Episodes

  • The Boy in the Submarine - Episode 12: Talking to Whales

    The Boy in the Submarine - Episode 12: Talking to Whales
    Jun 4 2024
    "We played a sound that we think means 'Hello' to the [humpback whale named] Twain... and Twain said 'Hello' back!" Owen Today we are updating two of our episodes with follow-up information. Both about how intelligent whales really are, because we are getting closer and closer to talking to them. In 2021 a team of marine biologists including Josie Hubbard approached a humpback whale that marine biologists have nicknamed Twain, and played a recording that they believed was a greeting, like "hello". Twain answered with the same sound back, not once, but many times over a half an hour, seemingly as excited to talk to us as we were to talk with him. Here's an article my dad shared with me! But earlier this month, using computers, marine biologists working with Project CETI (Cetacean Translation Initiative) identified recognizable repeated patterns in sperm whale clicking that are used like an alphabet or words over and over again. We might soon be able to use computers to figure out what they are talking about! This is the last episode of season 1 of Boy in the Submarine, and I have really enjoyed creating this for my friends and family, and all you listeners out there. Let me know if there are things you would like me to learn about sea creatures to give me ideas for a season 2 some time soon!
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    Less than 1 minute
  • Boy in the Submarine - Episode 11: Humpback Whales

    Boy in the Submarine - Episode 11: Humpback Whales
    May 28 2024
    Humpback Whales have beautiful voices, and are the great musicians of the sea. Each family has their own special song, and each individual whale has a song of its own based on it, just like a personal name! They also make up new songs for both fun and communication. If a whale makes up a particularly catchy tune, the whole ocean of Humpbacks can pick it up and start singing it.
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    Less than 1 minute
  • The Boy in the Submarine - Episode 10: Orca

    The Boy in the Submarine - Episode 10: Orca
    May 21 2024
    Orca are really smart! They can be taught to do tricks like sing songs and count, if they are trained well! Owen Orca, sometimes called "Killer Whales" are a really large Dolphin: they are one of the Oceans' apex predators. They work in packs to take down large prey. Humans have trained them to do all kinds of amazing things, because Orca love to learn. Family is very important to Orcas. Every family has its own patterns and markings, and they often come up with new tricks, games, and even fashions that they will keep repeating for years just for fun. These can be as weird as funny backwards swimming and wearing dead fish as hats, to the frightening, such as tipping sailboats. But they don't mean to hurt people: they are curious about us, and sometimes cause trouble by accident.
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    2 mins
  • The Boy in the Submarine – Episode 9: Sea Anemones

    The Boy in the Submarine – Episode 9: Sea Anemones
    May 14 2024
    Sea Anemones come in thousands of different shapes and colours, just like flowers! Owen Sea Anemones are another invertebrate related to coral. They look kind of like flowers, they are even named after a flower: but their stem is a hard tube, and their petals are tendrils full of stingers. Only a few creatures with special slime can touch a Sea Anemone. Some, like the clown fish even live in the anemone for safety. Others, like some nudibranches eat the stingers in anemones, then put them in their own skin for self-defence. WHen an Anemone is old ienough it splits down the middle into two new Anemones that quickly heal up. Whole families of anemones live close together that are all clones. And if they get crowded by other anemones they form clone armies that sting the other anemones until they can't find any more. Anemones eat microscopic organisms, and are very important for keeping wherever they live clean and healthy, while providing safe hiding places and food for the creatures who can handle the sting.
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    2 mins
  • The Boy in the Submarine - Episode 8: Coral

    The Boy in the Submarine - Episode 8: Coral
    May 7 2024
    Coral reefs are really important to the environment... they provide homes for hundreds of other sea creatures. Owen When people talk about coral we imagine big rolling hills and terrains full of strangely-shaped hard matter, it can look like cacti, giant mushrooms, fans, plants, or shelves attached to rocks, and it comes in all kinds of colours... but did you know all those amazing structures are made by a tiny animal? Coral is a tiny invertebrate, kind of like a jellyfish. Once it find a place it likes, it makes a house for itself out of minerals it sucks out of the water. At night it sticks its long feelers out of tiny pores in its rocky shell. When a micro-organism gets pushed past by the water, it shoots out a little harpoon called a radula, and pulls it inside the coral to eat. Over time, the coral attracts bacteria that live on its shell that gives it brilliant colours. As the coral gets older it eventually splits into new polyps, who often make their new shells on top of their parent's old shells. In times these shells can form amazing structures, which are those amazing objects we think of as "Coral." Whole forests and islands can form out of coral called a reef, which provides a home and safety to thousands of other sea creatures and plants.
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    2 mins
  • The Boy in the Submarine - Episode 7: Tiger Sharks

    The Boy in the Submarine - Episode 7: Tiger Sharks
    Apr 30 2024
    Whith Apex predators, we don't understand just how important they are... Owen Tiger sharks like warm and temperate waters. They particularly like coral reefs and kelp forests. Called "the garbage cans of the sea" tiger sharks will eat almost anything that they encounter to see if it is good or not, which makes them very good at cleaning up. But it also means you can find all kinds of weird junk in a tiger shark's belly. Sometimes things that make absolutely no sense to be there. A Tiger Shark is an Apex Predator: that means it is a hunter that eats all kinds of animals around it, but it usually doesn't have many other creatures that eat it. Apex predators have all kinds of amazing effects on how other animals live, which also effects the plants. We have seen just how big an effect Apex predators had when we wiped out the wolves in Yosemite National Park in California, USA: without the wolves, the animals, plants, even the river and the shape of the hills slowly changed. Now that we have put wolves back in the park, it is returning to its original state. We have no idea what might happen to the coral and kelp of our seas if Tiger Sharks were to disappear!
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    2 mins
  • The Boy in the Submarine episode 6: The Giant Pacific Octopus

    The Boy in the Submarine episode 6: The Giant Pacific Octopus
    Apr 23 2024
    The Giant Pacific Octopus is the smartest of all the cephalopods, it is great at solving problems! Owen Today we are talking about the Giant Pacific Octopus: a creature as big as a man and nearly as heavy, but so squishy it can fit inside a large jelly jar! The Giant pacific octopus likes to hide, and arranges junk and bits of coral and seaweed into a garden to help it hide and to protect its eggs. It is naturally curious, and often plays with things it finds on the bottom of the ocean. They are so clever and so curious that special lining (made of astroturf) has to be put at the edges of their tanks in aquariums or they will sneak out at night to explore other tanks in the same aquarium. They are sneaky hunters, and catch crabs, lobsters, shrimp, clams, squid, and abalones. While they are big when they are all grown up, their babies are so tiny that they are part of the clouds of zooplankton that big filter feeders eat.
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    2 mins
  • The Boy in the Submarine - episode 5: Manta Rays

    The Boy in the Submarine - episode 5: Manta Rays
    Apr 16 2024
    Manta rays are so efficient and graceful that we built drones based on them; Manta ray probes that explore the sea... Owen Manta rays are huge, graceful filter feeders, which means they eat microscopic food by opening their mouth and sucking it in. They are so big that they provide home and shade for other kinds of fish. They are famous for jumping out of the water and gliding for short distances. Here's an amazing video I enjoyed watching one swimming, and taking a short leap out of the water from Diving Couple: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjqMW2CL3cM Manta rays are so amazingly graceful and energy efficient that several different groups including Festo, EvoLogics, and the UVA Center for Bio-Inspired Engineering Research have all based amazing robot designs on the Manta ray for exploring the ocean and cleaning up pollution. Their brain is so sophisticated and their sense organs so complex that some people think that they may be the world's smartest fish!
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    2 mins