The Infinite Monkey Cage - The Infinite Monkey’s Guide to... Oceans

Episode Date: October 18, 2023

If there’s any doubt that the deep sea is as exciting to explore as the moon or Mars, this episode puts the question to rest, as Robin and Brian wade through the back catalogue to learn all about the ocean. Professor Lloyd Peck from the British Antarctic Survey tells them about the weird and wonderful creatures he’s encountered at sea, from rat-tailed fish to bacteria that feed off sulphides that could kill them, but Dave Gorman is still sceptical that it’s an environment worth investigating. And he's not the only one – fellow comedian Tim Minchin might live near Australia’s best beaches but says he’s terrified by the idea of getting in a submarine, let alone sharing such a small space with Brian Cox!Episodes featured: Series 6: Oceans: The Last Great Unexplored Frontier? Series 21: Coral Reefs Series 24: Exploring the DeepNew episodes will be released on Wednesdays, but if you’re in the UK, listen to new episodes, a week early, first on BBC Sounds: bbc.in/3K3JzyProducer: Marijke Peters Executive Producer: Alexandra Feachem

This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon Pull-Apart only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey, and just five bucks with a small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. As women, our life stages come with unique risk factors, like high blood pressure developed during pregnancy, which can put us two times more at risk of heart disease or stroke. Know your risks. Visit heartandstroke.ca Hello, I'm Robin Ince.

And I'm Brian Cox, and this is The Infinite Monkey's Guide To... Now, the bubble physicist Helen Chersky gets very annoyed when she hears people say that we know more about the moon than our oceans. Yeah, that's not right. Really? Yeah. You name one aquatic life form that lives on the moon. But it's not about that.

You've misunderstood. Prawns. Not more about... Squid. What, they live on the moon? No, in the ocean. So I've already said two things. Okay, fair enough.

Puffer fish. Yeah. This is still not an answer. Anyway, but you remember two things. Okay, fair enough. Pufferfish. Yeah, this is still not an answer. Anyway, but you remember at the Albert Hall, she was very angry, wasn't she, when she talked about it? Yes, although I challenged that. I think if you compiled an encyclopedia of the moon and an encyclopedia of the oceans, the encyclopedia of the oceans would be larger. It would contain more bits of information than the encyclopedia of the moon it's a magnificent mystery the ocean and it is not a failure of human exploration but a celebration of the complexity of evolution by natural selection today we offer an infinite monkey's guide to oceans which might include sea monkeys will include sea monkeys i don't think

they i did what's snorkeling simians sea monkeys to be honest any of you they include sea monkeys? I don't think they... Boy, it's snorkelling simians. Sea monkeys, to be honest, any of you ever purchased sea monkeys, what a rip-off. I think I can say that legally now. Anyway, where are we going to start? Here are Lloyd Peck, who's a scientist at the British Antarctic Survey, and Dave Gorman, who isn't, discussing the weirdest stuff of the deep. Now, perhaps weird's the wrong word, because it's weird to us,

but it's not weird to the creatures that live there. For long times there were the incredible mariner's tales of the bizarre creatures that lived in the sea and you would see them kind of, you know, giant octopus and like, and then there was a point where they went, this is all rubbish and then suddenly there was an investigation and people were going, we are finding some

really weird stuff out here. What point was this, well I suppose discovering life that people believed couldn't exist on the planet earth when was that the point of discovering that well that's a kind of progressive thing because it's one of those where if you go and look somewhere where you've not looked before you find things that you've not seen before so as we went the first time to the deep oceans we found animals that we didn't know existed and yes there are large squid living in the deep ocean there are large squid living in

the deep ocean there are some mega mouth sharks that live in the deep that have mouths big enough to encompass people we have some very bizarre animals rat tail fish and then if you go and look in places that are really well out of the way so in the antarctic you find fish that have no red blood cells they're the only vertebrates on the planet that if you cut them and drain their blood you have clear blood and yet they can still live. And that's because the temperatures are low. You have some really bizarre animals that you never realised existed. There are animals like wood lice that are 25, 30 centimetres long in the deep sea.

