March 6, 2026
What Do House Cats Have to Do With Deep-Sea Mining? The Ocean Story Nobody Expects
Deep sea mining and domesticated cats do not seem like they belong in the same story… but they are.
In this episode of the How to Protect the Ocean Podcast, Andrew Lewin sits down with deep-sea ecologist Dr. Andrew Thaler to explore one of the most unexpected stories in ocean science. What starts with mining minerals from the deep ocean quickly turns into a journey through ancient trade routes, maritime history, and the surprising role the ocean may have played in how cats became one of humanity’s closest animal companions.
Dr. Thaler shares a fascinating narrative that connects deep-sea resources, seafaring civilizations, and the spread of cats across the world. It is a reminder that the ocean has influenced human history in ways we rarely think about, and that even modern debates like deep-sea mining are connected to much bigger stories about exploration, trade, and human society.
If you enjoy ocean science, unusual scientific connections, and great storytelling, this episode will give you a completely new way to think about both the deep ocean and the animals that now live in our homes.
Listen now to discover how an ocean story thousands of years in the making might explain why cats and humans share such a unique relationship.
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Transcript
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Do you want to know how domesticated cats
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are related to deep sea mining?
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Then you're going to want
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to tune in to this episode.
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This is the how to
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protect the ocean podcast.
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If you want more ocean
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news updates every weekday,
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this is your time to hit that follow
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button. Hello everybody.
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Welcome back to the how to
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protect the ocean podcast.
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I'm your host Andrew Lewin
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and we today are talking to Dr.
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Andrew Thaler, who is a deep sea
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ecologist and he's writing a book.
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And this good friend of mine has come to
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me and said, Andrew,
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I need to tell you some deep sea stories,
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not just about the deep sea mining,
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but about the deep sea in general.
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These are stories that are
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going to knock your socks off.
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He's writing a book and part of this is
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telling these wonderful stories.
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It's going to be part of the book.
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So you're getting kind of a
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sneak peek by being part of this,
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how to protect the ocean podcast. Uh, and
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it's, it's phenomenal. Today,
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we're going to be talking about how deep
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sea mining has led to the
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domestication of cats and
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it's, you're going to want to,
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I don't want to give anything else away
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because I want you to hear it from
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Andrew. Cause he's a fantastic
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storyteller. And he said, Hey,
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let's do these stories on, uh, on the
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podcast. What do you think?
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And I'm like, let's do it.
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Like, why not? Is my podcast? Why?
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Let's let's try and
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switch it up a little bit,
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make it a little bit more entertaining.
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I know I throw a lot of news at you every
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weekday from Monday to Thursday is
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like a solo episode. We've
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been talking about enforcement.
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And now we're going to talk about deep
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sea mining. Just, uh, you know,
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it's the interview Friday, so we're going
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to be talking about that. Uh,
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and I just think, uh, it's a lot of fun.
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So I'm going to let you hear it straight
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from Andrew's mouth.
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Here is Andrew, Dr. Andrew Taylor,
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talking about the domestication of cats
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and how deep sea mining led to that
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domestication. Enjoy the interview. And I
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will talk to you after. Hey, Andrew,
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welcome back to the how to
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protect the ocean podcast.
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Are you ready to talk about deep sea
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stories? Just in general,
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this is going to be a new series that
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we're going to be doing.
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Are you ready to start the series?
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I am ready. The question for you is are
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you ready? I don't know.
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I take a step back and enjoy the power of
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a different Andrew hosting for a
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moment.
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This is going to be, this is
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going to be a lot of fun. We,
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we've been discussing this for, you know,
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about a month now. Um,
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and we'll get, well,
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I'll let you explain what you want to do
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on this because this is going to be
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your show and I'm just going to be like
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an audience member and kind of
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interjecting every once in a while and
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asking questions and stuff.
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But this is going to be a lot of fun.
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We're going to switch it up a little bit.
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Uh, Andrew's got some
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stories that he wants to tell.
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It's part of a larger
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project that he's working on. Uh,
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and so we're going to just
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kind of give it to you, buddy.
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I want you to just go ahead and before,
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before we start though,
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just for those of the, for those of the
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audience members who haven't heard of
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you before, haven't listened to you
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before here on this podcast,
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why don't you just let us know who you
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are and what you do.
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And of course what
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this project is all about.
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All right. Well, I am Dr.
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Andrew Thaler, deep sea ecologist,
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conservation technologist, ocean
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educator, and author,
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and welcome dear listeners to tales from
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the limitless abyss.
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So, uh, the backstory
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behind this little, uh,
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podcasting experiment we're doing is I
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have a book coming out in like a year
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and a half because I have
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to write it, but I have,
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I have a contract for a book tentatively
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titled limitless abyss,
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the use and misuse of the deep sea.
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And one of the things we want to do is as
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I'm researching this book and as I'm
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putting together chapters
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and drafting everything,
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there's just hundreds and hundreds and
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hundreds of these
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delightful little stories
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coming out about all the weird ways that
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humans have used and abused the deep sea
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over, uh, not just years, not just
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decades, not just centuries,
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but millennia. And so I, you know,
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I want to take a little bit of time
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throughout the process is a little bit of
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accountability for me because I got to
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keep writing the book if,
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if I'm going to come
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up with new stories. Uh,
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so it helps keep me on track and it helps
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keep everyone a little entertained.
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And you know, maybe when
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the book finally comes out,
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if you've been listening for a while,
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you'll pick it up. Absolutely.
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Uh, but, uh,
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I want to start today
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with a very simple question.
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All right. Uh, Andrew
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Lewin, why do we have cats?
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Well, as a, as someone who doesn't own a
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cat, um, I'm going to say, I don't know.
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I really don't know how cats came to be.
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I assume they're domesticated from like
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the wild over years and years and years
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of crazy people trying to domesticate
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tigers and lions and so forth. Is that,
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is that the right answer?
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So I'm going to take us back.
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I'm going to take us back about 6,000
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years to the new kingdom of Egypt,
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uh, to Pharaoh, uh, Ramses and Pharaoh,
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Tuttmus the third and, uh,
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the very first deep sea mines back then.
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So this is a, one of the really cool
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things that has come up and one of the,
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uh, interesting pieces of primary
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research that has come out of this book
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is I started asking this question.
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You know, I talk a lot when I tell people
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about deep sea mining and I tell people
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about hydrothermal vents.
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One of the things I
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say is that, you know,
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when you think about metal that comes in
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veins, so things like
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copper and gold and silver,
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in a lot of cases,
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those veins are actually the stock works
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of ancient hydrothermal vents.
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So the hydrothermal vent chimney that
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forms as this vent grows in the sea floor
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deposits heavy metals along the walls.
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And then eventually
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over millions of years,
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those vents shut down and they drift off
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access and, you know,
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continents up heave and the earth moves
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and eventually they end up on land.
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Uh, and they become
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things like gold mines.
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So, uh, those, those
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structures are called ophiolites.
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Ophiolites are chunks of oceanic plate
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that have been uplifted onto land.
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And are now sitting on land
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as remnants of ancient seabed.
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And so I thought, you know, wouldn't it
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be interesting to like, look at some of
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the old copper mines that were important
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during the Bronze Age and, you know,
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see how many of those really
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were ancient hydrothermal vents.
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So, you know, I started in the Egyptian
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New King kingdom at the, at
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the peak of the Bronze Age.
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And I started with a Pharaoh Thutmose III
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because one of the things that's really
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fascinating about that most of the third
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is that he was a conqueror.
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He, he spread the Egyptian
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kingdom across the Levant.
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And he is the source of the first battles
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in recorded history.
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So the first actual he carried, he
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brought with him a scribe
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who wrote everything down.
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So, you know, we don't know exactly what
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happened, but we know what
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he wanted us to know happened.
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And so we have records of, uh, you know,
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some of these ancient battles, including,
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um, uh, the battle of Megadow, which is
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the first battle in recorded history.
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Um, and we know how many people were
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killed and we knew what they carried and
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how many horses they had and how many
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chariots and all these great things and
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how many bronze weapons they had.
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So I was interested of like tracking back
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from there and being
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like these bronze weapons.
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This was a technological innovation to
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have bronze over, over
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copper or over stone.
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Uh, where did that bronze come from?
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And could we track it
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back to a hydrothermal vent?
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And what I found is that, uh, the
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Egyptian New Kingdom, their early copper
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mines were on, uh, the Sinai peninsula.
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They were 500 million
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year old Ophieolites.
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They were hydrothermal vents.
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Um, the major source of copper for the
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new kingdom was on the island of Cyprus.
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Uh, the island of Cyprus
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itself is in Ophieolite.
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Um, so the mountains of Cyprus are all
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chunks of ancient seabed.
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This is a hundred million year old chunk
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of the neotetha sea that was lifted up
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onto land and slowly over generations,
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the people who
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eventually settled on Cyprus
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were discovered that there were these
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rich, rich copper veins inside, um, the
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mountains of, of Cyprus.
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And in addition to these copper veins,
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they also found
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fossils, very strange fossils.
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And when archeologists started excavating
259
01:08:42,958 --> 01:08:46,250
these old, uh, mines in Cyprus and
260
01:08:46,250 --> 01:08:47,958
looking at the fossils, you know, this is
261
01:08:47,958 --> 01:08:51,000
early 19th century, early 20th century,
262
01:08:51,000 --> 01:08:53,416
you know, the Egyptologists, the, the
263
01:08:53,416 --> 01:08:54,750
archeologists that were going through
264
01:08:54,750 --> 01:08:56,750
ancient Greece, all that fun stuff.
265
01:08:56,750 --> 01:08:58,333
When the Victorians were out stealing
266
01:08:58,333 --> 01:09:00,750
everything they could from, uh, from the
267
01:09:00,750 --> 01:09:01,875
Levant and from Egypt.
268
01:09:02,250 --> 01:09:04,708
Um, they find these fossils and no one
269
01:09:04,708 --> 01:09:05,750
knew what these fossils were.
270
01:09:05,750 --> 01:09:06,250
They were just these
271
01:09:06,250 --> 01:09:07,208
strange, strange fossils.
272
01:09:07,250 --> 01:09:10,083
Uh, so they were kind of this weird
273
01:09:10,083 --> 01:09:12,583
thing, just something out there, the
274
01:09:12,583 --> 01:09:16,416
strange fossil until, and no one knew, no
275
01:09:16,416 --> 01:09:17,708
one really could figure it out.
276
01:09:17,708 --> 01:09:19,750
Maybe it was a worm. It was some kind of
277
01:09:19,750 --> 01:09:21,541
an animal. No one's really sure. Some of
278
01:09:21,541 --> 01:09:22,208
them looked like snails.
279
01:09:23,250 --> 01:09:28,000
And then in 1977, Bob Ballard dives on
280
01:09:28,000 --> 01:09:31,208
the Pacific rise in, you know, the
281
01:09:31,208 --> 01:09:33,500
Pacific ocean and finds
282
01:09:33,500 --> 01:09:35,625
the first hydrothermal vents.
283
01:09:37,000 --> 01:09:39,333
And on these first hydrothermal vents is
284
01:09:39,333 --> 01:09:40,791
riftia pachiptila, the
285
01:09:40,791 --> 01:09:42,208
giant deep sea tube worm.
286
01:09:42,250 --> 01:09:44,625
You know, these massive tube worms, the
287
01:09:44,625 --> 01:09:45,958
fastest growing invertebrate on the
288
01:09:45,958 --> 01:09:48,291
world. They can grow several meters long.
