Instant Genius - Exploring the deep sea - Everything you ever wanted to know about... the deep sea with Dr Jon Copley

Episode Date: November 13, 2020

Our guest this week is Dr Jon Copley. Jon is a marine biologist, specialising in the deep sea. He went on the first mini sub dive to the world’s deepest hydrothermal vents, 5km down on the ocean floor, and also took part in the firs minisub dives to 1km deep in the Antarctic. Jon is also a science communicator and writer, who worked as a science advisor on the iconic BBC series Blue Planet II. He is also an associate professor of ocean exploration and public engagement at the University of Southampton. In 2019, he also published fantastic book called Ask an Ocean Explorer which tells you all about the ocean in 25 questions. Over three quick-fire episodes, Jon tells BBC Science Focus managing editor Alice Limpscombe-Southwell about the bizarre life found on the ocean floor, the habitats where they thrive, and what it's like to explore the deep sea in a submarine. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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formats throughout the world. Find out more at sciencefocus.com or look out for us in your app store. Welcome back to the everything you wanted to know about podcast from the team behind BBC Science Focus magazine. Today for the third episode, we're back talking about some of the most popular questions about the deep sea with marine biologist Dr John Copley. In this episode, John gives me a first person account of how it feels to climb inside a submersible to descend to the bottom of the He also tells us why deep sea exploration and research is so important and reveals some of the biggest threats facing the deep ocean. So John, you've climbed into a submersible and you've travelled into the deep sea. So what did it feel like the first time you did that and were you scared?

Yeah, I was certainly nervous the first time I went into the deep sea. But every time I've been, what's been reassuring is the professionalism of the teams that run. these deep diving mini subs. Basically, to them, you know, this is driving to work. And when they're not worried, you're not worried. That rubs off on you. So they're calm, they're confident. So the nervousness about any safety issues, everything is planned so meticulously and the procedures are so well rehearsed. That kind of gives way to the excitement about what you're going to find. And at the same time, there is anxiety about getting the job done. Because when you're diving in one of these mini-subs, you are doing that on behalf of everyone else.

Everyone on that expedition, you know, it's not just for your bit of research. You're getting the samples, the measurements, you know, putting down the experiments or whatever, on behalf of everybody on that expedition. And everybody wants to get a good outcome. So there's quite a lot of pressure to get it right and to get through your to-do list while you're on the dive. So there's that kind of anxiety, if you like. But it's a mix of that and the excitement and actually going to this place and seeing it and being there.

So what's it actually like inside the submersible? When you see pictures in books or when you see it on TV, it looks really small. It's like the driver and there may be a couple of scientists. So you're all sort of stuck in their shoulder to shoulder. It's really cramped in these submersibles. In fact, the TV pictures perhaps don't do it justice because often they have quite wide-angled lenses.

Sometimes I see the pictures and think, it looks a lot more spacious than it felt. So, yeah, I mean, it gives you some idea. Most of them are a hollow ball, because that's a good shape for resisting pressure evenly from all sides. And two meters across inside. Okay, so imagine a hollow ball two meters across. Three of you in there.

Okay. And because it's a ball, you're kind of all sliding down to the bottom together. So you're kind of squeezed together at the bottom of this thing. and there's all the instrumentation around you, all the instrument panels and what have you. Now, it depends a little what the sub is you're using as to how deep you're going. In the ones that go deepest,

beyond 1,000 meters deep, it tends to be a hull is made of metal because that's strongest. So your windows, your portholes, are very small. They're maybe just seven centimeters across on the inside. They're actually wedges of acrylic. So they're actually big. bigger on the outside than they are on the inside, because then the pressure pushes it in like a wedge

and seals it shut against the hull. So, yeah, you've got to peer through these very small portholes from the inside, but your, you know, your face is rammed up against that the whole time because you don't want to miss anything. So, yeah, you're pushed up against that. Looking out, but with, you know, with the responsibility of getting the job done and working your way through the dive plan that's been carefully prepared to get everything done. This is your visit. We can't spend as long in the deep ocean as we would like to. We can't visit as often as we would like to.

So you've got to get it right when you do go. So you climb into a sub like that on the deck, and then there's all the preparation going on outside it, and it's often trundles out on a couple of kind of rails to the back deck of the research ship, where it's hooked up to a very big crane, often on something called an A-frame, that lowers it out over the side of the stern of the ship, and then it's lowered into the water.

