Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to Sorta Sophisticated with Pete and Amanda. So I love, like, my algorithm on my TikTok account now.
It has absolutely no idea what to show me anymore, because ever since we started this whole podcast thing that we're doing here, like, because we're so random with our topics, it can't figure me out. Like, which I think is absolutely sounds
[00:00:22] Speaker B: like every other person on this planet.
[00:00:23] Speaker A: No, but I think, like, most people have curated experiences on TikTok. I get them random as shit.
[00:00:28] Speaker B: Was this, like, the inspo for the episode today?
[00:00:30] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:00:30] Speaker B: This is where it's going.
[00:00:31] Speaker A: Of course. Okay.
[00:00:32] Speaker B: I'm excited where this is going.
[00:00:33] Speaker A: Of course you are. So I'm scrolling through some shit from. I guess something called Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution comes up.
[00:00:41] Speaker B: Yeah, I've never heard of this in my life. It's like, we just have curated feeds.
[00:00:45] Speaker A: It's like NASA for space. But this is, like, underwater shit. Yeah, Ocean stuff. Yeah. And they have this whole exhibit running in New York right now called the Twilight Zone. Hidden Wonders of the Ocean.
[00:00:54] Speaker B: Huh. Okay.
[00:00:56] Speaker A: Right.
[00:00:56] Speaker B: So not like, doo doo doo doo
[00:00:57] Speaker A: doo doo doo doo, maybe sort of like. No, not like the television series, but it's still doo doo doo doo doo doo doo. Oh, so it's an actual real place under the ocean. They've named it the Twilight Zone. No bullshit.
[00:01:09] Speaker B: What? Yeah, Like. Okay, I'm interested.
[00:01:12] Speaker A: The Bermuda Triangle.
[00:01:13] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[00:01:13] Speaker A: Okay. This is actually called the Twilight Zone.
[00:01:15] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:01:15] Speaker A: This is a legit layer in the ocean. Apparently, every single night, this absolutely massive migration happens in the ocean. We don't know anything about.
[00:01:25] Speaker B: Well, we don't know lots about the ocean because the ocean's so freaking bad.
[00:01:28] Speaker A: This is why this was so amazing to me. So thank you, TikTok. Right. So fun fact. It's actually considered the largest migration on planet Earth.
[00:01:37] Speaker B: I mean, fair enough.
[00:01:38] Speaker A: Every time this happened. Yeah. This is where we're going. Right, right. But since it's out of sight, out of mind. Happened solely in the dark, literally. Trillions of. Of little fishy sea creature. Trillions. With a T.
Trillions are migrating every single night.
[00:01:51] Speaker B: Huh.
[00:01:52] Speaker A: In and out of the Twilight Zone.
[00:01:55] Speaker B: That's weird.
[00:01:56] Speaker A: Up from the abyss.
[00:01:57] Speaker B: This is so random. Absolutely.
[00:01:59] Speaker A: Hundreds of feet. They're moving up from the. Yeah. To the surface. To eat.
[00:02:02] Speaker B: To the surface.
[00:02:02] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
[00:02:03] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:02:03] Speaker A: They're like fucking vampires.
[00:02:04] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:02:05] Speaker A: Well, not all the way up to the surface. Up to, like, the next zone. Anyway, naturally I have to go learn everything about this because that's how I roll. So here we are. This is the podcast episode.
So official title is the largest migration you've never heard of 100 fathoms down. You're like fathoms?
[00:02:20] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:02:20] Speaker A: You like that, right? That's like a C terminology. Fathom is six feet. So, like at least 600ft down. But anyway, here's our promise for today. First, why the most common animal with a backbone on our planet isn't people or chickens. I would have thought it was something. Okay, it's a fish the size of your finger that you've never heard of that we're gonna.
[00:02:37] Speaker B: A grunion.
[00:02:38] Speaker A: No, we're gonna get there already.
[00:02:39] Speaker B: Just kidding.
[00:02:40] Speaker A: Okay, second, one of the coolest fun facts ever.
So you can basically flex on all your friends and explain how the US Navy basically found an oscillating sea floor that moved up and down every day for, like, no apparent reason. What's that all about? Yes, that's what we're gonna talk about. That's the Twilight Zone. And finally, we're gonna tell you why your sushi only exists because of the Twilight Zone and why fishing boats are already down there scooping up everything before anybody really knows what's going to happen to it. So stay tuned. We have our global warming issue. We have our Twilight Zone issue.
[00:03:14] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:03:14] Speaker A: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Welcome back to Source Fist. Doomed, right? The podcast where culture, curiosity and chaos collide. I'm Pete. That's Amanda. Amanda, what are we drinking today? I haven't drank here in a while.
[00:03:24] Speaker B: Tonic ginger water.
[00:03:26] Speaker A: Okay, whatever.
I need to get back to doing this at like 7pm when I had an excuse to drink. But now we're after now. Now we're afternooners. You know what I mean? So it's not the same. Maybe it's second half of this episode. I'll put down a few.
[00:03:40] Speaker B: Is our word of the week sober?
[00:03:42] Speaker A: Should be. No, we already know that word. Okay, Our word of the week is. Oh, my God. I don't even know if I'm gonna say this right. Perseverate.
[00:03:49] Speaker B: Perseverate. Perseverate to sever severely.
[00:03:53] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:03:54] Speaker B: I don't know.
[00:03:54] Speaker A: It's exactly right. It's like chopping off your arm.
[00:03:57] Speaker B: No, it's not.
[00:03:57] Speaker A: Chopping off your nose. Despite your face.
Separate. No, it means you get stuck on something that your brain can't let go. Oh, you keep repeating the same thought or repeating the same behavior for way too long. Right. When you're obsessed. I perseverate all the fucking time, Amanda. This is what I do. With my life.
[00:04:13] Speaker B: That's what we're talking about. The Twilight Zone in the ocean.
[00:04:15] Speaker A: That was a good one. It comes from the Latin perseverare, which means to persist or to keep going. In the early 1900s, psychologists started using it for people who get stuck in a loop and can't move on to the next thing. I swear to God, this is explaining so much about me right now.
I. I can't even believe I'm saying that out loud. That's weird. Okay. Perseverate is sort of like persevere, but like, on crack, like, even more so.
[00:04:37] Speaker B: So isn't that more of a positive thing because you.
[00:04:39] Speaker A: Well, persevere is a positive thing, but when you take anything, when you.
[00:04:42] Speaker B: Too far.
[00:04:42] Speaker A: Too far. Okay, so you persevere. I perseverate. Therein lies the distinction between Amanda and Peter.
[00:04:51] Speaker B: Well, and for the rest of the.
[00:04:52] Speaker A: Probably why we're both great co hosts here.
[00:04:53] Speaker B: Well, and that's probably why we even have a podcast, because what are you going to do? I would probably.