289
01:09:48,625 --> 01:09:50,541
Um, they have these bright red plumes
290
01:09:50,541 --> 01:09:52,833
that come out of, of these tubes that
291
01:09:52,833 --> 01:09:55,500
they build that then extract the chemical
292
01:09:55,500 --> 01:09:57,041
energy from the hydrothermal vent and
293
01:09:57,041 --> 01:09:58,500
turn into food for the animal.
294
01:09:59,666 --> 01:10:01,208
And those two worms on the East Pacific
295
01:10:01,208 --> 01:10:02,375
rise looked almost
296
01:10:02,375 --> 01:10:05,208
identical to the fossils in Cyprus.
297
01:10:06,250 --> 01:10:10,375
And so they're like, oh, this is proof
298
01:10:10,375 --> 01:10:13,041
positive. This is these old copper mines.
299
01:10:13,041 --> 01:10:13,958
These old copper mines
300
01:10:13,958 --> 01:10:14,750
are hydrothermal vents.
301
01:10:16,041 --> 01:10:18,541
And so I kept tracking different minds
302
01:10:18,541 --> 01:10:22,125
across Egypt and the Near East and the
303
01:10:22,125 --> 01:10:24,333
Middle East. And we found ophiolites in
304
01:10:24,333 --> 01:10:27,083
Turkey and ophiolites in Oman and
305
01:10:27,083 --> 01:10:28,083
ophiolites kind of all
306
01:10:28,083 --> 01:10:28,208
across these regions.
307
01:10:28,250 --> 01:10:30,666
And they're all ancient hydrothermal
308
01:10:30,666 --> 01:10:31,750
vents. Most of them are from the
309
01:10:31,750 --> 01:10:34,833
neotethis. So 100 million year old vents.
310
01:10:35,208 --> 01:10:36,750
Some of them are 500 million years old.
311
01:10:36,750 --> 01:10:37,791
Some of them are incredibly
312
01:10:37,791 --> 01:10:39,208
ancient hydrothermal vents.
313
01:10:40,625 --> 01:10:43,250
But all of these copper mines, all these
314
01:10:43,250 --> 01:10:45,458
copper mines that basically created the
315
01:10:45,458 --> 01:10:48,375
Bronze Age are the remnants
316
01:10:48,375 --> 01:10:50,208
of ancient hydrothermal vents.
317
01:10:50,250 --> 01:10:54,208
So they are effectively the least
318
01:10:54,208 --> 01:10:56,416
efficient way to mine the deep sea. You
319
01:10:56,416 --> 01:10:58,083
wait till it comes to you.
320
01:10:59,208 --> 01:11:00,708
You wait until it comes to you. And
321
01:11:00,708 --> 01:11:02,583
honestly, that is probably the best way
322
01:11:02,583 --> 01:11:04,083
to do it to minimize your environmental
323
01:11:04,083 --> 01:11:05,916
impact on the sea. Yeah, exactly. You
324
01:11:05,916 --> 01:11:07,500
wait till the sea floor comes above the
325
01:11:07,500 --> 01:11:09,833
surface. Yeah, exactly. Only 500 million
326
01:11:09,833 --> 01:11:11,000
years, but it'll
327
01:11:11,000 --> 01:11:11,208
eventually get there, right?
328
01:11:12,250 --> 01:11:16,333
Yeah, so Cyprus is a funny. Yeah, Cyprus
329
01:11:16,333 --> 01:11:17,958
has been incredibly important throughout
330
01:11:17,958 --> 01:11:19,916
human history. It's a major source of
331
01:11:19,916 --> 01:11:21,500
copper. You know, it was a driver of the
332
01:11:21,500 --> 01:11:24,666
Bronze Age. It was a major cultural
333
01:11:24,666 --> 01:11:28,000
landmark. Cyprus has a few very funny
334
01:11:28,000 --> 01:11:31,333
animals associated with him. One of this
335
01:11:31,333 --> 01:11:32,208
is they had a pygmy elephant.
336
01:11:33,250 --> 01:11:36,333
So on the island of Cyprus, this is long
337
01:11:36,333 --> 01:11:37,666
before humans. Right, right, right.
338
01:11:38,083 --> 01:11:39,875
Several thousand years before human
339
01:11:39,875 --> 01:11:41,583
settlement, they had these pygmy
340
01:11:41,583 --> 01:11:42,958
elephants as an elephant, but it's a
341
01:11:42,958 --> 01:11:46,250
little tiny elephant. And how familiar
342
01:11:46,250 --> 01:11:47,500
are you with an elephant skull?
343
01:11:47,500 --> 01:11:50,416
I mean, I can kind of picture it, but I
344
01:11:50,416 --> 01:11:51,875
don't have one in my backyard or
345
01:11:51,875 --> 01:11:54,375
anything. Yeah. So one of the weird
346
01:11:54,375 --> 01:11:56,000
things about elephant skulls is that if
347
01:11:56,000 --> 01:11:57,875
you look at how the skull is shaped and
348
01:11:57,875 --> 01:11:59,791
where the eye sockets are, the eye
349
01:11:59,791 --> 01:12:00,208
sockets are kind of fused together.
350
01:12:00,250 --> 01:12:04,166
Okay. So they sort of look like one big
351
01:12:04,166 --> 01:12:05,833
eye socket in the middle of the skull,
352
01:12:06,083 --> 01:12:07,666
like a little bit of a figure eight, but
353
01:12:07,666 --> 01:12:12,000
like one big eye socket. So these pygmy
354
01:12:12,000 --> 01:12:15,958
elephant skulls, Greek explorers are, you
355
01:12:15,958 --> 01:12:17,375
know, sailing across the Greek islands.
356
01:12:17,583 --> 01:12:19,833
They're landing in Cyprus. They're, you
357
01:12:19,833 --> 01:12:21,666
know, going into caves in Cyprus and
358
01:12:21,666 --> 01:12:23,583
they're finding these elephant skulls
359
01:12:23,583 --> 01:12:25,500
that are not big. They're not the size of
360
01:12:25,500 --> 01:12:27,166
a full grown elephant, but they're like
361
01:12:27,166 --> 01:12:28,708
three, four times the
362
01:12:28,708 --> 01:12:29,666
size of a human head.
363
01:12:30,250 --> 01:12:31,958
And they've got one big eye socket right
364
01:12:31,958 --> 01:12:36,166
in the middle. And so, you know, I don't
365
01:12:36,166 --> 01:12:38,666
know if you've read the Odyssey. I have.
366
01:12:38,916 --> 01:12:40,500
I've read all three translations of the
367
01:12:40,500 --> 01:12:41,791
Odyssey because I love the Odyssey.
368
01:12:43,333 --> 01:12:45,875
The legend of the Cyclops in ancient
369
01:12:45,875 --> 01:12:48,916
Greece. One of the predominant theories
370
01:12:48,916 --> 01:12:51,333
about where that story comes from is
371
01:12:51,333 --> 01:12:53,791
these pygmy elephant skulls that look
372
01:12:53,791 --> 01:12:56,208
like a one eyed giant. That's crazy.
373
01:12:57,250 --> 01:13:00,458
So it didn't actually have one eye. It
374
01:13:00,458 --> 01:13:02,333
was just the way the bones refused
375
01:13:02,333 --> 01:13:04,250
together. Yeah, it's just the way that
376
01:13:04,250 --> 01:13:06,500
elephant skulls form and where the eyes
377
01:13:06,500 --> 01:13:08,375
are in the eye socket itself kind of
378
01:13:08,375 --> 01:13:09,708
looks like it's one big
379
01:13:09,708 --> 01:13:10,208
thing recessed in. Okay.
380
01:13:10,250 --> 01:13:14,208
Yeah. So Cyprus has lots of funny things
381
01:13:14,208 --> 01:13:16,291
going for it in terms of animal life. But
382
01:13:16,291 --> 01:13:17,708
one of the most interesting things that
383
01:13:17,708 --> 01:13:20,458
came out of my research is the earliest
384
01:13:20,458 --> 01:13:25,166
record of domesticated cats is from the
385
01:13:25,166 --> 01:13:26,833
island of Cyprus and they were
386
01:13:26,833 --> 01:13:29,375
domesticated to keep rats
387
01:13:29,375 --> 01:13:30,916
out of their copper mines.
388
01:13:31,250 --> 01:13:37,333
So our original pet cats, the very first
389
01:13:37,333 --> 01:13:40,500
pet cats are there because we were mining
390
01:13:40,500 --> 01:13:42,750
a hundred million year old hydrothermal
391
01:13:42,750 --> 01:13:45,416
vent full of fossil tube worms that we
392
01:13:45,416 --> 01:13:49,333
couldn't identify yet. And we just needed
393
01:13:49,333 --> 01:13:51,208
some help keeping the pests out.
394
01:13:51,250 --> 01:13:54,291
And so and so where did what is the or
395
01:13:54,291 --> 01:13:56,708
like where's the origin of cats like how
396
01:13:56,708 --> 01:13:58,416
like what were they domesticated from
397
01:13:58,416 --> 01:14:01,125
where they are smaller felines small wild
398
01:14:01,125 --> 01:14:03,208
cats. Yeah, small cats. Interesting.
399
01:14:04,333 --> 01:14:06,375
That's so cool. So can you so can you say
400
01:14:06,375 --> 01:14:10,500
like any mining area that's on an island
401
01:14:10,500 --> 01:14:13,500
or that's like fairly new in terms of the
402
01:14:13,500 --> 01:14:16,416
last hundred to 500 million years was
403
01:14:16,416 --> 01:14:18,208
essentially created in the deep sea.
404
01:14:18,250 --> 01:14:23,708
So all of these heavy metal mines are
405
01:14:23,708 --> 01:14:28,000
produced by hydrothermalism. Okay. In the
406
01:14:28,000 --> 01:14:30,083
deep ocean. They're not all from
407
01:14:30,083 --> 01:14:33,208
hydrothermal vents. But generally
408
01:14:33,208 --> 01:14:37,333
speaking, with the exception of very
409
01:14:37,333 --> 01:14:40,333
modern minds where we have the industrial
410
01:14:40,333 --> 01:14:43,041
equipment to access very deep reservoirs,
411
01:14:44,125 --> 01:14:45,625
very deep reserves,
412
01:14:46,333 --> 01:14:48,000
very deep deposits of ore.
413
01:14:48,666 --> 01:14:51,833
With big industrial machinery and strip
414
01:14:51,833 --> 01:14:53,166
mining and all that good stuff where you
415
01:14:53,166 --> 01:14:55,291
have to get really down deep and you can
416
01:14:55,291 --> 01:14:57,916
find metal that was deposited from like
417
01:14:57,916 --> 01:15:00,625
older magmatic processes that were
418
01:15:00,625 --> 01:15:03,041
producing metals with the with the
419
01:15:03,041 --> 01:15:04,875
exception of our most modern minds.
420
01:15:05,625 --> 01:15:09,541
Almost all gold mines, almost all copper
421
01:15:09,541 --> 01:15:11,166
mines, anything that could be accessed
422
01:15:11,166 --> 01:15:14,541
with 20th century technology or or
423
01:15:14,541 --> 01:15:17,125
earlier are going to be ancient
424
01:15:17,125 --> 01:15:21,083
hydrothermal vents, including and one of
425
01:15:21,083 --> 01:15:23,500
my particularly exciting discoveries and
426
01:15:23,500 --> 01:15:24,875
it's not really a discovery. We've known
427
01:15:24,875 --> 01:15:25,208
about it for a long time.