And yes, you have some bizarre animals. The more you look, the more you find. Deep sea hydrothermal vents, you find animals that just don't fit the patterns of life that you think even biochemically and they live in symbiosis and they've got bacteria feeding off hydrogen sulfides and yet if the hydrogen sulfides get into their own body tissues it kills them so they have this really interesting problem that they're closely dependent on on the bacteria that are living off something that's inimical to life there Sort of like Jordan and the tabloid press. Very much like Jordan and the tabloid press, that's right. Very much.

Which one's the sulphide-dependent bacteria? I understand biodiversity and how everything is interconnected, and when everyone says, oh, you know, the Siberian tiger might die out, and I understand the panic and trying to keep these things alive. But if the species that are living right at the very depth of the ocean were to die, our lives wouldn't be any different. So who gives a toss? You've made several assumptions there.

Yes, absolutely, yes. He's now currently in the Clarkson role of the show. Are we connected to them? Well, I'm loathe to use the word gratuitous in response to what you're saying but what you're saying is gratuitous if you think about the way the world works

I was trying but you've told me off and think about how important the oceans are. The oceans are the biggest mechanism for transferring heat around the planet and that happens because cold water at the pole sinks and drives a conveyor of major ocean currents. Now, the reason we are warmer than Canada is because of that system. The Gulf Stream keeps us several

degrees warmer than Canada because of that. If those organisms down there are to die, it's because those currents have stopped. And that's what happened the last time organisms died en masse down there, was the major ocean currents on the Earth stopped, we had huge anoxic layers in the deep sea oceans, there was no Gulf Stream. It got bloody cold. Coral reefs are also a barometer of the health and sustainability of our planet, something comedian Marcus Brigstock is very interested in. Here he is discussing surprising fish with Professor of Marine Conservation Callum Roberts. We do know that things are evolving quickly on the reef,

and one of the things which is incredibly potent as a selective force is predation. So reefs look like they're really benign places to to live and everything's bobbing around you know if you've watched finding nemo everyone's getting along incredibly well even even the predators and the prey and uh that's that's true if you look at the reef um there will be tiny little fish just dancing around within inches of the mouth of a huge grouper and the group is sitting there in its hole, eyeing it, but not really bothered to move. And you think, well, why is that?

Why doesn't this fish snap up these insolent little prey items? And the answer is that because the prey items know that the grouper is there, the grouper knows there's no point in it actually trying to catch them because they will lose. The prey will win so what you see is um this kind of illusion of a benign place a happy place but in fact acts of predation are incredibly quick and and fleeting so you can be down there for hours i've seen exactly that happen in a nightclub in Cardiff. Same system.

I'll stop there. I'm fascinated by that. And by some of the stuff you see on Reeve. I mean, look, I know it wasn't made for my benefit. But boxfish. How was there an evolutionary advantage to effectively becoming a slow-moving cube that's bright yellow that everything everything can see that doesn't really function like a fish does because it can't move its body properly it can only do its tail and and side fit i mean can

do jazz hands like you wouldn't believe but i cannot imagine when i look at them what was the evolutionary advantage of turning out like that and also for the audience listening on the radio like you wouldn't believe but i cannot imagine when i look at them what was the evolutionary advantage of turning out like that and also for the audience listening on the radio that was a superb thank you i did jazz hands down by my hips and did a bit of a shimmy and look yeah tried to look as cubic as possible yeah that i can pull off pretty easily but But I think, I mean, that is what has to happen on a reef, is that things have to get specialised into niches that you wouldn't have quite imagined that they could exist. I think Marcus is asking, what is the niche?

The niche is, firstly, they would get stuck in your throat because they're solid and they're square and they're not that tasty. And they're saying, by being not that tasty and they're saying by being unusually shaped and brightly coloured that that's a warning that you're not that good to eat now the blobfish won the ugly animal preservation society's ugliest animal award you made that up haven't you no it really does exist there's this terrible problem isn't there which is the ugly animal people aren't really bothered about conserving them but well as you know we did a show which i think in the end was called something like why do we care about pandas but the working title was a lot more expletive laden i think yeah because

you're not a blobfish they look fantastic and a panda they're they're lazy was it called pandas what the yeah yeah it's a little bit close to that i think as far as i remember we changed it to should we pander to pandas but yeah the blobfish is such a fascinating well also because i think it's very unfair don't you because we see the blobfish when they place it like a sample when it's being fished out of the water and it looks very different doesn't it when it's actually in the deep yeah we took you from the depths and then brought you very quickly to the surface didn't let you exhale and then took a picture of you'd look weird i'm not doing that again by the way because

i think that's what made me so weird in the first place in exploring the deep marine biologist dr diva amon told us a little about other fascinating pinups of the peculiar mating anglerfish and sea pigs sea pigs are fascinating and considerably better than sea monkeys. It's amazing that you can teach them to dive. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's complicated, you know. The deep ocean is dark and it's just an absolutely massive place. So it can be quite difficult to find a mate.