[00:04:57] Speaker A: You'd persevere.
[00:04:58] Speaker B: I don't know.
[00:04:59] Speaker A: I would be obsessive.
[00:05:00] Speaker B: But this is why we still have it, because you are a little too obsessive.
[00:05:03] Speaker A: Yeah, but, like, maybe for this, but for other things, it's really bad. Oh, my God. Okay. If you like what you're listening to, hit subscribe. Follow us. We need listeners. We need all the things, because we love you and this is super fun for us. We want to keep doing it. Okay, where should we start? With the Twilight Zone.
[00:05:15] Speaker B: Like, quick version? Yeah, let's.
[00:05:17] Speaker A: Let's just get.
[00:05:17] Speaker B: What is it? Where is it?
[00:05:19] Speaker A: How does it move more like. Let's get to the middle of it, not the bottom of it. Okay.
[00:05:23] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:05:23] Speaker A: Basically, scientists split the ocean into layers.
[00:05:25] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:05:26] Speaker A: Okay. So like a cake. If you didn't learn anything else from this whole podcast episode, this little section is enough. I didn't even know we separated shit into zones and layers. Anyway, the top layer is called the sunlit zone.
[00:05:37] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:05:37] Speaker A: The sunlit zone that goes from the surface down to about 650ft fathoms. Real quick. 100 fathoms.
[00:05:43] Speaker B: Yes. Okay.
[00:05:44] Speaker A: Okay. I mean, that makes sense. I get it. Like, that's how far this is below our first layer. Yeah, this is gonna be below that layer. Right. Sunlight. Layers first. That's where light reaches. That's pretty much like, where everything lives ever that, you know, whales, dolphins, sharks. All the things. All the reasons I don't go into the ocean. That's pretty much why. Right. That layer okay.
[00:06:00] Speaker B: All the animals that need to have light to survive.
[00:06:03] Speaker A: Yes, yes. Go to the Long Beach Aquarium. Walk around Long Beach Aquarium. All those. Most of them, except when you own the dark room, but you get the idea. Okay. Then all the way at the bottom of the ocean, you have what's called the Midnight Zone.
[00:06:13] Speaker B: Very simple, like the Dark Zone, Right?
[00:06:15] Speaker A: Very sophisticated name. Yes, yes. Right, right, right. Go. Finding Nemo. Shit. Right? Like. Okay, that's all the freaky shit. Big teeth, right?
[00:06:21] Speaker B: All that kind of.
[00:06:22] Speaker A: Right, yeah, yeah.
[00:06:23] Speaker B: Light bulbs evolve.
[00:06:25] Speaker A: Well, scary, scary shit down there. I don't even wanna know what the fuck is down there. Okay, then you have the in between zone. The zone from 650ft down to 3,300ft. And that is what they call the Twilight Zone.
[00:06:37] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:06:38] Speaker A: Every time I say the Twilight Zone, I want you to go, da, na, na, na. Yes. This is good. Okay, well, technically, scientists have a real name for this. This is actually called the mesopelagic zone. I don't know if I butchered that, but only sophisticated people can pronounce that right. So they nicknamed it the Twilight Zone. For real? That's not a joke. Cause it's not midnight black, but it's also not like a ton of sunlight. So it's like right in the middle. It's like twilight. It's like twilight. Literally, like at night. Cause we really only have twilight at night for like, what, 10 minutes? Twilight is not long at night. Like when the sun is going down. We call it sunset. There's a very, very, very small amount of twilight.
[00:07:09] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:07:10] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:07:10] Speaker B: Okay. Anyway, so would we say that this is like the middle child?
[00:07:13] Speaker A: Why is everything to you? Like psychology? Yes. This is perfect. This is the middle child of the ocean.
[00:07:18] Speaker B: So it's craving attention.
[00:07:19] Speaker A: Yeah, you. Yes, it desperately. And we.
[00:07:22] Speaker B: We don't give it away.
[00:07:23] Speaker A: We've done our digging and we are bringing that. We are bringing it to light. We are bringing the middle child to light. Yes, that's exactly what's going on. What's doing. It's holding the whole ocean together.
[00:07:33] Speaker B: Probably.
[00:07:34] Speaker A: It is at. Well, it's the middle layer.
[00:07:35] Speaker B: I mean, it's like when it's a cake, right? You have your cake, you have the cream, and you have the cake. The cream holds two together.
[00:07:40] Speaker A: This is like the cream and the Oreo cookie.
[00:07:41] Speaker B: Oh, here we go.
[00:07:42] Speaker A: This is like me being middle child. My family holding it all together. Let's go.
[00:07:45] Speaker B: So why is it so. So awesome?
[00:07:47] Speaker A: Okay, here's what's going on.
[00:07:48] Speaker B: All right. Here. Still blows my mind Your middle child. But anyways, continue.
[00:07:50] Speaker A: Well, I'm one of two middle children.
[00:07:51] Speaker B: That's true.
[00:07:52] Speaker A: It's still very first thing that happens. Like, color starts changing. Okay. Which makes sense. But I never really thought about. Here's the thing. That's so cool.
[00:07:59] Speaker B: It's like, ingredient, right? Because light.
[00:08:02] Speaker A: I didn't know that. So my point is.
[00:08:03] Speaker B: Well, that's what black and white is.
[00:08:05] Speaker A: I'm with you. I totally get you. But my point is, you don't think about that on a regular, daily basis. So why I love doing this podcast is because then when I start researching this, I'm like, oh, yeah, duh, that makes sense. Like, and then so I recall something super cool. So I'll just go through it real quick. So, like, water eats red first. That's why water's blue. Like, red goes away. Like, really, really, really quick. Okay. Like, first 30ft or something. It's gone.
[00:08:24] Speaker B: Color theory, y'. All. Color theory.
[00:08:26] Speaker A: Okay, thank you. Apparent. My brother told me this because when he, like, would cut himself. He's a diver. My brother's like a super.
[00:08:31] Speaker B: Oh, I didn't know that.
[00:08:32] Speaker A: Serious diver.
[00:08:32] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:08:33] Speaker A: Yeah. Shout out to Dave. Lobster diving, everything. Like, like, whatever. Badass.
[00:08:37] Speaker B: Fun fact about Dave, when he cuts
[00:08:39] Speaker A: himself, he's cut himself. The blood doesn't look red.
[00:08:41] Speaker B: So Jaws lied to us.
[00:08:43] Speaker A: Jaws sniffs it out. Dude, they smell that shit. They don't sniff it.
[00:08:46] Speaker B: No, but like in the movie, it's all red.
[00:08:48] Speaker A: Oh, they do that for us, right? No, he says it looks green.
[00:08:51] Speaker B: Weird.