428
01:15:25,250 --> 01:15:28,750
But the really fun bit of the story is
429
01:15:28,750 --> 01:15:32,083
that the city of Baltimore sits on top of
430
01:15:32,083 --> 01:15:34,625
a massive serpent night hosted
431
01:15:34,625 --> 01:15:37,500
hydrothermal vent. No. So Baltimore was
432
01:15:37,500 --> 01:15:39,583
very famous for chromium mines back in
433
01:15:39,583 --> 01:15:41,708
the day. And part of the reason that my
434
01:15:41,708 --> 01:15:44,333
family ended up in Baltimore 200 years
435
01:15:44,333 --> 01:15:46,083
ago is for the mining.
436
01:15:46,083 --> 01:15:46,208
Where were they before?
437
01:15:46,458 --> 01:15:52,333
They were in pressure. Okay. And they
438
01:15:52,333 --> 01:15:55,000
were in Russia. And, you know, we fled
439
01:15:55,000 --> 01:15:56,833
the pogroms. Right. Basically how we
440
01:15:56,833 --> 01:16:00,666
ended up in America. But we settled in
441
01:16:00,666 --> 01:16:02,208
Baltimore. And, you know, part of the
442
01:16:02,208 --> 01:16:03,291
reason we settled in Baltimore, which is
443
01:16:03,291 --> 01:16:04,208
the industry around Baltimore.
444
01:16:04,250 --> 01:16:07,666
And the industry came from chromium
445
01:16:07,666 --> 01:16:10,416
mining in a large part. And that chromium
446
01:16:10,416 --> 01:16:11,666
mining is the result of a
447
01:16:11,666 --> 01:16:14,041
serpentinization, which is a process that
448
01:16:14,041 --> 01:16:16,125
creates hydrothermal vents. So, you know,
449
01:16:16,125 --> 01:16:18,666
a lot of the Baltimore ultramafic
450
01:16:18,666 --> 01:16:21,625
complex, which is the rocks we sit on in
451
01:16:21,625 --> 01:16:24,208
Baltimore is from hydrothermal venting.
452
01:16:24,250 --> 01:16:28,750
That's so cool. That is so neat. Now,
453
01:16:28,750 --> 01:16:31,250
some of the mines that are internal, like
454
01:16:31,250 --> 01:16:34,625
inland, you know, I know Baltimore is a
455
01:16:34,625 --> 01:16:36,708
bit in, but it's got the coastal kind of
456
01:16:36,708 --> 01:16:39,583
structure to it. Would you say are from
457
01:16:39,583 --> 01:16:41,583
deep sea mines as well? Like anything in
458
01:16:41,583 --> 01:16:44,083
like any mine at all is, is a rise from
459
01:16:44,083 --> 01:16:46,625
the deep sea or is that like a different
460
01:16:46,625 --> 01:16:48,583
geographic or geophysical process?
461
01:16:49,250 --> 01:16:52,041
So not every, every mine, but for the
462
01:16:52,041 --> 01:16:53,625
most part, all the heavy metal, all the
463
01:16:53,625 --> 01:16:56,708
heavy metal mines. Yeah. So we are, I
464
01:16:56,708 --> 01:16:59,083
mean, that is how you get heavy metals is
465
01:16:59,083 --> 01:17:01,875
you dissolve it in seawater and then you
466
01:17:01,875 --> 01:17:03,916
put it under enormous pressure. And then
467
01:17:03,916 --> 01:17:05,916
you boil that sea water to the point
468
01:17:05,916 --> 01:17:07,500
where it goes through a phase transition.
469
01:17:07,833 --> 01:17:09,375
And then all those metals fall out of
470
01:17:09,375 --> 01:17:10,000
solution and are
471
01:17:10,000 --> 01:17:11,875
deposited on the sea floor. Wow.
472
01:17:13,250 --> 01:17:16,208
That's incredible. So we have been mining
473
01:17:16,208 --> 01:17:17,416
the deep sea for a very
474
01:17:17,416 --> 01:17:18,208
long time. Yeah. Just not.
475
01:17:18,250 --> 01:17:22,375
We just, we were more efficient at it. We
476
01:17:22,375 --> 01:17:24,500
waited. We were more patient. Let's just
477
01:17:24,500 --> 01:17:26,083
say, we waited. Just waited till you
478
01:17:26,083 --> 01:17:28,208
were, you know, until like generations
479
01:17:28,208 --> 01:17:32,083
and generations after. Yeah. Well, it's
480
01:17:32,083 --> 01:17:33,541
like oil, right? That's just a very
481
01:17:33,541 --> 01:17:35,500
inefficient way to get sunlight. Yeah.
482
01:17:36,291 --> 01:17:39,916
Yeah, that's true. That's true. That's so
483
01:17:39,916 --> 01:17:43,250
cool. Yeah, that is so neat. So like, how
484
01:17:43,250 --> 01:17:46,375
do you find like a story like this, like
485
01:17:46,375 --> 01:17:47,875
knowing the history like this?
486
01:17:49,500 --> 01:17:53,083
How do you find that helps like for the
487
01:17:53,083 --> 01:17:55,583
listeners out there to bring it to
488
01:17:55,583 --> 01:17:57,333
conservation and seeing all these
489
01:17:57,333 --> 01:18:00,958
petitions for an RFI is like, you know,
490
01:18:00,958 --> 01:18:03,208
request for information and things like
491
01:18:03,208 --> 01:18:05,916
that. How do you think this influences
492
01:18:05,916 --> 01:18:10,000
them or, or can help them in the fight
493
01:18:10,000 --> 01:18:12,333
against deep sea mining? Like just to not
494
01:18:12,333 --> 01:18:13,458
let it happen if they
495
01:18:13,458 --> 01:18:14,208
don't want to let it happen.
496
01:18:15,750 --> 01:18:17,083
So one of the things I'm looking at is
497
01:18:17,083 --> 01:18:19,375
all of our cultural connections to the
498
01:18:19,375 --> 01:18:21,958
deep sea. So we don't think about the
499
01:18:21,958 --> 01:18:23,000
deep sea as something that we're
500
01:18:23,000 --> 01:18:24,875
culturally connected to, you know,
501
01:18:24,875 --> 01:18:26,708
outside of a few people who are, you
502
01:18:26,708 --> 01:18:28,458
know, super jazzed about the deep ocean.
503
01:18:29,375 --> 01:18:31,000
And we don't think about all the ways
504
01:18:31,000 --> 01:18:33,750
that we use the deep sea that are maybe
505
01:18:33,750 --> 01:18:35,833
out of sight, out of mind, but are
506
01:18:35,833 --> 01:18:37,833
actually very important to how society
507
01:18:37,833 --> 01:18:40,000
functions. So, you know, like
508
01:18:40,000 --> 01:18:44,208
telecommunications tables, tables, telecommunication tables.
509
01:18:44,250 --> 01:18:49,750
I don't think we've used tables 99% of
510
01:18:49,750 --> 01:18:51,375
our data travels through the deep sea
511
01:18:51,375 --> 01:18:54,125
when whenever we're connecting across
512
01:18:54,125 --> 01:18:56,625
continents and it has for 200 years.
513
01:18:56,625 --> 01:19:00,333
Yeah. You know, we we use the deep sea as
514
01:19:00,333 --> 01:19:02,500
a place to dispose of tremendous amounts
515
01:19:02,500 --> 01:19:05,041
of waste. It's the use and misuse of the
516
01:19:05,041 --> 01:19:06,375
deep sea. So we're talking a lot about
517
01:19:06,375 --> 01:19:09,291
misuse as well. But you know, one of one
518
01:19:09,291 --> 01:19:10,958
of the ways we dispose of waste in the
519
01:19:10,958 --> 01:19:12,416
deep sea is we crash
520
01:19:12,416 --> 01:19:14,208
spaceships into a water.
521
01:19:14,250 --> 01:19:15,583
Point in the middle of the Pacific,
522
01:19:15,583 --> 01:19:17,833
that's far from land. So that doesn't
523
01:19:17,833 --> 01:19:19,500
hurt anyone out when you, you know, drop
524
01:19:19,500 --> 01:19:20,958
a spacecraft on the plane, or doesn't
525
01:19:20,958 --> 01:19:22,833
blow up as it gets down to the ground.
526
01:19:22,833 --> 01:19:25,708
Exactly. So there's all these different
527
01:19:25,708 --> 01:19:28,458
ways that we're using the deep ocean that
528
01:19:28,458 --> 01:19:30,000
we don't necessarily think about, but are
529
01:19:30,000 --> 01:19:32,291
that absolutely important to human
530
01:19:32,291 --> 01:19:34,000
civilization and human survival.
531
01:19:34,250 --> 01:19:35,625
So one of the reasons I wanted to start
532
01:19:35,625 --> 01:19:38,000
the book with this kind of tracking of
533
01:19:38,000 --> 01:19:39,458
all these ancient hydrothermal events is
534
01:19:39,458 --> 01:19:42,083
to argue, you know, hydrothermal events
535
01:19:42,083 --> 01:19:44,916
are responsible for the advent of the
536
01:19:44,916 --> 01:19:47,166
Bronze Age. They are, you know, they're
537
01:19:47,166 --> 01:19:48,958
not just this thing that we have
538
01:19:48,958 --> 01:19:51,125
discovered recently and are like, Oh,
539
01:19:51,125 --> 01:19:52,625
isn't that neat? Isn't that interesting?
540
01:19:52,625 --> 01:19:53,416
There's this weird thing on
541
01:19:53,416 --> 01:19:54,208
the bottom of the sea floor.
542
01:19:54,250 --> 01:19:57,250
They are central to our story as humans
543
01:19:57,250 --> 01:19:59,875
and to our story of technological
544
01:19:59,875 --> 01:20:02,750
development. We are people of the sea, we
545
01:20:02,750 --> 01:20:04,625
have come from the sea and the sea is,
546
01:20:05,333 --> 01:20:07,958
you know, from the sea, we have gained
547
01:20:07,958 --> 01:20:10,083
almost all of our civilization. Yeah.
548
01:20:11,375 --> 01:20:13,416
That's incredible. Never thought about it
549
01:20:13,416 --> 01:20:14,750
that way. If you think, you know, when
550
01:20:14,750 --> 01:20:16,708
you think about how much we depend on the
551
01:20:16,708 --> 01:20:17,916
ocean, we think of what it gives us right
552
01:20:17,916 --> 01:20:20,500
now, but not how it's formed sort of our
553
01:20:20,500 --> 01:20:22,750
society, you know, at this at this point.
554
01:20:23,875 --> 01:20:26,041
You know, the next time you pet a kitty,
555
01:20:26,500 --> 01:20:30,125
just think you owe this kid a little bit
556
01:20:30,125 --> 01:20:32,458
of protection in the deep ocean. The deep
557
01:20:32,458 --> 01:20:34,666
sea gave you a cat. You should you should
558
01:20:34,666 --> 01:20:35,541
respect the deep sea
559
01:20:35,541 --> 01:20:36,666
for that and that alone.
560
01:20:36,916 --> 01:20:39,083
So my title for this episode should be
561
01:20:39,083 --> 01:20:40,083
like cats? Question
562
01:20:40,083 --> 01:20:41,916
mark, protect the deep sea.
563
01:20:42,250 --> 01:20:44,083
I love it. Absolutely.