And then all of the lines are detached. You're not attached to the ship at all. That's a very special moment when suddenly you're rocking in the waves, and you think, yep, that's it. We're not connected to the ship. We are on our own. Off. We can go and explore.

And then the pilot will adjust the buoyancy to make you heavy, so flooding some tanks, usually so that you start to sink and you start to sink down into the deep ocean. And it's very gentle. And you're not driving down with thrusters or anything. So it's, you know, it's quite quiet. Near the surface, yeah, you can feel the waves. But gradually you kind of sink beyond the grip of the waves. And you don't become as aware of the motion of the sub. In fact, if you look at the instruments and you look at something like the compass, you can often, I've noticed

we actually kind of sink down a little bit like a sycamore leaf. We kind of gently spiraling down, but we're not, you're not very aware of it. Occasionally rock side to side maybe with a bit of current or something. And you're sinking through layers of life as well. So you're staring out through the porthole. First thing you notice is the sunlight fades. So it gets bluer and bluer and darker and darker until it's this incredible, the deepest darkest blue you can imagine, luminous black.

And then you start to see the flashes and squirts of the bioluminescent. life, but you're sinking through their layers. So actually, it's kind of like snow shooting up past the window. A little bit like when you're driving through snow, you know, you can become a little bit mesmerized by the snowflakes kind of shooting up past your windscreen. It's like that, but that's as you're sinking down through it. And, you know, it can take you, well, you sink at about, you know, maybe 40 metres a minute. And so it takes quite a while.

If you're going down, the deepest I've ever been is just over 5,000 meters. deep. And yeah, that took us two hours, 40 minutes or so to get down to the bottom there. And when we're planning to work at the ocean floor, we're saving our battery power until we're there. So we don't actually have the lights on while we're sinking. So it's dark. You're looking out through the portholes and so on. Because what limits the dive isn't things like, you know, oxygen supply. We have plenty of that, you know, several days worth in case we were to somehow get stuck on the sea bed and rescuing by some mechanism from above. Actually, what limits the duration of our dives is battery power.

We're not connected to the ship. We carry our own power in the batteries. The batteries drive everything. So the thrusters we use, the maneuver about, the lights, of course, the manipulator arms that we use to pick things up. And it's all about eking out the battery power. So leave everything switched off. It's non-essential on the journey down, unless you're studying things in mid-water,

in which case you'd be doing stuff. of course, but you sink down through that long darkness. And eventually you know you're getting near the seabed because you've got a target depth and you know how deep you are. And you'll switch on a thing called a pinger, which will start to just try and send a sound signal bouncing off the seabed to let you know when you're getting close. So you're sinking down, you start to get a signal off the pinger when you think you're getting close. And then again, the pilot can adjust the buoyancy, okay, to slow down R's descent and bring us to rest so that we're ultimately. we're floating, we're hovering just above the seabed, and then we can maneuver around and drive about. That's quite reassuring what you said about the oxygen, because I have often thought that, you know,

if something went wrong and you were stuck on the bottom, how long could you be down there for? But if you say you've got enough oxygen flight, you know, plenty of time, so if you did somehow, you know, lose battery power, you'd still be okay. There are some strict international procedures for these deep diving subs in terms of the life support that they have to back up life support that they need to carry. Unfortunately, that experience has been very hard one. There have been few accidents involving deep diving subs over the years, but those that there have been have been, you know, obviously terrible for those involved. In the early 1970s, there was a sub stuck on the seabed and the crew ran into trouble.