[00:08:52] Speaker A: But sharks don't care because sharks just smell blood. And they're like, you're gonna die anyway. Again, reason why I don't go in there, but okay. Then it just follows the rainbow. So, like, orange goes next, then yellow goes, then green. And by the time you get down to the Twilight zone, around that 650ft, only thing left is this dim, dim, deep blue. And then eventually that even fades out down at 3,300ft. And then you get into the midnight zone. That makes sense so far. So that's. That's like what's happening sort of just color wise. Then the second thing that's going on in this zone is pressure. Right. I'm sure you learned all this in school and everything. Yes, I get it. But for, like, every 33ft you go down, they. It's called, like, an atmosphere of pressure, which adds about 14.7 pounds per square inch to you, like, as you go down. Right? So the bottom of the Twilight Zone, you've got a hundred Times the amount of pressure that you're feeling right now. Like, sitting. Like, we're here in this podcast, just sitting here. Imagine a hundred pounds. We. We would. We'd be dead. We're dead. Like, if we wouldn't even. 1400 pounds of pressure per square inch of our body. Not like, 1400 pounds altogether. 1400 per square inch. Like, on your nipple, you would have, like, a cow sitting on your nipple. And then on your other nipple, you would have a cow, assuming you have two nipples. And then, like, on your nose, you would have another cow. Like, are you getting the idea?
[00:10:00] Speaker B: Yes. But you think about that, right? And then you think about everyone who went down into that, like, submersible that exploded.
[00:10:05] Speaker A: The Titan. They were probably trying to find the Twilight. They probably missed the Twilight Zone altogether. Why are we talking about that? Oh, my God. RIP everybody. God bless you.
[00:10:14] Speaker B: Think about how quickly they're so desperate to, like, go adventuring. Right? Or to see things. I know they went down to go see the Titanic, but with that much pressure.
[00:10:25] Speaker A: I know.
[00:10:26] Speaker B: And somehow you're able to, like, keep something pressurized or. I don't know. That's crazy.
[00:10:32] Speaker A: Queen and David Bowie sang a song about it under pressure coming down on you. Okay, sorry. All right. Where was I? Okay, but, like, you think it's, like, this thin little line. Like, it's not. It's massive. This runs, like, every ocean on our entire Earth.
[00:10:49] Speaker B: But wouldn't that make sense? Because every ocean has to, like.
[00:10:51] Speaker A: I love the way you, like, you, like, minimize what.
[00:10:54] Speaker B: I don't know.
[00:10:54] Speaker A: Like, maybe because I research it first, so I'm like, oh, my God. It blows my mind away. Yes, you're absolutely right. Of course. Duh. It makes sense. But it's still amazing to think about.
[00:11:02] Speaker B: Well, yes. I mean, the Earth is amazing.
[00:11:03] Speaker A: There's this whole section of our world that is massive that we're not paying any attention to, which I think is unbelievable, because scientists, for centuries. Amanda. Assumed it was absolutely empty. Too dark and too cold. Too much pressure. Nothing could live down there. Like. Like a. Like a barren desert.
[00:11:20] Speaker B: Okay, Right.
[00:11:20] Speaker A: Like, that's what they thought, but it turned out to be total bullshit. And the way they figured it out, Amanda, is the reason why we're doing the episode today.
[00:11:28] Speaker B: Okay, so how did the Navy figure it out?
[00:11:30] Speaker A: Here's a G code. This is it. It's World War II.
[00:11:33] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:11:33] Speaker A: Okay. 1942. The Navy just developed sonar. Do we know how sonar works?
[00:11:38] Speaker B: Ding.
[00:11:39] Speaker A: Okay, we know how sonar works. That's it. Okay. Basically, you send the ding or the bing down into the water, it bounces off something and you time how long it takes to come back. And there you go, you know how deep something is. That's how they figured out how many fathoms down all this shit is. So they start using this, and they're mapping the whole ocean floor, and something weird starts happening. The sonar keeps finding the bottom of the ocean, around 1,000 to 1,500ft deep, in places where they already knew the ocean was miles deep. So they had already mapped that part of the ocean. But when they're going back over there to do some work, they're like, why is the ocean now saying the floor is a lot higher than we thought it was? You with me?
[00:12:16] Speaker B: Somewhere so weird.
[00:12:16] Speaker A: Yes. Okay. So maybe they're like, okay, theories start popping up. Underwater islands, maybe some underwater mountains that they hadn't figured out. Yeah, like, whatever. Maybe not islands, but, like mountains. Right. That they hadn't mapped before. Okay. Who knows? But. But here's where it gets weird. This is not just in one spot. They start noticing everywhere, like all over the globe. These sonar operators couldn't figure it out, and they thought this sonar technology was broken. I'm not making any of this up. Like, Amanda, you can find all this shit online. This is exactly how this went down. And they started figuring it out, like, right down the coast from us in good old San Diego, California, is where the shit hit the fan. Finally, a Navy ship called the USS Jasper is doing this sonar work. And they noticed that during the day, this fake floor is pretty deep, somewhere around like a thousand feet or so. But then at night, the floor moves up, like, way up. Sometimes just a few hundred feet from the surface.
[00:13:05] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:13:06] Speaker A: And then right before morning, it goes back down again.
[00:13:08] Speaker B: Weird. So it's not a floor?
[00:13:10] Speaker A: It's not a floor. It's a false floor. So the.
[00:13:12] Speaker B: How do you have a false floor?
It's all the animals.
[00:13:16] Speaker A: Yes, correct. It's all the animals. So the scientist named Martin Johnson.
[00:13:19] Speaker B: So it's so dense that the sonars are.
[00:13:21] Speaker A: Oh, my God. You're like. You just. You just, like, debunked my whole thing. Yes, that's absolutely right. Okay, so this guy, Martin Johnson, civilian guy who. Who like the Navy used for all this weird shit like this, figures out that it is absolutely. What you just said. Animals so thick and so packed together that bouncing off them sounded like it was solid ground. Wild shrimp, jellyfish, squid. But mostly these little tiny things called lanternfish. And turns out lanternfish have these little air bladders. Inside of them. And those air bladders reflect sound perfectly.
I guess, to be fair, a lot of fish have air bladders. My point is there are so many lanternfish packed in there that it made the sound super easy to bounce off of.
[00:14:01] Speaker B: So basically, the Navy was pinging sounds off of trillions of fish.
[00:14:06] Speaker A: Trillions of fish. That's exactly it.
[00:14:08] Speaker B: But across the whole globe.
[00:14:09] Speaker A: Na, na, na. Now, you know. Yes. They ended up naming it the deep scattering layer of all things. Go figure. A very sophisticated term. The deep scattering layer. And I mean, it's still there. I mean, obviously, but every ship with sonar to this day still sees it every day right now. So they know to ignore it. Yeah. Which I think is fascinating.
[00:14:25] Speaker B: But anyway, that's kind of wild to think about. My brain is wrapping its little mind around this.
