new favourite thing… blackwater photography.
Don Walsh tells us about inspecting ex-soviet reactors and discovering he is standing on top of a running one and Thom and Heather tell the tale of acquiring a -80 ℃ freezer in New Caledonia.
Feel free to get in touch with us with questions or you own tales from the high seas on:
podcast@armatusoceanic.com
Read the show notes and find out more about us at:
www.armatusoceanic.com
Links
Deep-sea bacterial invisible to human immune system
Blackwater photography article
Blackwater photography paper
‘The Code’ - INTERNATIONAL CODE OF ZOOLOGICAL NOMENCLATURE
The genetic code database – GenBank
You can track where Alan currently is here
GlossaryMorphology – the shape of somethings bodyMolecular – Sometimes we say ‘molecular data’ when talking about DNA and RNA genetic dataTaxonomy – The science of classifying living things
Friday Apr 02, 2021
Friday Apr 02, 2021
Tales of monsters persist to this day and there’s no better place to hide them than in the deep sea. We are joined by paleontology student and cryptozoology blogger Tyler Greenfield to look at some of the most famous sea monsters and see if there is any truth to the stories. We discuss megalodon, globsters, plesiosaurs/Nessie and all manner of strange carcasses that wash up from time to time.
We have a good hard listen to The Bloop and I call upon an expert in the undersea calls of marine animals, Nicky Harris. She also has a tale from the high seas for us… a rather grizzly bit of nature in action. People in the front row will get wet.
Also in this episode, we talk about glowing sharks, the largest bioluminescent vertebrate. Soft robotics to the planets deepest places and Alan picks a fight with a polar bear, taking on The Octonauts’ very own Captain Barnacles.
Finally, we hear from Don Walsh, who shares some ocean myths that went on to have a grain of truth.
Feel free to get in touch with us with questions or you own tales from the high seas on:
podcast@armatusoceanic.com
Read the show notes and find out more about us at:
www.armatusoceanic.com
Links
Bioluminescence of the Largest Luminous Vertebrate, the Kitefin Shark, Dalatias licha: First Insights and Comparative Aspects
Self-powered soft robot in the Mariana Trench
10 Bizarre Deep Sea Creatures (treehugger.com)
Tyler’s fantastic blog
Tyler’s cryptozoology paper archive
A link to Beebe’s book, Half A Mile Down
You can find Tyler on Twitter @TylerGreenfieId
Papers on Helicoprion
Jaws for a spiral-tooth whorl: CT images reveal novel adaptation and phylogeny in fossil Helicoprion
Eating with a saw for a jaw: Functional morphology of the jaws and tooth-whorl in Helicoprion davisii
On the Giant Octopus (Octopus giganteus) and the Bermuda Blob: Homage to A. E. Verrill
How to tell a sea monster: molecular discrimination of large marine animals of the North Atlantic
NOAA’s response to the Mermaids: A body found
Fish tales: Combating fake science in popular media
Credits
Theme – Hadal Zone Express by Märvel (http://marvel.nu/)
Additional music - Lost In The Forest - Doug Maxwell, Media Right Productions
Friday Mar 05, 2021
Friday Mar 05, 2021
We are both biologists and a little bias toward the deep-sea critters, but the deep ocean contains a wealth of geological discoveries, after all, it is the geology which creates the deep sea.
We catch up the latest news, including life discovered 100s of km under the ice, slowing water currents, vampire squid history and the rules of naming something new, be it a species or an undersea feature.
We then have a chat with geologist and explorer (and friend of the show) Heather Stewart about the geology of the deep sea and how we produce maps of the ocean floor. Why do people talk about how little of the ocean has been mapped when we can clearly see it is all mapped on google earth?
What about some of the more unusual features that we see on the deep seabed in Google Earth, are those roads and pyramids? I have a chat with ‘my mate Dave™’, David Howell, about marine archaeology and looking for sunken human settlements.
Finally, we hear from Don Walsh, who recollects the time he used the bathyscaph Trieste to deploy devices to listen out for nuclear tests.
Feel free to get in touch with us with questions or you own tales from the high seas on:
podcast@armatusoceanic.com
Read the show notes and find out more about us at:
www.armatusoceanic.com
Links
Life under the ice
Gulf Stream weakening
Fossil evidence of vampire squid
Plastic waste as biodiversity hotspots
New species without holotype (of the many papers you can read on this):
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5672740/
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmars.2021.620702/full
A proposal for modesty
Here is a great tool where you can see the direct and satellite global data
Credits
Theme – Hadal Zone Express by Märvel
Friday Feb 05, 2021
Friday Feb 05, 2021
Working in the deep sea is entirely dependent on technology and the incredible forces push engineering to its limit. If you are doing something that no one has done before, chances are you are going to have to make some of your own tools. Unfortunately, we must spend a lot more on our equipment for the same data as shallower science. This makes funding difficult but also makes the deep sea quite an exclusive club.