564
01:20:44,250 --> 01:20:47,208
But I mean, it also goes to show a little
565
01:20:47,208 --> 01:20:48,875
bit like in my train of thought and you
566
01:20:48,875 --> 01:20:51,166
can correct me if I'm wrong, you know, we
567
01:20:51,166 --> 01:20:52,125
start mining the deep
568
01:20:52,125 --> 01:20:54,208
sea now in the deep sea.
569
01:20:55,291 --> 01:20:57,375
What's going to happen 100 million years
570
01:20:57,375 --> 01:21:00,000
from now? If we're that if there's still
571
01:21:00,000 --> 01:21:01,375
humans on that long, what's going to
572
01:21:01,375 --> 01:21:03,416
happen to the Earth's crust at that
573
01:21:03,416 --> 01:21:05,708
point? Are we going to get these, you
574
01:21:05,708 --> 01:21:08,666
know, islands or coastlines that have all
575
01:21:08,666 --> 01:21:10,958
these heavy metals in or are we just
576
01:21:10,958 --> 01:21:12,041
going to go down before
577
01:21:12,041 --> 01:21:14,208
they have a chance to rise to.
578
01:21:14,541 --> 01:21:16,500
To get that like same with seamen. Oh,
579
01:21:16,500 --> 01:21:17,958
100 million years from now, it's going to
580
01:21:17,958 --> 01:21:20,000
be a going to be a whole new. Yeah, we're
581
01:21:20,000 --> 01:21:21,750
not going to be a part of it. No, no, for
582
01:21:21,750 --> 01:21:23,208
sure. But I mean, it's it's looking at
583
01:21:23,208 --> 01:21:24,000
the future of the planet.
584
01:21:24,208 --> 01:21:26,083
Like from a planet perspective, you know,
585
01:21:26,083 --> 01:21:27,458
should we even be thinking about that? I
586
01:21:27,458 --> 01:21:30,250
can see some people not caring. But I
587
01:21:30,250 --> 01:21:31,708
mean, if it's if it's helped us here,
588
01:21:31,708 --> 01:21:33,083
it's going to help something for the
589
01:21:33,083 --> 01:21:34,375
planet later on. You
590
01:21:34,375 --> 01:21:35,541
know, it's a natural process.
591
01:21:35,875 --> 01:21:40,083
So, yeah, 100 million years from now, we
592
01:21:40,083 --> 01:21:41,000
may have plastic
593
01:21:41,000 --> 01:21:42,208
deposits. Yeah, that's true.
594
01:21:42,250 --> 01:21:44,958
Probably not plastics not going to
595
01:21:44,958 --> 01:21:46,541
persist for 100 million years. It's going
596
01:21:46,541 --> 01:21:48,041
to get subducted into the crust of the
597
01:21:48,041 --> 01:21:50,291
Earth and turned back into hydrocarbons,
598
01:21:50,291 --> 01:21:54,500
then spewed back out. But you know, I
599
01:21:54,500 --> 01:21:57,166
would I would hesitate to guess that that
600
01:21:57,166 --> 01:21:59,875
the vast majority of humans footprint on
601
01:21:59,875 --> 01:22:01,541
the planet will be gone 100 years,
602
01:22:01,541 --> 01:22:02,208
million years. Yeah, that's true. That's true.
603
01:22:02,250 --> 01:22:06,166
We may leave some fossils behind and
604
01:22:06,166 --> 01:22:07,916
there may be a few remnants. Yeah.
605
01:22:08,833 --> 01:22:11,458
Species rarely persist that long. True.
606
01:22:11,833 --> 01:22:13,625
True. It's it's a that's a long time.
607
01:22:13,625 --> 01:22:16,000
We're looking at it like that's a very,
608
01:22:16,000 --> 01:22:18,333
very long time. But this is great. And
609
01:22:18,333 --> 01:22:20,208
that I like starting that made. Sorry, go
610
01:22:20,208 --> 01:22:21,875
ahead. That I think that's a great start.
611
01:22:21,875 --> 01:22:23,916
And that also leads us into our second
612
01:22:23,916 --> 01:22:26,000
story. So if we want to, I don't know,
613
01:22:26,000 --> 01:22:28,208
pause and then kick off the next episode.
614
01:22:28,208 --> 01:22:29,958
Yeah, we can do that. We can do we can
615
01:22:29,958 --> 01:22:31,583
do. No, no, we can do to a will what
616
01:22:31,583 --> 01:22:32,208
we'll do is we'll answer that.
617
01:22:32,250 --> 01:22:34,583
And it here for the first story and then
618
01:22:34,583 --> 01:22:37,375
tune in soon. I don't know if we'll do
619
01:22:37,375 --> 01:22:39,291
this every other week or for the world.
620
01:22:39,583 --> 01:22:41,583
We'll worry. I'll let you know to the
621
01:22:41,583 --> 01:22:43,791
audience. I'll let you know when we'll be
622
01:22:43,791 --> 01:22:46,500
airing these. Let's just say Andrew has a
623
01:22:46,500 --> 01:22:48,500
lot of these stories, which I find if the
624
01:22:48,500 --> 01:22:50,250
first ones anything any indication is
625
01:22:50,250 --> 01:22:52,375
going to be great. So we'll end it here.
626
01:22:52,375 --> 01:22:53,583
Thank you so much. Andrew really
627
01:22:53,583 --> 01:22:55,875
appreciate it. And then we'll we're going
628
01:22:55,875 --> 01:22:56,750
to pause it. We're going to record
629
01:22:56,750 --> 01:22:58,541
another one and then we'll we'll see you
630
01:22:58,541 --> 01:22:59,208
in a bit. All right.
631
01:23:00,250 --> 01:23:02,291
Absolutely. Thank you so much. And this
632
01:23:02,291 --> 01:23:04,250
is going to be a fun absolutely looking
633
01:23:04,250 --> 01:23:06,125
forward to it. Thank you, Andrew, for
634
01:23:06,125 --> 01:23:08,208
joining us on today's episode of the how
635
01:23:08,208 --> 01:23:09,541
to protect the ocean podcast. It's always
636
01:23:09,541 --> 01:23:11,375
great to have him on. He's a good friend
637
01:23:11,375 --> 01:23:12,791
of mine. We've known each other for over
638
01:23:12,791 --> 01:23:15,583
a decade. And every time he's on the
639
01:23:15,583 --> 01:23:17,166
podcast, every time I talk to him really,
640
01:23:17,541 --> 01:23:19,041
I'm impressed just with the knowledge
641
01:23:19,041 --> 01:23:20,208
that he has and the way he tells it.
642
01:23:20,250 --> 01:23:22,166
he tells it. He is such a fun
643
01:23:22,166 --> 01:23:24,375
storyteller. I love listening to
644
01:23:24,375 --> 01:23:25,916
everything he says about
645
01:23:26,166 --> 01:23:27,916
not only the deep sea but just science in
646
01:23:27,916 --> 01:23:29,041
general and the ocean in
647
01:23:29,041 --> 01:23:30,583
general. And it's great to have
648
01:23:30,583 --> 01:23:33,416
him on every time he's on. He's been on a
649
01:23:33,416 --> 01:23:35,166
lot and there's a reason
650
01:23:35,166 --> 01:23:36,916
for that because he can really
651
01:23:36,916 --> 01:23:39,583
tell stories very well and I love to hear
652
01:23:39,583 --> 01:23:40,958
it. And we get to chat before
653
01:23:40,958 --> 01:23:42,458
and after. A lot of the times
654
01:23:42,458 --> 01:23:44,416
it's one of those times where I'm on with
655
01:23:44,416 --> 01:23:45,250
a guest and it's one of
656
01:23:45,250 --> 01:23:46,041
those times we're like hey maybe
657
01:23:46,083 --> 01:23:47,666
we should record a podcast while we talk
658
01:23:47,666 --> 01:23:50,916
to each other. That tends to
659
01:23:50,916 --> 01:23:53,083
happen. So it's great to have
660
01:23:53,083 --> 01:23:55,041
him on. I hope you enjoyed listening to
661
01:23:55,041 --> 01:23:56,000
this. Let me know what you
662
01:23:56,000 --> 01:23:57,250
think about this episode,
663
01:23:57,250 --> 01:23:59,000
what you thought of the story. Hit me up
664
01:23:59,000 --> 01:23:59,166
at
665
01:23:59,166 --> 01:24:03,625
speakupforblue.feedback. That's speakupforblue.com
666
01:24:04,000 --> 01:24:07,541
forward slash feedback speakupforblue.com
667
01:24:07,541 --> 01:24:09,291
forward slash feedback. I'd
668
01:24:09,291 --> 01:24:10,125
love to hear your thoughts.
669
01:24:10,375 --> 01:24:11,500
You can leave a voicemail or you can
670
01:24:11,500 --> 01:24:13,458
write it down. I just want
671
01:24:13,458 --> 01:24:14,458
to get some I just want to get
672
01:24:14,500 --> 01:24:16,208
feedback and I want to interact with you.
673
01:24:16,208 --> 01:24:16,958
That's the whole point of
674
01:24:16,958 --> 01:24:18,041
this podcast. We start the
675
01:24:18,041 --> 01:24:20,083
conversation on the podcast and then you
676
01:24:20,083 --> 01:24:22,166
continue it through that feedback link.
677
01:24:22,166 --> 01:24:23,375
So speakupforblue.com
678
01:24:23,375 --> 01:24:25,041
forward slash feedback and of course
679
01:24:25,041 --> 01:24:26,416
don't forget if you want to
680
01:24:26,416 --> 01:24:29,625
hear this type of stories,
681
01:24:31,041 --> 01:24:33,041
anything about the ocean, hit that follow
682
01:24:33,041 --> 01:24:36,250
button so you get to hear next week's
683
01:24:36,250 --> 01:24:36,958
episode. We're going
684
01:24:36,958 --> 01:24:39,000
to start Monday and we go Monday,
685
01:24:39,000 --> 01:24:41,041
Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.
686
01:24:41,500 --> 01:24:42,458
So I want to thank you so much
687
01:24:42,500 --> 01:24:44,375
for joining me on today's episode of the
688
01:24:44,375 --> 01:24:46,333
How to Protect the Ocean podcast. Have a
689
01:24:46,333 --> 01:24:47,750
great day. We'll talk to you on Monday
690
01:24:47,750 --> 01:24:48,958
and happy conservation.
01:00:00,000 --> 01:00:02,041
Do you want to know how domesticated cats
2
01:00:02,041 --> 01:00:04,000
are related to deep sea mining?
3
01:00:04,458 --> 01:00:05,041
Then you're going to want
4
01:00:05,041 --> 01:00:06,750
to tune in to this episode.
5
01:00:06,750 --> 01:00:07,666
This is the how to
6
01:00:07,666 --> 01:00:08,666
protect the ocean podcast.
7
01:00:09,083 --> 01:00:10,875
If you want more ocean
8
01:00:10,875 --> 01:00:13,041
news updates every weekday,
9
01:00:13,583 --> 01:00:15,375
this is your time to hit that follow
10
01:00:15,375 --> 01:00:17,125
button. Hello everybody.
11
01:00:17,500 --> 01:00:18,416
Welcome back to the how to
12
01:00:18,416 --> 01:00:19,416
protect the ocean podcast.
13
01:00:19,583 --> 01:00:20,625
I'm your host Andrew Lewin
14
01:00:20,625 --> 01:00:23,250
and we today are talking to Dr.