[00:14:30] Speaker A: Okay, see, so. So this is kind of cool.
[00:14:31] Speaker B: It is cool.
[00:14:32] Speaker A: Okay, fine.
[00:14:33] Speaker B: But like, because you said it's around the world.
[00:14:35] Speaker A: It is around the world. Yes.
[00:14:37] Speaker B: But like, it has to be in pockets of places. It can't be like this whole layer. Yes, it is around the world.
Moves up and down every day.
[00:14:45] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:14:46] Speaker B: Like, it's not like clusters of lantern fish here and a cluster over here.
[00:14:49] Speaker A: No, it's a wave. No, I mean, I'm sure there's certain parts where it's a little more dense than other parts. Of course. Right. Based on, like, where they are in the ocean and currents and all that kind of shit. But for the most part, imagine your cake in the middle of the cake and it's just.
It's oscillating, right?
[00:15:03] Speaker B: Yeah, Right.
[00:15:04] Speaker A: And some parts have a little less frosting and other parts have more frosting, but for the most part, there's frosting all in the middle of the cake.
[00:15:10] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:15:10] Speaker A: Yes, absolutely.
[00:15:11] Speaker B: That's crazy.
[00:15:12] Speaker A: It's just like the circle of life, but like underwater.
[00:15:14] Speaker B: Right. So why is it oscillating? Like, are they coming up to feed or is it a wave? Is it a current? Is it.
[00:15:19] Speaker A: Yes, it's mostly about food. Sorry. Yes, the whole idea is about food. I'm just saying, when you were saying, like, is it happening all over the earth at the same time? Not exactly, but yes, but this is all about. This is all about food. Because basically all the plankton, like, I mean, all the food lives up in the sunlit zone.
[00:15:33] Speaker B: Yeah, right.
[00:15:33] Speaker A: That's cut to shit. But plankton is there in abundance and that would. That's what these things eat. It's also where all the predators hang out too. So they gotta get up quick, eat Their food and get the fuck out of there before all the predators eat them. So it is a little bit of, like a. A circle of life.
[00:15:50] Speaker B: Can these lantern fish see?
[00:15:52] Speaker A: It's not just lantern fish. It's like all the fish. It's like everything, like I said, shrimp,
[00:15:55] Speaker B: jellyfish, everything that's in the middle layer. Can they see?
[00:15:58] Speaker A: They see. Ish. I mean, I'm assuming they have to see it to some degree because there's trillions of them. So what are they going to do? Bump into each other? I don't know. Like, there's. There's. There's eyes. There's fish eyes there. Of course.
[00:16:07] Speaker B: I was just wondering, like, going from the light to the dark, you know how that. Or the twilight to the light.
[00:16:11] Speaker A: No, no, no, no, no, no. Sorry. We have to say it every time.
Which is weird because, like, when you think about that's happening on a regular basis all over the planet at the same time, I think that's wild. Like, think about it for context here. Do you ever watch David Attenborough, the. The old man who Blue planet?
[00:16:26] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, yeah.
[00:16:26] Speaker A: Well, he does. He. He narrates these massive, you know, wildebeest migrations, and he talks all about them. He's got that super low, calming voice. So to give you context, wildebeest migration.
[00:16:37] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:16:37] Speaker A: Okay. Once a year. Mind you, once a year. Not every day.
[00:16:40] Speaker B: Right.
[00:16:40] Speaker A: Once a year, that happens. It's about a million and a half wildebeest that run through the desert to get from, like, point A to point B, wherever they're going to get to their new land. Okay, this, like I said, is literally trillions of sea creatures every single night. And, Amanda, they're not, what I say, like 3,300ft to 650ft. They are. I mean, you would argue some of them are traveling. Could be a thousand feet.
[00:17:03] Speaker B: It's crazy up.
[00:17:04] Speaker A: Think about how tiny these things are. They're like shrimp. Okay? A couple of millimeters long. I don't even know, whatever. Maybe an inch long. Whatever. You do the math. Okay.
Imagine if you're a human trying to do the same thing. Like, right, I'm just going to do some. Some quick math here. That is, like, if you or I had to travel 100 miles a day, it's crazy. To get food, and then 100 miles back so we could be safe again. And we have to do that every day.
[00:17:29] Speaker B: I wonder how long their little lives are. It's a life cycle.
[00:17:32] Speaker A: They can't possibly be long. What, do they have time for sex? I Mean, when are the time for
[00:17:35] Speaker B: procreate on the way?
[00:17:36] Speaker A: I know. This is all I ever think about. I get it.
[00:17:38] Speaker B: I'm a man.
[00:17:39] Speaker A: But. Right. They're doing it on the move, right? They gotta poop, they gotta do it. They gotta like. They gotta do everything all at the same time. I think about that.
I have run four marathons in my entire life. 26. A hundred miles. I've run 100 miles in my life. Well, I mean, you know, more than that.
[00:17:54] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Marathon miles. Yeah.
[00:17:56] Speaker A: Every day, dude. What do you want me to say? I think it's insane.
[00:18:00] Speaker B: How do they know that they need to go up? Like, is it just internal and like they just do it on their own or do they follow a beacon?
[00:18:08] Speaker A: It's God. It's God. They know they need their food. Right? Right.
[00:18:11] Speaker B: Okay. So it's just an internal thing they all know independently of each other.
[00:18:14] Speaker A: Oh, oh. Well, first of all, let's talk about energy and all that kind of stuff. Right? There's. We all have energy running through us. There's all this stuff. So there is. There is no. That's how fish school, right?
They, yes, independently, know shit. But let's cut to shit. They all have the energy fields and they're all going to some magnetic shit and you know what I mean, going with the flow of all that stuff. But the real way that it all works and everything is sort of like. What's the word? Bioluminescence.
[00:18:37] Speaker B: Okay, right.
[00:18:37] Speaker A: Bioluminescence. Right. So they make their own.
[00:18:39] Speaker B: The glowing of light.
[00:18:40] Speaker A: They are making their own light.
So. So the sunlit zone, animals don't make their own light. Anything in the twilight zone and anything in the midnight zone use bioluminescence.
[00:18:48] Speaker B: But how? Like, do you remember probably earlier this summer, you could go out to the beach, San Clemente. Yeah. And they would have.
[00:18:56] Speaker A: That's algae bloom. That's a little different.
[00:18:58] Speaker B: So they're not from the middle.
[00:18:59] Speaker A: No, no, no, no. That's algae bloom. That's different. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it is wild to think about that these animals can come up and create this. They're just farther out. They're not close enough to shore for you to see.
And fun fact, specifically out here in California, Monterey Bay Aquarium, they did this whole research on this specific thing and figured out three quarters of the fish in this twilight zone. I said twilight zone.