We are joined by James Cameron (yes, that one) to talk about solving the problems of working deep with new technology. He shares how he went about illuminating the Titanic and confesses that his films are often an outlet for the technology he wishes he could build. Some of the concepts coming in Avatar 2 are an example of this. Don Walsh joins us as ever to give his take on the importance of the engineering that allows us to do the things we do.
In recent news, we have a new deep-sea fish, and it’s a beast with a very cool name. In honour of the Valentine’s day we talk about love in the deep sea with some different reproductive strategies. We take some listener questions and it Tails from the High Seas my old colleague Izzy talks about a wild storm and getting superstitious with your equipment.
Links
New giant slickhead
Vampire squid reproduction
Rattails spawning
The Crabsuit
Credits
Theme – Hadal Zone Express by Märvel
Sound effects obtained from https://www.zapsplat.com
Saturday Jan 02, 2021
Saturday Jan 02, 2021
We impact the deep sea in many ways we don’t realise. Some are deliberate, some are accidental, some we didn’t even notice at the time. We talk about ways we have impacted the deep sea and touch on the huge problem that is marine plastic, a particular problem in the isolated Mediterranean Sea. His serene highness Prince Albert II of Monaco tells us about his experience diving to the deepest point in the Mediterranean, the Calypso Deep (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calypso_Deep) and his Beyond Plastic Med
(https://www.beyondplasticmed.org/en/) initiative.
To solve these problems sometimes we have to ask ourselves difficult questions. There often isn’t right and wrong but shades of grey and nothing is ever as simple as it seems. How much of the deep sea would you sacrifice if it solved climate change? This may not be as hypothetical as it sounds.
You can submit your own ‘tails from the high seas’ about an experience you have had offshore or pose us a question/comment on:
podcast@armatusoceanic.com
Theme – Hadal Zone Express by Märvel (http://marvel.nu/)
Links
Mercury paper:
https://www.pnas.org/content/117/47/29292
Sam’s work and his podcast:
https://www.samillingworth.com/
Eurythenes plasticus video:
https://youtu.be/phAFW05eKI8
Eurythenes plasticus educational resources:
https://www.plasticus.school/en/
2020 Grand Prix for Good:
https://www2.eurobest.com/winners/2020/gp4g/
Carbon storage paper:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1876610217318878
Mesozoic Ocean:
https://repository.si.edu/bitstream/handle/10088/11283/paleo_TAKASHIMA_et_al-2006.pdf
Deep-Sea observatories:
http://www.poseidon.hcmr.gr/eurosites/about.php
Deep Mediterranean paper:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00227-018-3413-0
Beyond Plastic Med:
https://www.beyondplasticmed.org/en/
Monday Dec 28, 2020
Monday Dec 28, 2020
It’s the holidays so we decided to get together, have a few drinks and tell some stories from life at sea. We even get Märvel – the barons of high-energy rock and roll on the line for a festive chat.
This is a silly/gross episode, even by our standards. There are stories of seasickness and competitive food fungus… you have been warned.
podcast@armatusoceanic.com
Theme – Hadal Zone Express by Märvel (http://marvel.nu/)
Friday Dec 04, 2020
Friday Dec 04, 2020
Our world is rapidly changing. As we move away from fossil fuels and our use of electronics increases, demand is climbing for a handful of metals key to the manufacture of modern technology. Mining the deep sea may meet these demands but is probably the most contentious issue the community is facing right now. Is there a net benefit for the deep sea; funding research and understanding, addressing climate change, and encouraging developing nations? Or is the deep sea too fragile and too unknown to be responsibly exploited?
We bite off far more than we can chew by taking on this issue in a deep-sea mining special episode. Luckily, we have some guests we can call on to help us understand the issue. Professor Jeffrey Drazen of University of Hawai`i at Manoa explains just what deep-sea mining is and its ecological impacts. We then speak with Michael Lodge, secretary-general of the International Seabed Authority (ISA). The ISA, comprised of 167 member states and the European Union, regulates and controls all mineral-related activities in the open ocean – that’s the majority of the planet!
We also have current news and a chat with Don Walsh, who of course it turns out, has first-hand experience with the complexities of mining in the ocean.