15
01:00:23,500 --> 01:00:25,041
Andrew Thaler, who is a deep sea
16
01:00:25,041 --> 01:00:27,291
ecologist and he's writing a book.
17
01:00:27,833 --> 01:00:29,916
And this good friend of mine has come to
18
01:00:29,916 --> 01:00:30,750
me and said, Andrew,
19
01:00:31,750 --> 01:00:33,875
I need to tell you some deep sea stories,
20
01:00:33,875 --> 01:00:35,083
not just about the deep sea mining,
21
01:00:35,333 --> 01:00:37,166
but about the deep sea in general.
22
01:00:37,625 --> 01:00:38,666
These are stories that are
23
01:00:38,666 --> 01:00:39,833
going to knock your socks off.
24
01:00:39,833 --> 01:00:42,875
He's writing a book and part of this is
25
01:00:42,875 --> 01:00:44,166
telling these wonderful stories.
26
01:00:44,500 --> 01:00:45,416
It's going to be part of the book.
27
01:00:45,875 --> 01:00:46,625
So you're getting kind of a
28
01:00:46,625 --> 01:00:48,250
sneak peek by being part of this,
29
01:00:48,250 --> 01:00:50,500
how to protect the ocean podcast. Uh, and
30
01:00:50,500 --> 01:00:52,166
it's, it's phenomenal. Today,
31
01:00:52,166 --> 01:00:53,708
we're going to be talking about how deep
32
01:00:53,708 --> 01:00:55,333
sea mining has led to the
33
01:00:55,625 --> 01:00:57,583
domestication of cats and
34
01:00:57,583 --> 01:00:58,875
it's, you're going to want to,
35
01:00:58,875 --> 01:01:00,416
I don't want to give anything else away
36
01:01:00,416 --> 01:01:01,875
because I want you to hear it from
37
01:01:01,958 --> 01:01:03,208
Andrew. Cause he's a fantastic
38
01:01:03,208 --> 01:01:05,458
storyteller. And he said, Hey,
39
01:01:05,458 --> 01:01:08,041
let's do these stories on, uh, on the
40
01:01:08,041 --> 01:01:09,083
podcast. What do you think?
41
01:01:09,083 --> 01:01:10,083
And I'm like, let's do it.
42
01:01:10,250 --> 01:01:12,125
Like, why not? Is my podcast? Why?
43
01:01:12,125 --> 01:01:12,875
Let's let's try and
44
01:01:12,875 --> 01:01:13,875
switch it up a little bit,
45
01:01:14,208 --> 01:01:15,625
make it a little bit more entertaining.
46
01:01:15,625 --> 01:01:17,833
I know I throw a lot of news at you every
47
01:01:17,833 --> 01:01:20,291
weekday from Monday to Thursday is
48
01:01:20,291 --> 01:01:21,500
like a solo episode. We've
49
01:01:21,500 --> 01:01:22,500
been talking about enforcement.
50
01:01:23,125 --> 01:01:24,333
And now we're going to talk about deep
51
01:01:24,333 --> 01:01:25,708
sea mining. Just, uh, you know,
52
01:01:25,708 --> 01:01:27,083
it's the interview Friday, so we're going
53
01:01:27,083 --> 01:01:28,791
to be talking about that. Uh,
54
01:01:28,791 --> 01:01:30,708
and I just think, uh, it's a lot of fun.
55
01:01:30,708 --> 01:01:33,625
So I'm going to let you hear it straight
56
01:01:33,625 --> 01:01:34,500
from Andrew's mouth.
57
01:01:34,916 --> 01:01:36,750
Here is Andrew, Dr. Andrew Taylor,
58
01:01:36,916 --> 01:01:39,541
talking about the domestication of cats
59
01:01:39,541 --> 01:01:41,375
and how deep sea mining led to that
60
01:01:41,458 --> 01:01:43,458
domestication. Enjoy the interview. And I
61
01:01:43,458 --> 01:01:45,333
will talk to you after. Hey, Andrew,
62
01:01:45,750 --> 01:01:47,291
welcome back to the how to
63
01:01:47,291 --> 01:01:48,083
protect the ocean podcast.
64
01:01:48,458 --> 01:01:51,625
Are you ready to talk about deep sea
65
01:01:51,625 --> 01:01:53,625
stories? Just in general,
66
01:01:53,625 --> 01:01:55,416
this is going to be a new series that
67
01:01:55,416 --> 01:01:55,958
we're going to be doing.
68
01:01:55,958 --> 01:01:57,333
Are you ready to start the series?
69
01:01:57,833 --> 01:02:00,083
I am ready. The question for you is are
70
01:02:00,083 --> 01:02:01,250
you ready? I don't know.
71
01:02:01,250 --> 01:02:04,166
I take a step back and enjoy the power of
72
01:02:04,166 --> 01:02:06,583
a different Andrew hosting for a
73
01:02:06,583 --> 01:02:06,916
moment.
74
01:02:08,500 --> 01:02:09,458
This is going to be, this is
75
01:02:09,458 --> 01:02:10,416
going to be a lot of fun. We,
76
01:02:10,416 --> 01:02:12,166
we've been discussing this for, you know,
77
01:02:12,166 --> 01:02:14,041
about a month now. Um,
78
01:02:14,041 --> 01:02:14,625
and we'll get, well,
79
01:02:14,666 --> 01:02:16,458
I'll let you explain what you want to do
80
01:02:16,458 --> 01:02:17,958
on this because this is going to be
81
01:02:17,958 --> 01:02:19,791
your show and I'm just going to be like
82
01:02:19,791 --> 01:02:21,250
an audience member and kind of
83
01:02:21,250 --> 01:02:22,666
interjecting every once in a while and
84
01:02:22,666 --> 01:02:23,708
asking questions and stuff.
85
01:02:24,250 --> 01:02:25,500
But this is going to be a lot of fun.
86
01:02:25,500 --> 01:02:26,791
We're going to switch it up a little bit.
87
01:02:27,125 --> 01:02:27,791
Uh, Andrew's got some
88
01:02:27,791 --> 01:02:29,208
stories that he wants to tell.
89
01:02:29,208 --> 01:02:30,000
It's part of a larger
90
01:02:30,000 --> 01:02:32,000
project that he's working on. Uh,
91
01:02:32,000 --> 01:02:33,041
and so we're going to just
92
01:02:33,041 --> 01:02:34,166
kind of give it to you, buddy.
93
01:02:34,166 --> 01:02:36,416
I want you to just go ahead and before,
94
01:02:36,416 --> 01:02:37,375
before we start though,
95
01:02:37,375 --> 01:02:38,958
just for those of the, for those of the
96
01:02:38,958 --> 01:02:40,625
audience members who haven't heard of
97
01:02:40,625 --> 01:02:41,875
you before, haven't listened to you
98
01:02:41,875 --> 01:02:43,166
before here on this podcast,
99
01:02:43,250 --> 01:02:44,250
why don't you just let us know who you
100
01:02:44,250 --> 01:02:45,500
are and what you do.
101
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And of course what
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this project is all about.
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All right. Well, I am Dr.
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Andrew Thaler, deep sea ecologist,
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01:02:52,875 --> 01:02:54,583
conservation technologist, ocean
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01:02:54,583 --> 01:02:56,291
educator, and author,
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and welcome dear listeners to tales from
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01:02:59,500 --> 01:03:00,666
the limitless abyss.
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So, uh, the backstory
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01:03:03,375 --> 01:03:05,333
behind this little, uh,
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podcasting experiment we're doing is I
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01:03:07,833 --> 01:03:10,500
have a book coming out in like a year
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01:03:10,500 --> 01:03:11,375
and a half because I have
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01:03:11,375 --> 01:03:13,416
to write it, but I have,
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I have a contract for a book tentatively
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01:03:17,416 --> 01:03:18,625
titled limitless abyss,
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01:03:19,250 --> 01:03:21,500
the use and misuse of the deep sea.
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And one of the things we want to do is as
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I'm researching this book and as I'm
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01:03:26,708 --> 01:03:27,625
putting together chapters
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01:03:27,625 --> 01:03:28,500
and drafting everything,
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there's just hundreds and hundreds and
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01:03:30,791 --> 01:03:31,625
hundreds of these
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01:03:31,625 --> 01:03:33,000
delightful little stories
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01:03:33,500 --> 01:03:36,125
coming out about all the weird ways that
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humans have used and abused the deep sea
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over, uh, not just years, not just
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decades, not just centuries,
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but millennia. And so I, you know,
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I want to take a little bit of time
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throughout the process is a little bit of
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accountability for me because I got to
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keep writing the book if,
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if I'm going to come
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up with new stories. Uh,
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so it helps keep me on track and it helps
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keep everyone a little entertained.
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And you know, maybe when
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the book finally comes out,
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if you've been listening for a while,
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you'll pick it up. Absolutely.
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Uh, but, uh,
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I want to start today
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with a very simple question.
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All right. Uh, Andrew
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Lewin, why do we have cats?
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Well, as a, as someone who doesn't own a
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cat, um, I'm going to say, I don't know.
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I really don't know how cats came to be.
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I assume they're domesticated from like
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the wild over years and years and years
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of crazy people trying to domesticate
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tigers and lions and so forth. Is that,
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is that the right answer?
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So I'm going to take us back.
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I'm going to take us back about 6,000
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years to the new kingdom of Egypt,
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uh, to Pharaoh, uh, Ramses and Pharaoh,
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01:04:51,125 --> 01:04:54,000
Tuttmus the third and, uh,
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the very first deep sea mines back then.
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01:04:59,125 --> 01:05:03,000
So this is a, one of the really cool
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things that has come up and one of the,
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uh, interesting pieces of primary
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research that has come out of this book
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01:05:08,833 --> 01:05:11,791
is I started asking this question.
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You know, I talk a lot when I tell people
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about deep sea mining and I tell people
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about hydrothermal vents.
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One of the things I
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say is that, you know,
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when you think about metal that comes in
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veins, so things like
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01:05:20,833 --> 01:05:22,208
copper and gold and silver,
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in a lot of cases,
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those veins are actually the stock works
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of ancient hydrothermal vents.
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So the hydrothermal vent chimney that
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forms as this vent grows in the sea floor
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deposits heavy metals along the walls.
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And then eventually
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over millions of years,
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those vents shut down and they drift off
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access and, you know,
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continents up heave and the earth moves
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and eventually they end up on land.
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Uh, and they become
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01:05:47,583 --> 01:05:48,958
things like gold mines.
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So, uh, those, those
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structures are called ophiolites.
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Ophiolites are chunks of oceanic plate
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that have been uplifted onto land.
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And are now sitting on land
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as remnants of ancient seabed.
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And so I thought, you know, wouldn't it
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be interesting to like, look at some of
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01:06:06,958 --> 01:06:10,375
the old copper mines that were important
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during the Bronze Age and, you know,
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see how many of those really
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were ancient hydrothermal vents.
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01:06:18,541 --> 01:06:20,875
So, you know, I started in the Egyptian
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New King kingdom at the, at
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the peak of the Bronze Age.
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And I started with a Pharaoh Thutmose III
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because one of the things that's really
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01:06:31,375 --> 01:06:32,916
fascinating about that most of the third
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is that he was a conqueror.
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He, he spread the Egyptian
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kingdom across the Levant.
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And he is the source of the first battles
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in recorded history.
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So the first actual he carried, he
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brought with him a scribe
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who wrote everything down.