[00:19:20] Speaker B: Yes. You have to say thank you.
[00:19:24] Speaker A: Can you keep up, please? Okay.
[00:19:26] Speaker B: I'm just so invested.
[00:19:27] Speaker A: They have the ability to have bioluminescence. So a quarter of them don't but three quarters of them have the ability, which I think is also amazing because
[00:19:32] Speaker B: like a firefly or a mushroom.
[00:19:34] Speaker A: But that's all we have here. Like we have nothing else. What else do we have? That's it. You just named them.
[00:19:38] Speaker B: We don't have anything else like glow. No.
[00:19:40] Speaker A: And down there they have like a whole world of glowing things. I think we should advocate for more glowing things up here on earth.
[00:19:48] Speaker B: Man made them.
[00:19:49] Speaker A: Have you seen. When was the last time you saw a firefly?
[00:19:51] Speaker B: I don't know I've ever seen a real life firefly.
[00:19:52] Speaker A: Oh my God. My kids saw them recently. We went to Pittsburgh like a year or two ago for a wedding. They had never seen a firefly and I forgot to tell them about them. And we were just outside. They're like, what the hell is that, dad? I'm like, those are fireflies. They're like, what? And like so. Oh my God. Like remember we talked about wonder in our last episode? About what?
I saw Wonder in my 20 something year old kid's eyes. They were mind blown. It was unbelievable. Anyway, whatever. My point is they're super cool to look at, so we should have more of this shit. But anyway.
[00:20:16] Speaker B: But I'm sure they use that for like, I don't know, fight or flight.
[00:20:20] Speaker A: They use it for everything.
[00:20:22] Speaker B: It's kind of like when frogs are different colors. Don't eat me.
[00:20:25] Speaker A: All of their adaptive. It's all their camouflage. It's all bioluminescence is everything for me.
[00:20:31] Speaker B: You know what I just thought about?
[00:20:32] Speaker A: What?
[00:20:32] Speaker B: Okay, so in finding Nemo, when all of the fishes come together and they make the signs. Yes, right. And like spell out whatever. Is it the same thing? Do they like all group together and have a bunch of lights that they look like a bigger fish?
[00:20:44] Speaker A: It's exactly what they do. That is one of the tactics that they play around with for sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They do a lot of things actually. And you know why? To stay alive, they perseverate. That's what they're doing. There we go. Dun, dun, dun, dun. Just like that. We dropped it. Yes. It's either stay alive or it's to hunt. They're using it also to like eat, right?
[00:21:02] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:21:03] Speaker A: Or to alarm other fish. I mean those are like the three major things. Cause like, okay, think about the whole getting eaten thing, right?
[00:21:08] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:21:09] Speaker A: Shine their light really bright. If they're about to get eaten, it will tell all the other fish around them. Big fish right here, about to eat me. So you guys all scatter. So they sort of are giving themselves up for somebody else. Right. So it's an alarm system. That's one.
This one I thought was fascinating. They use bioluminescence to hide. So fish below them are looking up to eat them, and they can see the shadow through the dim, dim, dim sunlight. They can see the shadow of their fish.
They can change their light to match the light above them, so their shadow disappears.
[00:21:37] Speaker B: Oh, crazy.
[00:21:37] Speaker A: Which is wild, right? So that's the way they hide. It's called. It's a fancy word. It's called counter illumination, actually. And then some of them use the light to hunt because remember what I said about red? The color red, it goes away. So again, finding Nemo. These fish are able to use red. Like, they somehow make their bioluminescence red. So they can basically have, like. What is it? Like, X ray vision, night vision goggles, and they can see what's going on around them. And so those other fish that don't have that ability. Yeah, I know. So they can totally kill the other fish. I know. Okay. Remember the backbone thing I told you about?
[00:22:07] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:22:07] Speaker A: Where I said, like, there's something that has a backbone.
[00:22:09] Speaker B: That's the most common animal on the planet. On the planet.
[00:22:11] Speaker A: Right. Here we go. I just got to get to that fun fact because I thought that was super apropo, right now. Here it is. It's something called the bristlemouth fish. Have you ever seen the bristlemouth fish?
[00:22:19] Speaker B: No.
[00:22:19] Speaker A: Yes. This is where it lives. In the Twilight Zone.
[00:22:21] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:22:21] Speaker A: Scientists think they've estimated it. I don't know how they do this. Hundreds of trillions of them down there.
[00:22:27] Speaker B: They gotta be small.
[00:22:28] Speaker A: Hundreds of trillions.
[00:22:29] Speaker B: Are they microscopic?
[00:22:30] Speaker A: I don't know. No, no, no, no. They're small. Don't get me wrong. But, like. No, not microscopic. Yeah, so whatever. I'm. I don't know, A few. Maybe a centimeter.
[00:22:37] Speaker B: Sure. Okay.
[00:22:38] Speaker A: Yeah, we're gonna call it a centimeter long. Maybe a little less. I don't know.
[00:22:40] Speaker B: Okay, so why does any of this matter?
[00:22:42] Speaker A: Because we should care and be curious. This is the topic of our podcast episodes. That's why it matters.
[00:22:47] Speaker B: But does the Twilight Zone do something for us?
[00:22:50] Speaker A: Well, besides the weird shit that goes on down there, I think that is enough.
[00:22:53] Speaker B: Yeah. That doesn't do anything for us humans.
[00:22:55] Speaker A: Yes, it does.
[00:22:56] Speaker B: Or like our. Does it change our weather patterns?
[00:22:59] Speaker A: I'm answering your question. I'm gonna go for it.
[00:23:00] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:23:00] Speaker A: I have the answer.
[00:23:01] Speaker B: Okay, go.
[00:23:01] Speaker A: I looked it up. It's very sophisticated.
[00:23:03] Speaker B: Are you ready? Oh, Ready?
[00:23:04] Speaker A: They take out all our trash.
[00:23:05] Speaker B: What?
[00:23:06] Speaker A: They take out all our trash like
[00:23:07] Speaker B: they eat all of our garbage.
[00:23:08] Speaker A: They do? Yes. All the little fish that swim up and eat all night long and then swim back down. What do they have to do after they do that?
[00:23:14] Speaker B: They poop.
[00:23:14] Speaker A: They poop. Thank you very much. You know what? They poop. They poop. Carbon. All the carbon gets poop. All goes down to the bottom of the ocean. And then when they die, because a lot of them die, like you said. Oh, my God. How long do these fish live? They all go down to the bottom and they die. And all that carbon gets buried for a very, very, very long time. And that matters because we are getting help because of the whole idea of global warming. Right. We call that the biological carbon pump.
So the Twilight Zone every night is grabbing carbon from up near the surface, dragging it down to the depths. So if you get rid of the.