So instead of sporting a luminescent lure like the female does, So instead of sporting a luminescent lure like the female does, male anglerfish have massive eyes and massive nostrils to help them seek out their ladies. And the ladies can actually be up to 60 times larger than the males. So then when a lucky male does find a female, he becomes so, you know, taken with her incredible scent and her overwhelming charisma and her incredible looks that he just bites her. And when he bites her, it triggers a hormonal reaction that causes his lips to fuse to the side of her body. And then his organs begin dissolving. Right.

And his circulatory system fuses with hers. And eventually he becomes nothing more than a dangling testes on the female side. He basically just gives her sperm whenever she needs it. And she gives him everything he needs to stay alive is it possible that there are big things down there amongst the unknowns i mean how big are we talking giant squid giant squid level not not dinosaurs i mean i'm interested i think what brian's trying to say is is it possible that there are ghosts down there? Because it does seem, you know, it's below the twilight zone.

It does seem highly likely. Sorry, Rob. That is what you were trying to say, wasn't it? It's possible that there's goats down there. Oh, well, goats as well. Spider goats. There's not going to be goats. Goats are amazing and they go anywhere,

but there's not going to be goats down there, mate. We're joking about this, but John and I have actually seen pigs down in the deep sea. Yes. Oh. Yeah. We're joking about this, but John and I have actually seen pigs down in the deep sea. This is where the show was meant to get to. Tell us more about the sea pigs. No, actually it wasn't even sea pigs, we mean land pigs. I just know this is a lie because you try and stop a pig from drinking for 18 hours and they just won't do it. So very quickly, the deep sea is a really food limited

environment. So what happens is sometimes you get these really big injections of food in the deep sea. So it could be a tree that floats out to sea and sinks or a whale, for instance, that dies and sinks into the deep ocean. And that prompts us feeding bonanza on the deep sea floor because animals come from far and wide to just gorge on what has arrived. So we were in Kingston, Jamaica, getting on a ship to go out to the Cayman Trench to look for the world's deepest hydrothermal vents. And we decided, hey, why don't we just sink some animals, dead animals, obviously. And so we went to the butchers in, no, it was Montego Bay, went to the butchers in Montego Bay and just ordered some pigs, some foal pigs and we strapped them onto the RV. They were called Petunia and Princess and we left them

down on the deep sea floor to see what would come to eat them. I remember when we were talking a while ago about how, because you've gone down quite deep into the ocean, haven't you? You've gone on... Yeah, on the Alvin submersible. And we went down to see hydrothermal vents off Baja, California. I think it was about more than two kilometres down. It's a remarkable thing as you descend because you realise that after just a few tens of metres,

it's pitch black. So you can't see anything at all. And I suppose our picture of the deep sea, you imagine that there are things swimming around and you can see them. All you can see is bioluminescence unless you turn the lights on. So it's a remarkable dark and cold place

with very strange animals. How long does it take then to go down two kilometres? It took a long time, several hours, several hours to go down, several hours to come back. What was the first thing you thought that you'd just go, that's natural selection? You start to see these lights in the darkness and you realise that they're animals, they're sea creatures swimming around, essentially lit up like Christmas trees. It's absolutely bizarre. And then when you get down to the vents, in those vents of Baja California,

they're surrounded by mats of sulphur because of the bacteria that live off hydrogen sulphide. So they secrete yellow mats of sulphur around the vents. And of course you can't see it until you turn the lights on. You turn the lights on and you see colour. You see tube worms and shrimp i remember shrimp everywhere just yeah two kilometers down below the surface of the ocean so it's fascinating that creatures that we know of live down there and of course many creatures that we don't know of i would love to do that apart from you you weren't allowed to go to the