It was a sub with two separate compartments, and in one of the compartments, the crew ran into trouble because it got so cold that the system that removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere wasn't working as well. And unfortunately, two people died during that accident. And, you know, there was also, in the early 70s, there was a very narrow escape by a sub, a mini sub that was being used to actually lay telephone cables off the southwest coast of Ireland, which was being recovered back onto the ship, sank, unfortunately, down into the deep ocean with two people inside. it was stuck on the bottom for more than in total they were in there for more than 80 hours. And eventually they were recovered and they were kind of recovered literally with minutes

of oxygen life support remaining. And the recommendation is, yeah, you need several days' worth because that's what it can take to get all the assets required to mount a recovery operation in place and out to wherever this has happened. So, yeah, that experience has been hard won. But procedures are so you know, carefully planned now. My biggest fear is actually electrical fire in the sub. You've got a lot of electrical systems. You're in a very enclosed space and, yeah, things can go wrong with electrics. And you don't want any kind of fire, not necessarily a fire with flames, but actually just burning plastic and all the fumes and so on in that tiny space. So, yeah, that's, there are various ways around some of the subs I've dived in, actually you breathe down the oxygen content to 16% from its normal 20%,

which means the chances of fire are actually reduced. You can still function on 16% oxygen fine. Others have other procedures. And if anything does happen, there's a separate, like a scuba, you know, mouthpiece regulator that we can switch to and put on goggles. So our eyes and we've got, we've got clean air coming straight to us. We've got goggles on and then we can come straight back up in the event of any kind of fire accident. I'd absolutely love to come. one, but obviously I'm not doing deep sea research. I probably won't ever get the opportunity. Could people buy a ticket to do it? People have already commercialised deep dives in deep diving submersibles.

You know, for the, so far, pretty much for the ultra wealthy. But back in the 1990s, Russia has for several decades operated two fantastic deep sea submersibles. They're both called MIR, you know, like the space station Russian for peace. Mere 1 and Mere 2, which were actually the ones featured in the movie Titanic. Those are the mere subs in the movie there. And for a while in the 90s, actually were able to buy kind of tourist trips out on a ship

and people dive to the wreck of the Titanic in the MERS as tourists, as paying tourists. So it's already happened. And there are other subs that are being developed with a view to that potential market. So yeah, you know, there's this idea of space tourism. There's some degree of deep sea tourism has already happened. So what was the biggest surprise you found at depth?

Oh, wow, what's the biggest surprise? Let's have a think about that. When we're exploring the deep ocean, what we tend to do is we're going out there to test predictions. So we've got an idea as to how nature works. And on the basis of what we understand, here's what we would expect to find if we went there and looked.

So it's testing our understanding and through doing that, refining and improving our understanding. And that's really the science part of deep sea exploration. It's what we call it, it's hypothesis testing. And that's what you have to do to get funding for this kind of research.

You know, it would be lovely to be able to have a ship and all this technology and just go out and see, well, let's go and see what we can find. But, you know, that's kind of like a fishing trip. You know, we, we, we understandably, people are not going to invest money on that proposition. So, you know, we have carefully crafted scientific hypotheses that we are going out there to test. And what is wonderful about it is when you get somewhere and the prediction that you've made, no, it's not that at all. Okay.

And you're like, ah, okay, so we were wrong then. Our understanding was wrong. and what we do find, then when we investigate that, we understand, well, why have we found the thing that we found instead? Then when we investigate that, we think, actually, do you know what, the process that this is part of is actually more complicated than we realize? And that is wonderful. That's reminding us how beautifully intricate nature is that we're always, it's always surprising us, you know, when we think we understand it. And then what we find is not what we expected. So that has happened to me several times because that is fundamentally what we're,

we do in this exploration science, particularly when we've been exploring these deeps events. So past decade, I've been lucky to be involved in several research projects in different parts of the world where it's like a global jigsaw puzzle. We know what lives, you know, what the other puzzle pieces around this missing piece are. And on the basis of that, we predict what we should see on that missing puzzle piece. And then when we get there, you know, we explore the deeps events in that particular region that hasn't been visited before. And we've predicted, yeah, we should find this species and that species and that's what we find is completely different. So, you know, stuff we couldn't imagine. So a nice example from that, working with colleagues around the UK, we were

exploring deeps events in the Antarctic about 10 years ago. And, you know, we, no one had seen black smoke a hot, hot deepsy vents down in the Antarctic before. There'd been some signs that they were there and we spent a long time trying to find them. Because, I mean, these things are small, the size of a couple of football pitches at the bottom of a very, very large, very dark, deep ocean. So just finding them is a real challenge. So we found them and we were able to send a camera down on that reconnaissance. We didn't have the sophisticated deep sea vehicles. It was reconnaissance. We sent down a camera, see what's living there. And what we saw were these yellowish scarab-like crustaceans scurrying around the mineral spires of the hot springs. And it was like,

Huh, those look like some kind of crab. And that was a total surprise because crab like animals don't thrive in the deep Antarctic because they can't cope with the cold. They can't cope with really minus one and a half degree conditions. They can't flush magnesium out of their blood from the seawater. And it's a narcotic to them. So they generally stupefy in cold conditions. And there were piles of these crab like animals down there.