A whole lot more carbon would be staying up here with us. And we know carbon traps heat. Makes our Earth and planet a lot hotter. Thank you, Al Gore. We have the whole problem with carbon footprint. Yada, yada, yada. There you go. That's one reason they take out the trash. Two, it basically feeds everything else that you eat. Do you like sushi?
[00:24:07] Speaker B: Well, yeah.
[00:24:08] Speaker A: Okay. Who doesn't like sushi? Like tuna specifically. I love my yellowtail. Yeah. So the researchers at Woods Hole, remember this institute I was talking about that's like NASA but for the ocean? Yeah. They tagged a bunch of tuna to see where they hang out. Neat. Guess what they figured out?
[00:24:19] Speaker B: They hang out of the toilet.
[00:24:20] Speaker A: That's where they go eat, really swim down there. They open up their fucking mouth and they eat like mania. Like a torpedo. They just shoot right through it and eat everything in its path and comes back up every day. Yes. So they've tracked tuna specifically. They spend 3% of their time down in the twilight zone. 97% in the sun zone.
[00:24:39] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:24:40] Speaker A: 3% down in the twilight zone. They get over 50% of all of their food intake in that 3% of time they're down there. 50%. I thank you very much. So if there was no Twilight Zone,
[00:24:51] Speaker B: they're full for a long period of
[00:24:53] Speaker A: time, we wouldn't be eating sushi. We have to thank. So they take out the trash.
[00:24:56] Speaker B: So take it back. Yeah.
[00:24:57] Speaker A: And we love our sushi.
[00:24:58] Speaker B: All right. So that, like the Twilight Zone Job well done.
[00:25:02] Speaker A: Very good. So anyway, now that we figured out what's down there, of course, now we know everything. We're like, okay. Let's see, what are we going to now do? What do humans now do?
[00:25:12] Speaker B: Try to fish it. Try to fish it but we can't eat it. There's a little.
[00:25:15] Speaker A: Try to screw it.
[00:25:15] Speaker B: What are we gonna do with it?
[00:25:16] Speaker A: We're screw everything up, Amanda. That's what we're just saying.
[00:25:18] Speaker B: Why are we fishing it?
[00:25:19] Speaker A: We barely started to study what's going on down there, and there are already people down there trying to figure out how to fish it.
[00:25:27] Speaker B: Why?
[00:25:28] Speaker A: Yes. I don't know.
[00:25:29] Speaker B: They're so little.
[00:25:29] Speaker A: Yes.
It's like until we put regulations in place, people try to get away with what they can get away with. Think about the whole migration out west, everything that we were doing to come out here. Like, there were guns and shooting and killing and robbers and the whole thing. And then it was like, okay, put laws in place. And then Tombstone, Arizona, and then, you know, you got Wyatt Earp and Law and Order. Same thing. There's no law and order yet.
[00:25:49] Speaker B: I still understand why we gotta, like, mess with anything.
[00:25:52] Speaker A: Okay, well, now you're asking me a way more fundamental question than I can.
That's who we are. This is why humans suck a little bit, right?
[00:25:58] Speaker B: So we're just sending, like, bots down there because it's so much pressure. I don't know, that we can't dive.
[00:26:03] Speaker A: Trust me, I don't know what we're doing, but we're sending shit down there. We're starting to screw it up. And until we put laws in place. And the problem is it's all international waters and weird shit. And so it makes it really hard. And I told understand, but we got to figure some shit out, right? Because we've sort of figured out. I don't want to say we figured out the Sunlit Zone, but we have a sense, like, all of the ocean people have, like, made it important for us to, like, have a cause. I'm not saying we're good at it because there's plastic and shit all in our oceans and all that stuff. Don't get me wrong, but at least it's being advocated for. The Twilight Zone isn't even being advocated for. Nobody gives two shits about it. And so whoever's in there is doing whatever the fuck they want. Oh, well, it's true.
[00:26:33] Speaker B: So how did scientists figure out that these little, like, you can't tag them, they're too small. We tagged tuna. That makes sense. They're big. But, like, how do you know what these little fishes are doing?
[00:26:45] Speaker A: Because we know.
[00:26:46] Speaker B: No, we're not psychics we're not.
[00:26:49] Speaker A: We just talked about psychics. Yes, we are. We're psychics. No, because of Woods Hole. That's why everything is about Woods Hole.
[00:26:55] Speaker B: Oh, this institute that came up on your feet.
[00:26:56] Speaker A: Yes, absolutely. That's. It all goes back to that.
[00:26:58] Speaker B: They're very.
[00:26:58] Speaker A: They're very, very famous. You said something about a robot. They actually do have a. Like, we don't have robots. Like, we're not fishing robots. But they are using robots down there now. Right?
It's called a mesobot.
[00:27:08] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:27:09] Speaker A: And it, like, quietly follows all these little animals up and down during migration at night without scaring the shit out of them. There's no noise.
[00:27:16] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:27:17] Speaker A: They've made sure there's, like, a little red light on it so, like, the fish can't be bothered by it, so on and so forth. So they still use their super sophisticated sonar and they do this thing called environmental DNA where they just sort of scoop up the seawater behind it and test all the little bits of DNA and all the animals leave behind so they can keep studying them. So they're super careful with all these,
[00:27:36] Speaker B: like, not to really.
[00:27:37] Speaker A: With all these.
[00:27:37] Speaker B: I've got it. Yeah. Yes.
[00:27:38] Speaker A: I would say. Right. I would say scientific robots versus, like, however we're starting to mess around with it. I. I can't even answer you. I just know that. That fishermen are doing that they're not supposed to be doing. So whatever. Sooner or later, over the period of time of us collecting enough data about their behaviors, we're gonna figure it out. Like, go all the way back to how they figured this out in the first place.
[00:27:58] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:27:58] Speaker A: There were hundreds and hundreds of years. Thousands of years. We didn't know anything. The Navy comes along. Oh, my God. What's going on? This is. Oscillate that. And then we figured it out. And that was like the 1940s. So now we're just in a new wave of, like, no pun intended, the new wave of, like, just figuring out what the next thing is about the Twilight Zone. So I would just say, like, we just gotta be, like, more conscientious and more careful and all that kind of shit. I have a question for you.
[00:28:18] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:28:19] Speaker A: Are you. Are you an ocean person at all?
[00:28:21] Speaker B: No.
[00:28:21] Speaker A: Okay. Is this mildly interesting to you or.
[00:28:23] Speaker B: It's fascinating because, I mean, the ocean is why we're all able to be, like, alive.
[00:28:26] Speaker A: Yeah. Like, there's. Because there's such a balance. So go back to God. Seriously, when you think about all of this stuff and how we breathe in oxygen.
[00:28:33] Speaker B: Right?
[00:28:33] Speaker A: And they take carbon dioxide all like, how can you not make the case for. Talk to your atheist friends about just this and say, how can you not make a case for God? Would you go, like, would you go down and look, if I said, hey, I can get you a free ticket in the Titan, but I could guarantee you wouldn't die? No, it wouldn't do it.