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So, you know, we don't know exactly what
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01:06:55,750 --> 01:06:56,625
happened, but we know what
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01:06:56,625 --> 01:06:58,583
he wanted us to know happened.
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And so we have records of, uh, you know,
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some of these ancient battles, including,
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um, uh, the battle of Megadow, which is
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the first battle in recorded history.
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Um, and we know how many people were
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killed and we knew what they carried and
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how many horses they had and how many
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chariots and all these great things and
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how many bronze weapons they had.
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So I was interested of like tracking back
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from there and being
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like these bronze weapons.
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This was a technological innovation to
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have bronze over, over
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copper or over stone.
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Uh, where did that bronze come from?
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And could we track it
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back to a hydrothermal vent?
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01:07:37,500 --> 01:07:39,541
And what I found is that, uh, the
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Egyptian New Kingdom, their early copper
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mines were on, uh, the Sinai peninsula.
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They were 500 million
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01:07:46,041 --> 01:07:47,250
year old Ophieolites.
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They were hydrothermal vents.
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Um, the major source of copper for the
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01:07:53,833 --> 01:07:56,375
new kingdom was on the island of Cyprus.
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Uh, the island of Cyprus
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itself is in Ophieolite.
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Um, so the mountains of Cyprus are all
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chunks of ancient seabed.
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This is a hundred million year old chunk
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of the neotetha sea that was lifted up
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01:08:11,083 --> 01:08:15,708
onto land and slowly over generations,
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the people who
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eventually settled on Cyprus
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were discovered that there were these
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rich, rich copper veins inside, um, the
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mountains of, of Cyprus.
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And in addition to these copper veins,
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they also found
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fossils, very strange fossils.
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And when archeologists started excavating
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these old, uh, mines in Cyprus and
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looking at the fossils, you know, this is
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early 19th century, early 20th century,
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you know, the Egyptologists, the, the
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01:08:53,416 --> 01:08:54,750
archeologists that were going through
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ancient Greece, all that fun stuff.
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When the Victorians were out stealing
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everything they could from, uh, from the
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Levant and from Egypt.
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Um, they find these fossils and no one
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knew what these fossils were.
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They were just these
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strange, strange fossils.
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Uh, so they were kind of this weird
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thing, just something out there, the
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strange fossil until, and no one knew, no
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01:09:16,416 --> 01:09:17,708
one really could figure it out.
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Maybe it was a worm. It was some kind of
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01:09:19,750 --> 01:09:21,541
an animal. No one's really sure. Some of
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01:09:21,541 --> 01:09:22,208
them looked like snails.
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And then in 1977, Bob Ballard dives on
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the Pacific rise in, you know, the
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01:09:31,208 --> 01:09:33,500
Pacific ocean and finds
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01:09:33,500 --> 01:09:35,625
the first hydrothermal vents.
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01:09:37,000 --> 01:09:39,333
And on these first hydrothermal vents is
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riftia pachiptila, the
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giant deep sea tube worm.
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01:09:42,250 --> 01:09:44,625
You know, these massive tube worms, the
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01:09:44,625 --> 01:09:45,958
fastest growing invertebrate on the
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01:09:45,958 --> 01:09:48,291
world. They can grow several meters long.
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Um, they have these bright red plumes
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01:09:50,541 --> 01:09:52,833
that come out of, of these tubes that
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01:09:52,833 --> 01:09:55,500
they build that then extract the chemical
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energy from the hydrothermal vent and
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01:09:57,041 --> 01:09:58,500
turn into food for the animal.
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And those two worms on the East Pacific
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01:10:01,208 --> 01:10:02,375
rise looked almost
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01:10:02,375 --> 01:10:05,208
identical to the fossils in Cyprus.
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And so they're like, oh, this is proof
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positive. This is these old copper mines.
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These old copper mines
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are hydrothermal vents.
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And so I kept tracking different minds
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across Egypt and the Near East and the
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01:10:22,125 --> 01:10:24,333
Middle East. And we found ophiolites in
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01:10:24,333 --> 01:10:27,083
Turkey and ophiolites in Oman and
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01:10:27,083 --> 01:10:28,083
ophiolites kind of all
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01:10:28,083 --> 01:10:28,208
across these regions.
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01:10:28,250 --> 01:10:30,666
And they're all ancient hydrothermal
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01:10:30,666 --> 01:10:31,750
vents. Most of them are from the
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neotethis. So 100 million year old vents.
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Some of them are 500 million years old.
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Some of them are incredibly
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01:10:37,791 --> 01:10:39,208
ancient hydrothermal vents.
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But all of these copper mines, all these
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01:10:43,250 --> 01:10:45,458
copper mines that basically created the
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01:10:45,458 --> 01:10:48,375
Bronze Age are the remnants
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01:10:48,375 --> 01:10:50,208
of ancient hydrothermal vents.
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01:10:50,250 --> 01:10:54,208
So they are effectively the least
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01:10:54,208 --> 01:10:56,416
efficient way to mine the deep sea. You
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01:10:56,416 --> 01:10:58,083
wait till it comes to you.
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01:10:59,208 --> 01:11:00,708
You wait until it comes to you. And
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01:11:00,708 --> 01:11:02,583
honestly, that is probably the best way
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01:11:02,583 --> 01:11:04,083
to do it to minimize your environmental
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01:11:04,083 --> 01:11:05,916
impact on the sea. Yeah, exactly. You
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wait till the sea floor comes above the
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01:11:07,500 --> 01:11:09,833
surface. Yeah, exactly. Only 500 million
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01:11:09,833 --> 01:11:11,000
years, but it'll
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01:11:11,000 --> 01:11:11,208
eventually get there, right?
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01:11:12,250 --> 01:11:16,333
Yeah, so Cyprus is a funny. Yeah, Cyprus
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01:11:16,333 --> 01:11:17,958
has been incredibly important throughout
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01:11:17,958 --> 01:11:19,916
human history. It's a major source of
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01:11:19,916 --> 01:11:21,500
copper. You know, it was a driver of the
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01:11:21,500 --> 01:11:24,666
Bronze Age. It was a major cultural
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01:11:24,666 --> 01:11:28,000
landmark. Cyprus has a few very funny
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01:11:28,000 --> 01:11:31,333
animals associated with him. One of this
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01:11:31,333 --> 01:11:32,208
is they had a pygmy elephant.
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01:11:33,250 --> 01:11:36,333
So on the island of Cyprus, this is long
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01:11:36,333 --> 01:11:37,666
before humans. Right, right, right.
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01:11:38,083 --> 01:11:39,875
Several thousand years before human
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01:11:39,875 --> 01:11:41,583
settlement, they had these pygmy
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01:11:41,583 --> 01:11:42,958
elephants as an elephant, but it's a
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01:11:42,958 --> 01:11:46,250
little tiny elephant. And how familiar
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01:11:46,250 --> 01:11:47,500
are you with an elephant skull?
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01:11:47,500 --> 01:11:50,416
I mean, I can kind of picture it, but I
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01:11:50,416 --> 01:11:51,875
don't have one in my backyard or
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01:11:51,875 --> 01:11:54,375
anything. Yeah. So one of the weird
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01:11:54,375 --> 01:11:56,000
things about elephant skulls is that if
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01:11:56,000 --> 01:11:57,875
you look at how the skull is shaped and
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01:11:57,875 --> 01:11:59,791
where the eye sockets are, the eye
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01:11:59,791 --> 01:12:00,208
sockets are kind of fused together.
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01:12:00,250 --> 01:12:04,166
Okay. So they sort of look like one big
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01:12:04,166 --> 01:12:05,833
eye socket in the middle of the skull,
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01:12:06,083 --> 01:12:07,666
like a little bit of a figure eight, but
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01:12:07,666 --> 01:12:12,000
like one big eye socket. So these pygmy
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01:12:12,000 --> 01:12:15,958
elephant skulls, Greek explorers are, you
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01:12:15,958 --> 01:12:17,375
know, sailing across the Greek islands.
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01:12:17,583 --> 01:12:19,833
They're landing in Cyprus. They're, you
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01:12:19,833 --> 01:12:21,666
know, going into caves in Cyprus and
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01:12:21,666 --> 01:12:23,583
they're finding these elephant skulls
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01:12:23,583 --> 01:12:25,500
that are not big. They're not the size of
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01:12:25,500 --> 01:12:27,166
a full grown elephant, but they're like
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01:12:27,166 --> 01:12:28,708
three, four times the
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01:12:28,708 --> 01:12:29,666
size of a human head.
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01:12:30,250 --> 01:12:31,958
And they've got one big eye socket right
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01:12:31,958 --> 01:12:36,166
in the middle. And so, you know, I don't
365
01:12:36,166 --> 01:12:38,666
know if you've read the Odyssey. I have.
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01:12:38,916 --> 01:12:40,500
I've read all three translations of the
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01:12:40,500 --> 01:12:41,791
Odyssey because I love the Odyssey.
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01:12:43,333 --> 01:12:45,875
The legend of the Cyclops in ancient
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01:12:45,875 --> 01:12:48,916
Greece. One of the predominant theories
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01:12:48,916 --> 01:12:51,333
about where that story comes from is
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01:12:51,333 --> 01:12:53,791
these pygmy elephant skulls that look
372
01:12:53,791 --> 01:12:56,208
like a one eyed giant. That's crazy.
373
01:12:57,250 --> 01:13:00,458
So it didn't actually have one eye. It
374
01:13:00,458 --> 01:13:02,333
was just the way the bones refused
375
01:13:02,333 --> 01:13:04,250
together. Yeah, it's just the way that
376
01:13:04,250 --> 01:13:06,500
elephant skulls form and where the eyes
377
01:13:06,500 --> 01:13:08,375
are in the eye socket itself kind of
378
01:13:08,375 --> 01:13:09,708
looks like it's one big
379
01:13:09,708 --> 01:13:10,208
thing recessed in. Okay.
380
01:13:10,250 --> 01:13:14,208
Yeah. So Cyprus has lots of funny things
381
01:13:14,208 --> 01:13:16,291
going for it in terms of animal life. But
382
01:13:16,291 --> 01:13:17,708
one of the most interesting things that
383
01:13:17,708 --> 01:13:20,458
came out of my research is the earliest
384
01:13:20,458 --> 01:13:25,166
record of domesticated cats is from the
385
01:13:25,166 --> 01:13:26,833
island of Cyprus and they were
386
01:13:26,833 --> 01:13:29,375
domesticated to keep rats
387
01:13:29,375 --> 01:13:30,916
out of their copper mines.
388
01:13:31,250 --> 01:13:37,333
So our original pet cats, the very first
389
01:13:37,333 --> 01:13:40,500
pet cats are there because we were mining
390
01:13:40,500 --> 01:13:42,750
a hundred million year old hydrothermal
391
01:13:42,750 --> 01:13:45,416
vent full of fossil tube worms that we
392
01:13:45,416 --> 01:13:49,333
couldn't identify yet. And we just needed
393
01:13:49,333 --> 01:13:51,208
some help keeping the pests out.
394
01:13:51,250 --> 01:13:54,291
And so and so where did what is the or
395
01:13:54,291 --> 01:13:56,708
like where's the origin of cats like how
396
01:13:56,708 --> 01:13:58,416
like what were they domesticated from
397
01:13:58,416 --> 01:14:01,125
where they are smaller felines small wild
398
01:14:01,125 --> 01:14:03,208
cats. Yeah, small cats. Interesting.