And this is two and a half thousand meters deep or so. And so that was like, huh, we've won't. would not have expected it to be crab-like animals dominating these deep sea feds. Really wouldn't have predicted that. Now, how are they able to do that? Well, guess what? Where they're living is not minus one and a half degree C because they're close to a hot spring. They're living in that nice balmy 20, 25-degree sea water where they're living in these huge piles.

It's actually nice and warm and they don't have the problems of the cold. So, you know, they're a little bit like those amazing monkeys on that island in Japan, you know, where it's snow. and the monkeys are basking in those warm hot springs. It's a little bit like that for the crabs at the Antarctic Deep Sea Vent. So that was a total surprise. You know, simply wouldn't have predicted that kind of life there. So it's those kinds of surprises, but it's because they remind us how little we know, perhaps. Or rather they remind us that nature is always more intricate, more beautifully complex than we currently understand.

But are there any places you'd still like to visit that you haven't been to yet? Lots of places I'd like to go to carry on exploring in the deep sea. It is like a global jigsaw puzzle. So, you know, over the past decade, yeah, we've got several missing pieces, but there are still further pieces that we don't have yet. I'm particularly interested in the South Atlantic, the middle of the South Atlantic, for life at deep sea events, because recently I've explored what lives in, the Antarctic just south of that. I've explored what's in the southwest Indian Ocean kind of

over to the east of that. I've spent some time looking at what's in the North Atlantic and the Caribbean. And so, you know, what's happening in the South Atlantic? We've got, we get different species thriving in those different regions. And so again, we make predictions. What would we expect to see in the deep, in the deep ocean at the vents in the South Atlantic? From what we understand of the ocean currents, how life disperses, how life evolves. We are utterly. dependent on technology, of course, when we're working in the deep ocean. But we are extremely blessed with the technology we have. And it just keeps getting better and better. The toolkit we have now is phenomenal. I mean, so much more advanced than 25 years ago when I started out

in this field. Yeah, there's always things we might like. I think a big challenge for me is understanding the environmental conditions. So, yeah, we can get down there. We can look at what lives where. We can map the distributions of species in very great detail. And it's a bit like now, we can do it in a way like when we go to a rocky beach. And if you're a marine biologist, you love a rocky shore. And you look at the zones of different species as you go down the shore.

And you notice, you know, they're just a meter or two in width. And then it's a different species. And we can map that out. and we can understand what processes are generating those patterns of life. We can do that around deepsy events right now with our deep diving vehicles. So that's great. The patterns of life, mapping that in detail, we can do very well. But understanding the variation in environmental conditions is a bit more challenging.

Temperature we've been able to measure accurately and in a lot of detail for some time. But what about the chemical conditions? And we tend to measure temperature and say, yeah, we expect the chemistry to kind of vary, you know, with the temperature. But actually, we know it doesn't. For a lot of the sort of chemical compounds that are important to what lives where, they don't match the temperature pattern. So what I would love is something that allows me to kind of scan the environment and get all that environmental, you know, what is it like for that animal living there? What are its conditions that matter, you know, to understand why it's living, where it's, where it's, you know, it's living and how it's living where it's living. So what's about the biggest threats facing the deep sea? We've, I mean, you've briefly spoken before about, you know, we still see plastic down in the deep ocean, down in the deep ocean, and there's still noise pollution as well. Is there any threat that's particularly pertinent?

The biggest threat to deep ocean environments is climate change. Okay, we're aware of plastics, yes, and microplastics. and yeah, down to the bottom of the deepest trenches and getting swallowed by things like those amazing amphipod crustaceans that live down there. But actually the most pervasive, widespread threat to deep ocean environments comes from climate change, because climate change affects deep ocean environments in several different ways. So first of all, let's think about all those animals in the deep ocean that we love on TV. They're animals. They need oxygen. How does oxygen get into the deep ocean?

Well, there are vast currents that form in the polar regions where the water gets cold. It becomes dense because it's cold. It sinks into the ocean basins and then flows through the ocean basins at depth. And when it sinks away from the surface in the polar regions, that's where it's taking the oxygen from the atmosphere into the deep ocean. So these vast polar currents, what we call deep water formation happening in the polar regions. That is where the deep ocean is breathing in. And we know that that flow is getting weaker because of climate change. Because the things that drive it in terms of ice formation and so on, yeah, we've had an impact on that.

So that's been measured. You know, we're seeing greater deoxygenation in the deep ocean. Weakening of that flow. We're getting low oxygen regions that are growing and spreading. and they are pushing species into new areas and that can't cope with low oxygen conditions. So that's one way that we're having an impact through climate change.

And then there are others as well in the deep ocean in particular. So the other thing that, of course, hand in hand with climate change is ocean acidification is a part of climate change. Not only when we put something like carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Yes, it traps heat there. That changes ocean circulation

and those patterns of currents, but also it will dissolve in seawater and change the chemistry of seawater, make it less alkaline. And that has implications for the deep ocean, because everything that sinks into the deep ocean, these particles coming down as marine snow, they're getting eaten, they're also dissolving away as they're sinking. And when we change the chemistry of the oceans, we actually change the depths at which different minerals dissolve away in that rain of material to the deep ocean. And that then changes the types of sediments that form in different areas around the deep ocean. Normally beyond a certain depth, we'd say, yes, you only get clay particles, because everything else will have dissolved away on its journey through the ocean to get to that depth.

Now, you know, the depths of certain minerals are dissolving in the particles of marine snow. That's changing. That's changing. That's changing what then settles on the deep ocean beneath it. So there are lots of different ways that climate change actually affects deep ocean environments. And, you know, it's then on top of the other impacts that we're having. So it's the combinations of impacts. So if you've got changes because of climate change, plus you've got microplastic particles arriving here, you know, plus you've got accidents from oil and gas exploration or you've got other forms of pollution, you know, eventually this all mounts up.

into even greater impacts. When I was starting out in this career, I kind of had the idea. One of the other things that attracted me to ocean exploration was I grew up watching TV series like Star Trek, The Next Generation, and kind of thinking that, yes, exploring the unknown is a chance to bring out some of the best in humanity

and make the world a better place for all of us. And there have been moments on expeditions when we do see that, when we're all kind of united in wonder at the surprise, the thing we found at the bottom of the ocean. And these are hard-bitten scientists who are happy to argue about different interpretations of science at the drop of that. And literally, you know, people in tears, you know, wonder what we're seeing for the first time and realizing we're the first people to see it. And then thinking, yeah, wouldn't it be great if we could take those moments of wonder that unite us and kind of use that. to kind of spread and make the world a better place.

I still think exploration has the potential to do that. But what I've also come to realize is that exploration of the ocean, if we look back at its history, it has always been a tool wielded by the culture, the society of the time. So, you know, in the early days of exploring the ocean before we started to get into the deep ocean, it was about empire building.

It was about hegemony. It was sort of age of empires and that kind of thing. And then later it was about, ultimately, it led to exploitation of natural resources, you know, enriching a small proportion of society far more than others. So now I think, yeah, exploration is great. It can unite us in wonder at the world around us. But if we're going to explore, you know, to benefit all of us, then we at the same time, we also. have to build more inclusive societies in science in our communities and beyond. That's it for today, and that was our last episode of our series about the Deep Ocean. We've been talking to Dr. John Copley, a marine biologist who specialises in the deep sea. So if you've enjoyed this podcast, then please do subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts, and if you can spare a minute, leave a review and let us know what subjects you want us to tackle next. And if you want even more primers on the big ideas in science from the BBC Science Focus team, and head over to our website, ScienceFocus.com, or find us on Twitter,

Facebook and Instagram. Thank you for listening to the Science Focus podcast from the BBC Science Focus magazine team. With the UK's best-selling science and technology monthly, available in print and in several digital formats throughout the world, find out more at sciencefocus.com or look out for us in your app store. This podcast is sponsored by name, audio and focal. The texture and emotional depth. of music can be lost through digital sources or poor signal. Name Audio believes you can have digital precision with analog warmth.

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