[00:28:51] Speaker B: No.
[00:28:52] Speaker A: Yeah. Why not?
[00:28:53] Speaker B: I don't. I just. I don't have that adventurous spirit.
[00:28:55] Speaker A: Can I assume. Can I say it's a lot bigger than where they were sitting in that little stupid submersible?
[00:28:59] Speaker B: I mean, sure, but I just don't like. I'm not a diver.
[00:29:03] Speaker A: Okay. Do you go on Finding Nemo at Disneyland?
[00:29:05] Speaker B: Well, my children want to.
[00:29:06] Speaker A: Do you go on it?
[00:29:07] Speaker B: I do.
[00:29:08] Speaker A: Okay. All right. That's about as far as you go.
[00:29:09] Speaker B: It's. Yeah.
[00:29:10] Speaker A: So you wouldn't go to suburb if you've been. I've been to submarine Catalina. I've been submarine in Hawaii. Oh, no, no. Okay.
[00:29:15] Speaker B: Would I maybe.
[00:29:16] Speaker A: I wouldn't do this. I'm not going 650ft. No way.
[00:29:19] Speaker B: I don't know.
[00:29:20] Speaker A: I'll go 100.
[00:29:20] Speaker B: Absence of light. I don't know. Why? I don't know.
[00:29:23] Speaker A: No, not for me. Do you like the ocean in general?
[00:29:25] Speaker B: I mean, it's fine.
[00:29:26] Speaker A: Like, you'll swim in the ocean.
[00:29:27] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:29:28] Speaker A: You're hesitant. You're like me then.
[00:29:29] Speaker B: Like, we don't all jump in the waves.
[00:29:31] Speaker A: Right? You don't love it.
[00:29:32] Speaker B: No.
[00:29:32] Speaker A: Right. Because you don't know what's underneath.
[00:29:33] Speaker B: Correct. I don't like it.
[00:29:34] Speaker A: So please tell me, like a shout out to Dave, my brother, he lives in the ocean. He is a fucking fish. This is like Amanda during lobster season. Every night by himself, middle of the ocean, goes out on a boat, Diver down, flag down, underwater for hours. I have a picture. Remind me. I have a picture he just sent me of these two lobster that he just caught. Oh, my God. I would be so fucking scared. All I would do is want to be like turning around all the time.
[00:30:00] Speaker B: Nope.
[00:30:00] Speaker A: Okay. We're on the same page. We are very glad. There's people at Woods Hole that do shit like this. So we don't have to.
[00:30:07] Speaker B: Correct. They're all giving different gifts and talents.
[00:30:09] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:30:09] Speaker B: It's not mine.
[00:30:11] Speaker A: We're out. That is the Twilight Zone.
[00:30:13] Speaker B: Do, do, do, do, do. What is it?
[00:30:15] Speaker A: Wait, I have a question. Have you seen. Did you ever watch Rod Sterling with the Twilight Zone?
[00:30:18] Speaker B: I've only seen clips of it on the ride in Walt Disney World.
[00:30:22] Speaker A: Oh, my God.
Please go watch a Twilight Zone. That was so good. That was a great series that ran and then they rebooted it years and years later. Okay, anyway, whatever.
[00:30:32] Speaker B: All right. Do you have any fun facts?
[00:30:33] Speaker A: I do.
[00:30:34] Speaker B: I feel like there has to be, like, so many. Cool.
[00:30:36] Speaker A: Oh, I got. I got Twilight Zone fun facts.
[00:30:37] Speaker B: Like, let's go.
[00:30:38] Speaker A: Here we go. Okay, number one, remember the lights I said they use as like the alarm to like, let people know. Okay, I'm gonna sacrifice myself so all you people get out here. Okay. Apparently, back In June in 2012, a team of scientists led by Tsunami Kubedera of Japan's National Museum of Nature and Science built a fake jellyfish with a light thingy in it that mimicked the patterns of the jellyfish and sent it down into the Twilight Zone. This little lure with like lead light that copies the exact flashing pattern. Okay. Anyway, they drop it off the coast of Japan with a camera tied to it. For the first time in human history, they filmed a giant living squid floating around in its own habitat. Have you seen this? I remember when this happened in 2012 and it hit national news. It was massive. I went back and I watched that video. It was only 14 years ago. It was absolutely insane. They knew this thing existed for centuries.
[00:31:23] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:31:23] Speaker A: Never ever had any evidence of like seeing it live.
[00:31:27] Speaker B: A giant squid.
[00:31:28] Speaker A: Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And because of Twilight Zone, we were able to see it. Go watch the video. It's like 55 seconds long. You totally see this squid comes out of nowhere. Fucking scares the shit out. Scares the shit out of you. Yes. Okay, so it leaves.
[00:31:41] Speaker B: Out of the sea.
[00:31:43] Speaker A: I'm creeping out just talking about this stuff. Okay. Number two, did you know there's a fish with a see through head?
Right through. It's called the barreleye fish. Yes. Its whole head is a clear dome. Like a helicopter. Like the windshield of a helicopter. Yeah. You can literally see. You can see the back of its eye. You can see all the goofy shit in his eyes. Everything. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Eyes are these big green tubes that rotate look like straight up through the top of its head.
[00:32:06] Speaker B: Huh.
[00:32:07] Speaker A: So that national institute that we were talking about had the first real video of it in 2009. And it's honestly one of the weirdest things to ever see. Google it. Crazy shit. Okay, number three, some of these fish are blacker than black.
[00:32:19] Speaker B: Well, they're deep sea fish.
[00:32:21] Speaker A: They're black. I like, they're like really black.
[00:32:22] Speaker B: Pitch black.
[00:32:23] Speaker A: Yes. Pitch black. Yes. These fish skin is so black, it absorbs more than 99.5% of light that hits it. It's like really black paint. It's a defense mechanism.
So remember the fish with the little lights?
[00:32:35] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:32:35] Speaker A: Right. Because if you don't have any lights, the best thing you can do is hide from those lights. So when they turn their little lights on, if you're that dense and that black, they still can't see you. So that's their version of a defense mechanism. Yeah. No. I don't know. Whatever. I think it's crazy. Okay, number four. I know we think we all know the longest animal on Earth is the blue whale. Right? Duh.
[00:32:54] Speaker B: That's an. It's a mammal.
[00:32:57] Speaker A: Whatever. So maybe it's actually a thing called a siphonophore. Yes. And it lives in the twilight Zone. A siphon at 4.
[00:33:03] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:33:03] Speaker A: Scientists have measured it to stretch.
[00:33:04] Speaker B: Is this the oarfish?
[00:33:05] Speaker A: Huh?