You can submit your own ‘tails from the high seas’ about an experience you have had offshore or pose us a question on:
podcast@armatusoceanic.com
Theme – Hadal Zone Express by Märvel (http://marvel.nu/)
Links
ECO Magazine Deep-Sea Heroes: http://digital.ecomagazine.com/publication/?i=683954&ver=html5&p=22
Scary bigfin squid video: https://youtu.be/L8xXnVkOGsA
Bigfin squid paper: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0241066
Eel swarm: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0967063720302107
ISA website: https://www.isa.org.jm/
DeepData: https://www.isa.org.jm/deepdata
UNESCO report: http://whc.unesco.org/en/news/1535/
#deepseamining #deepsea #mining #ManganeseNodules #manganese #PolymetallicNodules #Polymetallic #ISA #InternationalSeabedAuthority #MichaelLodge #LawOfTheSea #HighSea #InternationalLaw #conservation #EnvironmentalImpact #seamount #HydrothermalVent #ProtectedArea #ProtectedHabitat
Monday Nov 09, 2020
Monday Nov 09, 2020
In this episode we explore the power of storytelling and complete the arc of our first five episodes: science communication and perception of the deep sea.
We talk with multiple New York Times bestseller Susan Casey (https://susancasey.com/) about telling a good story and engaging people with a narrative, while still being scientifically accurate. Don Walsh (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Walsh) is kind enough to record his thoughts on the importance of good storytellers, which of course also contains a story we never knew about Don.
Storytelling is an incredibly powerful tool, but it can be a difficult one to wield. Alan talks of some experiences where the public perception of a story was not what was expected but also the risk of not telling the story at all and of assumptions being made.
We have our regular returning segments: Recent news, which seems very squiddy this episode; tails from the high seas, where Alan is imprisoned in a seaman’s mission; and Thom tries out a new segment about the history of some deep-sea animal names.
You can submit your own ‘tails from the high seas’ about an experience you have had offshore or pose us a question on:
podcast@armatusoceanic.com
Theme – Hadal Zone Express by Märvel (http://marvel.nu/)
Links
The description of the roundnose grenadier from 1765: https://www.ntnu.no/ojs/index.php/DKNVS_skrifter/article/download/710/642
An image of the Grenadier cap: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Prussian_Grenadier_Cap.jpg
An image of the grenadier fish: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abyssal_grenadier#/media/File:Coryphaenoides_armatus.jpg
Frankie Fulleda’s podcast, Hard Candy & Fruit Snacks: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hard-candy-fruit-snacks/id1532914761
Friday Oct 02, 2020
Friday Oct 02, 2020
It’s the October episode and that means it’s our Halloween Spooktacular, what better time to turn the spotlight on ourselves and wonder why humanity seems to have an intrinsic fear of the deep sea. Glenn Singleman (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_Singleman) joins us to give a psychological explanation for why we feel differently about the deep sea and seem to have an aversion to it. Even some of the best documentaries seem to change their wording when talking about the deep sea.
We give Don a quick call to get his thoughts on fear, as that’s something he’s always asked when talking about the first dive to the deepest point. Finally, we have a Tails from the High Seas from Heather Stewart who, after running from some bad weather, found herself in the middle of a military exercise.
Theme – Hadal Zone Express by Märvel (http://marvel.nu/)
Additional music by Harvey Jones (http://www.harvjones.com/)
Links
Blackest black: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn28363-super-dark-chameleon-material-shifts-colour-to-boost-solar-power/
Guinness Book of World Records
Deepest fish: https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/deepest-fish
Deepest octopus: https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/83167-deepest-octopus
Deepest eel: https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/626705-deepest-eel
Deepest decapod: https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/626036-deepest-decapod
First new species contaminated with plastic: https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/626040-first-new-species-contaminated-with-plastic
Thanks to the people who recorded monsters in their native tongue:
Rusalka (Slavic) - Christina Nikolova
Afanc (Welsh) - Thomas Hughes
Iku-Turso (Finnish) - Anni Mäkelä
Kappa (Japan) - Kazumasa Oguri
Uile-Bheist Doimhneachd na Mara (Scottish Gaelic) - Andrew Henderson
Cetus, Charybdis, Scylla and Hydra (Greek) - Georgios Kazanidis
Thursday Sep 03, 2020
Thursday Sep 03, 2020
Can we use art to help people engage with the deep sea? We stop trying to explain things and let artist Alex Gould (alexandragould.co.uk) help us see deep-sea animals for the first time all over again.
We talk about the aesthetic of deep-sea fish, is it shaped by our expectations? Can we save the blobfish from bullying? Can art help us with the horror of tongue eating parasites and fish absorbing their boyfriends?
Sponsor Armatus Oceanic
Thursday Aug 06, 2020
Thursday Aug 06, 2020
On January 23, 1960 Don Walsh and Jacques Piccard were the first people to dive to the deepest point in the ocean, Challenger Deep. Would you believe that Don's full of other stories at least as interesting as that?
We talk science communication and exploration with Don, realise that actually we do know a lot about the Mariana Trench, and we cross the equator.
podcast@armatusoceanic.com
Music by Harvey Jones