399
01:14:04,333 --> 01:14:06,375
That's so cool. So can you so can you say
400
01:14:06,375 --> 01:14:10,500
like any mining area that's on an island
401
01:14:10,500 --> 01:14:13,500
or that's like fairly new in terms of the
402
01:14:13,500 --> 01:14:16,416
last hundred to 500 million years was
403
01:14:16,416 --> 01:14:18,208
essentially created in the deep sea.
404
01:14:18,250 --> 01:14:23,708
So all of these heavy metal mines are
405
01:14:23,708 --> 01:14:28,000
produced by hydrothermalism. Okay. In the
406
01:14:28,000 --> 01:14:30,083
deep ocean. They're not all from
407
01:14:30,083 --> 01:14:33,208
hydrothermal vents. But generally
408
01:14:33,208 --> 01:14:37,333
speaking, with the exception of very
409
01:14:37,333 --> 01:14:40,333
modern minds where we have the industrial
410
01:14:40,333 --> 01:14:43,041
equipment to access very deep reservoirs,
411
01:14:44,125 --> 01:14:45,625
very deep reserves,
412
01:14:46,333 --> 01:14:48,000
very deep deposits of ore.
413
01:14:48,666 --> 01:14:51,833
With big industrial machinery and strip
414
01:14:51,833 --> 01:14:53,166
mining and all that good stuff where you
415
01:14:53,166 --> 01:14:55,291
have to get really down deep and you can
416
01:14:55,291 --> 01:14:57,916
find metal that was deposited from like
417
01:14:57,916 --> 01:15:00,625
older magmatic processes that were
418
01:15:00,625 --> 01:15:03,041
producing metals with the with the
419
01:15:03,041 --> 01:15:04,875
exception of our most modern minds.
420
01:15:05,625 --> 01:15:09,541
Almost all gold mines, almost all copper
421
01:15:09,541 --> 01:15:11,166
mines, anything that could be accessed
422
01:15:11,166 --> 01:15:14,541
with 20th century technology or or
423
01:15:14,541 --> 01:15:17,125
earlier are going to be ancient
424
01:15:17,125 --> 01:15:21,083
hydrothermal vents, including and one of
425
01:15:21,083 --> 01:15:23,500
my particularly exciting discoveries and
426
01:15:23,500 --> 01:15:24,875
it's not really a discovery. We've known
427
01:15:24,875 --> 01:15:25,208
about it for a long time.
428
01:15:25,250 --> 01:15:28,750
But the really fun bit of the story is
429
01:15:28,750 --> 01:15:32,083
that the city of Baltimore sits on top of
430
01:15:32,083 --> 01:15:34,625
a massive serpent night hosted
431
01:15:34,625 --> 01:15:37,500
hydrothermal vent. No. So Baltimore was
432
01:15:37,500 --> 01:15:39,583
very famous for chromium mines back in
433
01:15:39,583 --> 01:15:41,708
the day. And part of the reason that my
434
01:15:41,708 --> 01:15:44,333
family ended up in Baltimore 200 years
435
01:15:44,333 --> 01:15:46,083
ago is for the mining.
436
01:15:46,083 --> 01:15:46,208
Where were they before?
437
01:15:46,458 --> 01:15:52,333
They were in pressure. Okay. And they
438
01:15:52,333 --> 01:15:55,000
were in Russia. And, you know, we fled
439
01:15:55,000 --> 01:15:56,833
the pogroms. Right. Basically how we
440
01:15:56,833 --> 01:16:00,666
ended up in America. But we settled in
441
01:16:00,666 --> 01:16:02,208
Baltimore. And, you know, part of the
442
01:16:02,208 --> 01:16:03,291
reason we settled in Baltimore, which is
443
01:16:03,291 --> 01:16:04,208
the industry around Baltimore.
444
01:16:04,250 --> 01:16:07,666
And the industry came from chromium
445
01:16:07,666 --> 01:16:10,416
mining in a large part. And that chromium
446
01:16:10,416 --> 01:16:11,666
mining is the result of a
447
01:16:11,666 --> 01:16:14,041
serpentinization, which is a process that
448
01:16:14,041 --> 01:16:16,125
creates hydrothermal vents. So, you know,
449
01:16:16,125 --> 01:16:18,666
a lot of the Baltimore ultramafic
450
01:16:18,666 --> 01:16:21,625
complex, which is the rocks we sit on in
451
01:16:21,625 --> 01:16:24,208
Baltimore is from hydrothermal venting.
452
01:16:24,250 --> 01:16:28,750
That's so cool. That is so neat. Now,
453
01:16:28,750 --> 01:16:31,250
some of the mines that are internal, like
454
01:16:31,250 --> 01:16:34,625
inland, you know, I know Baltimore is a
455
01:16:34,625 --> 01:16:36,708
bit in, but it's got the coastal kind of
456
01:16:36,708 --> 01:16:39,583
structure to it. Would you say are from
457
01:16:39,583 --> 01:16:41,583
deep sea mines as well? Like anything in
458
01:16:41,583 --> 01:16:44,083
like any mine at all is, is a rise from
459
01:16:44,083 --> 01:16:46,625
the deep sea or is that like a different
460
01:16:46,625 --> 01:16:48,583
geographic or geophysical process?
461
01:16:49,250 --> 01:16:52,041
So not every, every mine, but for the
462
01:16:52,041 --> 01:16:53,625
most part, all the heavy metal, all the
463
01:16:53,625 --> 01:16:56,708
heavy metal mines. Yeah. So we are, I
464
01:16:56,708 --> 01:16:59,083
mean, that is how you get heavy metals is
465
01:16:59,083 --> 01:17:01,875
you dissolve it in seawater and then you
466
01:17:01,875 --> 01:17:03,916
put it under enormous pressure. And then
467
01:17:03,916 --> 01:17:05,916
you boil that sea water to the point
468
01:17:05,916 --> 01:17:07,500
where it goes through a phase transition.
469
01:17:07,833 --> 01:17:09,375
And then all those metals fall out of
470
01:17:09,375 --> 01:17:10,000
solution and are
471
01:17:10,000 --> 01:17:11,875
deposited on the sea floor. Wow.
472
01:17:13,250 --> 01:17:16,208
That's incredible. So we have been mining
473
01:17:16,208 --> 01:17:17,416
the deep sea for a very
474
01:17:17,416 --> 01:17:18,208
long time. Yeah. Just not.
475
01:17:18,250 --> 01:17:22,375
We just, we were more efficient at it. We
476
01:17:22,375 --> 01:17:24,500
waited. We were more patient. Let's just
477
01:17:24,500 --> 01:17:26,083
say, we waited. Just waited till you
478
01:17:26,083 --> 01:17:28,208
were, you know, until like generations
479
01:17:28,208 --> 01:17:32,083
and generations after. Yeah. Well, it's
480
01:17:32,083 --> 01:17:33,541
like oil, right? That's just a very
481
01:17:33,541 --> 01:17:35,500
inefficient way to get sunlight. Yeah.
482
01:17:36,291 --> 01:17:39,916
Yeah, that's true. That's true. That's so
483
01:17:39,916 --> 01:17:43,250
cool. Yeah, that is so neat. So like, how
484
01:17:43,250 --> 01:17:46,375
do you find like a story like this, like
485
01:17:46,375 --> 01:17:47,875
knowing the history like this?
486
01:17:49,500 --> 01:17:53,083
How do you find that helps like for the
487
01:17:53,083 --> 01:17:55,583
listeners out there to bring it to
488
01:17:55,583 --> 01:17:57,333
conservation and seeing all these
489
01:17:57,333 --> 01:18:00,958
petitions for an RFI is like, you know,
490
01:18:00,958 --> 01:18:03,208
request for information and things like
491
01:18:03,208 --> 01:18:05,916
that. How do you think this influences
492
01:18:05,916 --> 01:18:10,000
them or, or can help them in the fight
493
01:18:10,000 --> 01:18:12,333
against deep sea mining? Like just to not
494
01:18:12,333 --> 01:18:13,458
let it happen if they
495
01:18:13,458 --> 01:18:14,208
don't want to let it happen.
496
01:18:15,750 --> 01:18:17,083
So one of the things I'm looking at is
497
01:18:17,083 --> 01:18:19,375
all of our cultural connections to the
498
01:18:19,375 --> 01:18:21,958
deep sea. So we don't think about the
499
01:18:21,958 --> 01:18:23,000
deep sea as something that we're
500
01:18:23,000 --> 01:18:24,875
culturally connected to, you know,
501
01:18:24,875 --> 01:18:26,708
outside of a few people who are, you
502
01:18:26,708 --> 01:18:28,458
know, super jazzed about the deep ocean.
503
01:18:29,375 --> 01:18:31,000
And we don't think about all the ways
504
01:18:31,000 --> 01:18:33,750
that we use the deep sea that are maybe
505
01:18:33,750 --> 01:18:35,833
out of sight, out of mind, but are
506
01:18:35,833 --> 01:18:37,833
actually very important to how society
507
01:18:37,833 --> 01:18:40,000
functions. So, you know, like
508
01:18:40,000 --> 01:18:44,208
telecommunications tables, tables, telecommunication tables.
509
01:18:44,250 --> 01:18:49,750
I don't think we've used tables 99% of
510
01:18:49,750 --> 01:18:51,375
our data travels through the deep sea
511
01:18:51,375 --> 01:18:54,125
when whenever we're connecting across
512
01:18:54,125 --> 01:18:56,625
continents and it has for 200 years.
513
01:18:56,625 --> 01:19:00,333
Yeah. You know, we we use the deep sea as
514
01:19:00,333 --> 01:19:02,500
a place to dispose of tremendous amounts
515
01:19:02,500 --> 01:19:05,041
of waste. It's the use and misuse of the
516
01:19:05,041 --> 01:19:06,375
deep sea. So we're talking a lot about
517
01:19:06,375 --> 01:19:09,291
misuse as well. But you know, one of one
518
01:19:09,291 --> 01:19:10,958
of the ways we dispose of waste in the
519
01:19:10,958 --> 01:19:12,416
deep sea is we crash
520
01:19:12,416 --> 01:19:14,208
spaceships into a water.
521
01:19:14,250 --> 01:19:15,583
Point in the middle of the Pacific,
522
01:19:15,583 --> 01:19:17,833
that's far from land. So that doesn't
523
01:19:17,833 --> 01:19:19,500
hurt anyone out when you, you know, drop
524
01:19:19,500 --> 01:19:20,958
a spacecraft on the plane, or doesn't
525
01:19:20,958 --> 01:19:22,833
blow up as it gets down to the ground.
526
01:19:22,833 --> 01:19:25,708
Exactly. So there's all these different
527
01:19:25,708 --> 01:19:28,458
ways that we're using the deep ocean that
528
01:19:28,458 --> 01:19:30,000
we don't necessarily think about, but are
529
01:19:30,000 --> 01:19:32,291
that absolutely important to human
530
01:19:32,291 --> 01:19:34,000
civilization and human survival.
531
01:19:34,250 --> 01:19:35,625
So one of the reasons I wanted to start
532
01:19:35,625 --> 01:19:38,000
the book with this kind of tracking of
533
01:19:38,000 --> 01:19:39,458
all these ancient hydrothermal events is
534
01:19:39,458 --> 01:19:42,083
to argue, you know, hydrothermal events
535
01:19:42,083 --> 01:19:44,916
are responsible for the advent of the
536
01:19:44,916 --> 01:19:47,166
Bronze Age. They are, you know, they're
537
01:19:47,166 --> 01:19:48,958
not just this thing that we have
538
01:19:48,958 --> 01:19:51,125
discovered recently and are like, Oh,
539
01:19:51,125 --> 01:19:52,625
isn't that neat? Isn't that interesting?
540
01:19:52,625 --> 01:19:53,416
There's this weird thing on
541
01:19:53,416 --> 01:19:54,208
the bottom of the sea floor.
542
01:19:54,250 --> 01:19:57,250
They are central to our story as humans
543
01:19:57,250 --> 01:19:59,875
and to our story of technological
544
01:19:59,875 --> 01:20:02,750
development. We are people of the sea, we
545
01:20:02,750 --> 01:20:04,625
have come from the sea and the sea is,
546
01:20:05,333 --> 01:20:07,958
you know, from the sea, we have gained
547
01:20:07,958 --> 01:20:10,083
almost all of our civilization. Yeah.
548
01:20:11,375 --> 01:20:13,416
That's incredible. Never thought about it
549
01:20:13,416 --> 01:20:14,750
that way. If you think, you know, when
550
01:20:14,750 --> 01:20:16,708
you think about how much we depend on the
551
01:20:16,708 --> 01:20:17,916
ocean, we think of what it gives us right
552
01:20:17,916 --> 01:20:20,500
now, but not how it's formed sort of our
553
01:20:20,500 --> 01:20:22,750
society, you know, at this at this point.
554
01:20:23,875 --> 01:20:26,041
You know, the next time you pet a kitty,
555
01:20:26,500 --> 01:20:30,125
just think you owe this kid a little bit
556
01:20:30,125 --> 01:20:32,458
of protection in the deep ocean. The deep
557
01:20:32,458 --> 01:20:34,666
sea gave you a cat. You should you should
558
01:20:34,666 --> 01:20:35,541
respect the deep sea
559
01:20:35,541 --> 01:20:36,666
for that and that alone.
560
01:20:36,916 --> 01:20:39,083
So my title for this episode should be
561
01:20:39,083 --> 01:20:40,083
like cats? Question
562
01:20:40,083 --> 01:20:41,916
mark, protect the deep sea.
563
01:20:42,250 --> 01:20:44,083
I love it. Absolutely.
564
01:20:44,250 --> 01:20:47,208
But I mean, it also goes to show a little
565
01:20:47,208 --> 01:20:48,875
bit like in my train of thought and you
566
01:20:48,875 --> 01:20:51,166
can correct me if I'm wrong, you know, we
567
01:20:51,166 --> 01:20:52,125
start mining the deep
568
01:20:52,125 --> 01:20:54,208
sea now in the deep sea.
569
01:20:55,291 --> 01:20:57,375
What's going to happen 100 million years
570
01:20:57,375 --> 01:21:00,000
from now? If we're that if there's still
571
01:21:00,000 --> 01:21:01,375
humans on that long, what's going to
572
01:21:01,375 --> 01:21:03,416
happen to the Earth's crust at that
573
01:21:03,416 --> 01:21:05,708
point? Are we going to get these, you
574
01:21:05,708 --> 01:21:08,666
know, islands or coastlines that have all
575
01:21:08,666 --> 01:21:10,958
these heavy metals in or are we just
576
01:21:10,958 --> 01:21:12,041
going to go down before
577
01:21:12,041 --> 01:21:14,208
they have a chance to rise to.
578
01:21:14,541 --> 01:21:16,500
To get that like same with seamen. Oh,
579
01:21:16,500 --> 01:21:17,958
100 million years from now, it's going to
580
01:21:17,958 --> 01:21:20,000
be a going to be a whole new. Yeah, we're
581
01:21:20,000 --> 01:21:21,750
not going to be a part of it. No, no, for
582
01:21:21,750 --> 01:21:23,208
sure. But I mean, it's it's looking at
583
01:21:23,208 --> 01:21:24,000
the future of the planet.
584
01:21:24,208 --> 01:21:26,083
Like from a planet perspective, you know,
585
01:21:26,083 --> 01:21:27,458
should we even be thinking about that? I
586
01:21:27,458 --> 01:21:30,250
can see some people not caring. But I
587
01:21:30,250 --> 01:21:31,708
mean, if it's if it's helped us here,
588
01:21:31,708 --> 01:21:33,083
it's going to help something for the
589
01:21:33,083 --> 01:21:34,375
planet later on. You
590
01:21:34,375 --> 01:21:35,541
know, it's a natural process.
591
01:21:35,875 --> 01:21:40,083
So, yeah, 100 million years from now, we
592
01:21:40,083 --> 01:21:41,000
may have plastic
593
01:21:41,000 --> 01:21:42,208
deposits. Yeah, that's true.
594
01:21:42,250 --> 01:21:44,958
Probably not plastics not going to
595
01:21:44,958 --> 01:21:46,541
persist for 100 million years. It's going
596
01:21:46,541 --> 01:21:48,041
to get subducted into the crust of the
597
01:21:48,041 --> 01:21:50,291
Earth and turned back into hydrocarbons,
598
01:21:50,291 --> 01:21:54,500
then spewed back out. But you know, I
599
01:21:54,500 --> 01:21:57,166
would I would hesitate to guess that that
600
01:21:57,166 --> 01:21:59,875
the vast majority of humans footprint on
601
01:21:59,875 --> 01:22:01,541
the planet will be gone 100 years,
602
01:22:01,541 --> 01:22:02,208
million years. Yeah, that's true. That's true.
603
01:22:02,250 --> 01:22:06,166
We may leave some fossils behind and
604
01:22:06,166 --> 01:22:07,916
there may be a few remnants. Yeah.
605
01:22:08,833 --> 01:22:11,458
Species rarely persist that long. True.
606
01:22:11,833 --> 01:22:13,625
True. It's it's a that's a long time.
607
01:22:13,625 --> 01:22:16,000
We're looking at it like that's a very,
608
01:22:16,000 --> 01:22:18,333
very long time. But this is great. And
609
01:22:18,333 --> 01:22:20,208
that I like starting that made. Sorry, go
610
01:22:20,208 --> 01:22:21,875
ahead. That I think that's a great start.
611
01:22:21,875 --> 01:22:23,916
And that also leads us into our second
612
01:22:23,916 --> 01:22:26,000
story. So if we want to, I don't know,
613
01:22:26,000 --> 01:22:28,208
pause and then kick off the next episode.
614
01:22:28,208 --> 01:22:29,958
Yeah, we can do that. We can do we can
615
01:22:29,958 --> 01:22:31,583
do. No, no, we can do to a will what
616
01:22:31,583 --> 01:22:32,208
we'll do is we'll answer that.
617
01:22:32,250 --> 01:22:34,583
And it here for the first story and then
618
01:22:34,583 --> 01:22:37,375
tune in soon. I don't know if we'll do
619
01:22:37,375 --> 01:22:39,291
this every other week or for the world.
620
01:22:39,583 --> 01:22:41,583
We'll worry. I'll let you know to the
621
01:22:41,583 --> 01:22:43,791
audience. I'll let you know when we'll be
622
01:22:43,791 --> 01:22:46,500
airing these. Let's just say Andrew has a
623
01:22:46,500 --> 01:22:48,500
lot of these stories, which I find if the
624
01:22:48,500 --> 01:22:50,250
first ones anything any indication is
625
01:22:50,250 --> 01:22:52,375
going to be great. So we'll end it here.
626
01:22:52,375 --> 01:22:53,583
Thank you so much. Andrew really
627
01:22:53,583 --> 01:22:55,875
appreciate it. And then we'll we're going
628
01:22:55,875 --> 01:22:56,750
to pause it. We're going to record
629
01:22:56,750 --> 01:22:58,541
another one and then we'll we'll see you
630
01:22:58,541 --> 01:22:59,208
in a bit. All right.
631
01:23:00,250 --> 01:23:02,291
Absolutely. Thank you so much. And this
632
01:23:02,291 --> 01:23:04,250
is going to be a fun absolutely looking
633
01:23:04,250 --> 01:23:06,125
forward to it. Thank you, Andrew, for
634
01:23:06,125 --> 01:23:08,208
joining us on today's episode of the how
635
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to protect the ocean podcast. It's always
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01:23:09,541 --> 01:23:11,375
great to have him on. He's a good friend
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of mine. We've known each other for over
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a decade. And every time he's on the
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podcast, every time I talk to him really,
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I'm impressed just with the knowledge
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that he has and the way he tells it.
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01:23:20,250 --> 01:23:22,166
he tells it. He is such a fun
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01:23:22,166 --> 01:23:24,375
storyteller. I love listening to
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everything he says about
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not only the deep sea but just science in
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01:23:27,916 --> 01:23:29,041
general and the ocean in
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01:23:29,041 --> 01:23:30,583
general. And it's great to have
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him on every time he's on. He's been on a
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lot and there's a reason
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for that because he can really
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tell stories very well and I love to hear
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it. And we get to chat before
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and after. A lot of the times
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it's one of those times where I'm on with
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a guest and it's one of
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01:23:45,250 --> 01:23:46,041
those times we're like hey maybe
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01:23:46,083 --> 01:23:47,666
we should record a podcast while we talk
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to each other. That tends to
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happen. So it's great to have
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01:23:53,083 --> 01:23:55,041
him on. I hope you enjoyed listening to
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01:23:55,041 --> 01:23:56,000
this. Let me know what you
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01:23:56,000 --> 01:23:57,250
think about this episode,
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01:23:57,250 --> 01:23:59,000
what you thought of the story. Hit me up
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01:23:59,000 --> 01:23:59,166
at
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01:23:59,166 --> 01:24:03,625
speakupforblue.feedback. That's speakupforblue.com
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01:24:04,000 --> 01:24:07,541
forward slash feedback speakupforblue.com
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01:24:07,541 --> 01:24:09,291
forward slash feedback. I'd
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01:24:09,291 --> 01:24:10,125
love to hear your thoughts.
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01:24:10,375 --> 01:24:11,500
You can leave a voicemail or you can
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01:24:11,500 --> 01:24:13,458
write it down. I just want
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01:24:13,458 --> 01:24:14,458
to get some I just want to get
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01:24:14,500 --> 01:24:16,208
feedback and I want to interact with you.
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01:24:16,208 --> 01:24:16,958
That's the whole point of
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this podcast. We start the
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01:24:18,041 --> 01:24:20,083
conversation on the podcast and then you
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01:24:20,083 --> 01:24:22,166
continue it through that feedback link.
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01:24:22,166 --> 01:24:23,375
So speakupforblue.com
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01:24:23,375 --> 01:24:25,041
forward slash feedback and of course
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01:24:25,041 --> 01:24:26,416
don't forget if you want to
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01:24:26,416 --> 01:24:29,625
hear this type of stories,
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01:24:31,041 --> 01:24:33,041
anything about the ocean, hit that follow
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01:24:33,041 --> 01:24:36,250
button so you get to hear next week's
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01:24:36,250 --> 01:24:36,958
episode. We're going
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01:24:36,958 --> 01:24:39,000
to start Monday and we go Monday,
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Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.
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So I want to thank you so much
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for joining me on today's episode of the
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01:24:44,375 --> 01:24:46,333
How to Protect the Ocean podcast. Have a
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01:24:46,333 --> 01:24:47,750
great day. We'll talk to you on Monday
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01:24:47,750 --> 01:24:48,958
and happy conservation.