loo were you and you had to be dehydrated you can you can no yeah yeah and you're soggy you can't pop outside yeah yeah it's not like in space where it's just nice and easy then you just wee through that little hole doesn't it turns into ice crystals whereas uh if you know you don't open a little hole in the spacecraft no but there's that lovely story isn't there i forget which Apollo mission it was where some of the urine was let out and then i don't know how we've gotten to urine at this point i do apologize listeners but it's usually later and there were yeah yeah yeah normally it's a special late night edited version where we talk about different excretions in space but uh that moment where the the crystals of urine were

mistaken briefly for like what on earth is that incredible shower of light and they went oh it's the urine that's just frozen very, very quickly. Anyway, so that was my theory of why you see so many wonderful things in the deep is because you're dehydrated, you're desperate for a wee, and your mind's just making up any old rubbish. So I'm not entirely sure that I trust all of your flamboyant sea monsters that you came back telling me about. But Tim Minchin joined us to talk of deep sea exploration

and actually what prevents him from going so far down. Tim I know you you live near water don't you and uh and are you one of those are you an Australian who loves exploring the ocean are you a scuba diver? No I'm not a scuba diver because the lord didn't bless me with very good ear holes I snorkel with my kids a bit I live on a rocky bay called Gordon's Bay. I live right near there. Not very close, stalkers, just around that area. And I like, we snorkel, you know, there's a couple of big blue gropers who live there and we go looking for them. And I swim, I swim in the ocean. So I swim from Gordon's Bay to Coogee around the headland, or at least I did

until a week ago when someone got munched and now we're a bit nervous about it. Have you... I mean, obviously, Brian's got so much wealth that he can get in a little submarine whenever he wants, really. Have you been off with that chance? Have you had the chance to go deeper into the ocean? To go into a small submarine with Brian Cox? Yeah.

A submarine is one of the few small spaces that Brian has not invited me into. LAUGHTER How dare you? None of my spaces are that small. LAUGHTER I find the idea of submarines utterly terrifying, which is, I guess, absurd, because it's just a plane with water on top of it i mean

it's you know you're just as screwed if your plane doesn't work but uh yeah it scares the crap out of me i just want to pay tribute to the professionalism of robin's interviewing where his intro to you tim was now you live near water don't you but he does not everyone lives near water let's make this clear some people live by the seaside, not everyone lives near water. Let's make this clear, some people live by the seaside but not everyone lives by the seaside. I'd say most people live near water Robin, I'd say that's probably the primary attribute of

sapiens or all animals is that they live near water. You're quite right you are always near water because you yourself are predominantly water. So I should have said, Tim, you're predominantly made up of water, do you like it or do Tim, you're predominantly made up of water. Do you like it or do you wish you were drier? That would be good.

We'll probably stick that question in instead. Tim, you're really deep. You could have gone with that. That's what I would have done. Right at the beginning, we talked about the idea that we know more about the moon than the seas. But what about knowing more about Mars than we know about the seas of Earth? So what I mean is the amount of unknown knowledge,

unknown knowns, unknown knowns. So in terms of unknown unknowns and known unknowns, Mars versus the oceans, go. There's a great deal of interest in Mars now. We've got a lot of missions on the surface of Mars as we speak and in orbit around Mars. Because we want to piece together the history of that planet, because early in its life, so around the same time that life was beginning here on Earth, Mars was Earth-like, by which I mean it had liquid water on the surface, potentially oceans, rivers. So the conditions for the origin

of life were, as far as we know, present on Mars at the same time as life began here on Earth. And so that's why we're particularly interested in Mars. The oceans are, I'm going to say, easier to explore. That would be doing a disservice to ocean exploration. It's very hard to explore the bottom of the deep oceans, but it's also very hard to explore Mars. They are both filled with tantalising questions. Good. I think we can say that they both have enough quandaries to remain truly fascinating. It takes longer to go down to the floor of the deepest oceans and back again

than it does to go to the International Space Station and back. Put it that way. I know, that's amazing, isn't it? And it's that moment, isn't it, that's to the International Space Station and back. Put it that way. I know, that's amazing, isn't it? Again, and it's that moment isn't it, that's why the moment we find on any other kind of extraterrestrial body, any form of life, then the number of

questions, the speed of the number of questions that will be generated, I just think is remarkable. And of course we don't know. I mean, you said when, I mean, it really is if. Even on Mars it looks like everything was there but it's still a big if. Did life begin? And if so, how? What does it look like? What does it look like, Robin?