[00:33:05] Speaker B: Is this the oarfish?
[00:33:07] Speaker A: The orfish?
[00:33:07] Speaker B: Doomsday or fish.
[00:33:09] Speaker A: I don't even know the doomsday or fish.
[00:33:10] Speaker B: It's like this fish that lives in one of these layers. I don't know which one, but, like, when, like, seismic stuff is happening, it, like, dies.
[00:33:17] Speaker A: I gotta look this up. No, I have no idea. Okay, I'll look that up. No, no, no. This. This thing is 130ft long.
[00:33:23] Speaker B: Oh, dang. Okay.
[00:33:23] Speaker A: Longer than a blue whale. But here's the weird part, I will admit, okay? It's not one animal. Okay. Back to your whole Nemo thing where it puts it. Yeah. They come together. It's a colony of thousands of tiny clones all hooked together, each one of them with its own little job. Some swim, some eat, some sting. It's basically like a little business running down there that's learned, like, how to swim together. So technically, I'm alive.
[00:33:43] Speaker B: Not a thing.
[00:33:44] Speaker A: The blue whale is still the longest mammal on Earth. But this is what we're going to call, like, the longest, like, creature y thing. Okay. It was still a cool, fun fact, but whatever. Siphonophore. Now I gotta go look up that
[00:33:55] Speaker B: other ore ones or look up all these things. Oarfish.
[00:33:57] Speaker A: Oarfish. Okay, I'm looking that up. Okay. And finally, in Japan, there's a place called Toyama Bay where every spring millions of these tiny firefly squid come up from the deep to spawn. The whole bay lights up. Remember how you were asking earlier about, like, down in San Clemente? Right. It lights up blue at night. It's a huge deal. So people take these boat tours at, like, 3am Just to go see this stuff. It's One of the most beautiful natural light ships on the planet. Way better than the algae blooms in San Clemente.
[00:34:22] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:34:23] Speaker A: It's like Aurora Borealis, but like underwater.
[00:34:25] Speaker B: That's cool.
[00:34:25] Speaker A: Here's the funny part. Everybody goes and watches all that shit.
[00:34:27] Speaker B: But.
[00:34:28] Speaker A: But because they're considered a delicacy, all the Japanese people, right afterwards, they eat them all, boil them raw, pickle, whatever, you know, they just eat them all. Well, yes. Nature puts on the greatest show on Earth. And then we go, yeah, cool. Pasta, soy sauce. Let's eat these shit. I mean, what? We're crazy. There you go. We took the Japanese. You got to love them. Okay, here we go.
[00:34:45] Speaker B: All right, well, if we want to learn more about the Twilight Zone, what should we do besides looking at these five fun fact things that we got
[00:34:51] Speaker A: a lot of homework to do with the fun. Yes. Well, how about this? If you think you have, like a deep sea fact that is better than mine, or if we misspoke or said something incorrect, let us know. Let us know. Send us some info. DM us on Instagram. We read everything. First, go watch Blue Planet 2. I think that's good.
The specific episode I'm talking about is the deep David Attenborough. It's got all the glowing, weird stuff that we were talking about basically in this whole episode. Second, if you want to read something, two books. Below the Edge of Darkness by Edith Witter. Fun fact, she was actually on the team that helped build the whole fake jellyfish project. She was the marine biologist that actually did that. And this book is her memoir. And it's full of all her stories about how she did it. If you want a classic, the Sea Around Us by Rachel Carson. We talked about her before in our episode the Oldest Lesson Some societies seem to forget. She was the one who studied the effects of DDT on the environment and wrote Silent Spring. She was like the first woman that started the whole environmentalist movement. But anyway, before she did that, she wrote this whole book on the phantom sea floor that turned out to really be alive. So this woman's like, yeah, Rachel Carson's the bomb. And finally, if you're anywhere near New York, go see the exhibit the Twilight Zone Hidden Wonders of Our Ocean. It's at Art Tech House in Chelsea Market, and it runs through November 16th. And if you're super lazy and don't do any of that, then just go on YouTube and look up the Mbari Channel. Mbari Channel. You can watch all the real footage from down there, including all the see through fish and all the things I talked about it will definitely ruin your afternoon for.
Yeah, whatever you're gonna do, that's it.
[00:36:12] Speaker B: And you don't want to do any of that. Just remember these details seem sort of sophisticated. First, the ocean's twilight zone is the dim layer. From about 650 to 3,300ft down. It's between the sunlit surface and the pitch black deep. Colors disappear. It's refrigerator cold. And by the bottom, the pressure is about 100 times what we feel up here. And it wraps around the entire planet.
[00:36:33] Speaker A: Yes, it does.
[00:36:34] Speaker B: Number two. Every single night, trillions of animals rise out of the Twilight zone to feed near the surface. Then they sink back down before sunrise. It's the largest migration on Earth. And it follows a sunset around the globe. And almost nobody has ever heard of it.
[00:36:46] Speaker A: Not anymore.
[00:36:47] Speaker B: You're welcome.
[00:36:47] Speaker A: Right.
[00:36:48] Speaker B: Number three. In World War II, Navy sonar found a false bottom in the middle of the ocean that rose at night and sank during the day. It actually wasn't the sea floor. It was a layer of animals so thick it bounced the sound back like solid ground. Number four, about three quarters of the animals in the open ocean can make their own light shocker. They use it to hide, to hunt, and even to call in bigger predators to eat whatever's attacking them. And the most common animal with the backbone on Earth is an us Go figure. It is a finger sized Twilight Zone fish called the Bristol mouth. Look it up even. Finally, the Twilight zone is quietly helping pull carbon out of the surface and down into the deep ocean. And it's feeding the tuna and swordfish that we love to eat. But fishing boats have already started fishing from it for decades before anybody really understands what we're messing with.
That's crazy and uncomfortable all at the same time.
[00:37:34] Speaker A: We gotta get it figured out, I'm telling you. There you have it, dear listeners. We started today with a layer of ocean most people have never heard of. And we ended with trillions of animals running four marathons a day just to get dinner. Here's the thing. We tend to think of the important stuff as the stuff we can see that makes sense. The stuff like right in front of us. But the Navy looked right at this thing and thought it was a floor. Scientists thought it was a desert. And it turned out to be one of the busiest, most important places on our whole planet. Just happens in the dark. So tonight, when you go to bed, just know that a few miles off the coast, trillions of animals are getting up to go to work. If we did our job today, you know, the ocean isn't just the surface and the scary bottom. There's a whole world in the middle. It glows, it commutes. It cleans up after us, and it feeds us. And it's never once asked for credit. As always, if you like what you just heard, hit subscribe, leave a review and share it with someone who thinks the ocean is just the stuff in between the beaches. Now you know. Until next time, stay curious, stay up late. And the next time you eat your sushi, say thank you to the Twilight Zone.