I remember it from Robinson Crusoe on Mars, starring Adam West from TV's Batman. It was actually a barren of life, and perhaps we could have just left it there. Once you've sent Adam West to Mars, that's enough, isn't it? He found no life on Mars. No life on Mars, yeah. But then again, of course, as we know from Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds, the chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one, they say. But it turned out that despite it being a million to one,

there was a terrible invasion. And much of Kent and Suffolk was very badly damaged by it. Don't we need to put a disclaimer on it? Because you did that in your newsreader voice. Yeah, well, do you know what? I'm trying to get more listeners by creating that Orson Welles panic that, of course, happened in 1940,

whatever it was. Anyway, so here are Lloyd Peck, who we've met already, and a man that we were sold by his agent as being half apple and half human, Bramley Merton. He's a professor of marine geology. He's not half human, half apple.

Oh, I thought he was half apple because there was some kind of bobbing element that was used in his exploration. So his head is an apple. It's less dense than water's. He's a dream of Magritte's. For some reason, the BBC don't like our references to surrealist artists. They say that our core demographic won't understand

them, but we think it will. Core demographic. Oh, core demographic, an accidental pun. Anyway, here are bramley merton and lloyd peck explaining the difficulties of ocean exploration compared to space exploration this is a really weird thought but actually our planet is one of the darkest planets in the solar system right because there's no light down there this is something i tell my students we've got 70 of the planet covered in ocean and you can't see anything. It's easy for Brian with his telescope to look up and go, oh, look, there's the moon, there are craters.

It is infinitely big, though, the universe. But you can see it. The ocean is finite. There are photons buzzing around and bringing you information. But the bottom of the ocean is absolutely dark, and it's black, and you can't see anything. And the pressure's down there. Space travels a doddle.

You've only got one atmosphere different. It's never been this aggressive before. It's never used to just be nice. I'll tell you what, looking at a telescope or whatever you do at CERN, that's easy. The sea's just packed with stuff that we can't see. It's dark and mysterious. And there's things with old teeth that are very bitey.

But you're floating around in a spacecraft made of tinfoil. You know, we've got Jim Cameron just recently went down to the bottom of the atmosphere. Or clean film. Everyday household appliances are sufficient to explore the universe. His sub-room is like a foot thick of titanium, poor soul I mean, he's got to go down The pressure's there will crush him to the size of a peanut if it goes wrong You say that James Cameron says he's been exploring the oceans

And I think, hang on, a lot of his friends are into special effects Did he really do that? Well, that's a good question The Infinite Monkey Cage episodes we took all of these clips from are available on BBC Sounds and the Infinite Monkey Cage back catalogue. Next week, the Infinite Monkey's Guide 2 is an Infinite Monkey's Guide to being human. I don't know anything about that.

No, no, no, of course you don't, of course you don't. But you're meant to know, you're meant to have been programmed to believe that you know about what it is to be human. You are a real boy. He's not. Join us with Professor Alice Roberts, Dave Gorman, Ross Noble, David Baddiel and lots more. Goodbye. In the infinite monkey cage. The naughty monkey. In the infinite monkey cage. Without your trousers. In the infinite monkey cage. Turned out nice again. And if you enjoyed our show, here's another podcast that you might enjoy. It's called Nature Bang.

Nature Bang. Hello. Hello. And welcome to Nature Bang. I'm Becky Ripley. I'm Emily Knight. And in this series from BBC Radio 4, we look to the natural world to answer some of life's big questions.

Like how can a brainless slime mold help us solve complex mapping problems? And what can an octopus teach us about the relationship between mind and body? It really stretches your understanding of consciousness. With the help of evolutionary biologists. I'm actually always very comfortable comparing us to other species. Philosophers. You never really know what it could be like to be another creature. Andophers. You never really know what it could be like to be another creature. And spongologists. Is that your job title? Are you a spongologist? Well, I am in certain spheres. It's science meets storytelling, with a philosophical twist. It really gets to the heart of free will and what it means to be you.

So if you want to find out more about yourself via cockatoos that dance, frogs that freeze, and single cell amoebas that design border policies, subscribe to Nature Bang from BBC Radio 4, available on BBC Sounds. Bye. Pull apart only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey, and just five bucks with a small coffee all day long. Tax is extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply.