Science Friday - Living Underwater For 100 Days, Refineries’ Excess Emissions, Owl Facts. June 9, 2023, Part 2

Episode Date: June 9, 2023

Exposing Texas’ Excess Emissions Problems In the early hours of August 22, 2020, Hurricane Laura was still just a tropical storm off the coast of the Leeward Islands in the Caribbean. But effects from the monstrous storm, which would ultimately take at least 81 lives, were already being felt on the U.S. Gulf Coast. As rain poured down on the Sweeney refinery in Old Ocean, Texas, that afternoon, two processing units failed, releasing nearly 1,400 pounds of sulfur dioxide, which can cause trouble breathing, and other chemicals. Over the next few days, Laura siphoned up moisture from the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico and transformed into a Category 1 hurricane. In Texas, chemical plants began shutting down, hurriedly burning off unprocessed chemicals and releasing vast amounts of pollution in anticipation of the storm making landfall. On August 24, Motiva’s Port Arthur refinery released 36,000 pounds of sulfur dioxide, hydrogen sulfide, and other noxious pollutants. The next morning, Motiva began purging chemicals its plant had been processing, emitting nearly 48,000 pounds of carbon monoxide and propylene, among other pollutants. The following day, a Phillips 66 refinery in southwest Louisiana shut down, releasing more than 1,900 pounds of sulfur dioxide. Then, as gale-force winds swept through coastal communities and the relentless rain poured down, the chemical facilities increasingly malfunctioned. To read the rest, visit sciencefriday.com.   A Scientist’s Catalog Of 100 Days Under The Sea In February, Dr. Joe Dituri put on his scuba gear, dove 30 feet below the surface, and entered a 100-square-foot underwater lodge. This former US Navy diving officer didn’t come up again for air until June 9, spending 100 days underwater. And even before the end of his stay, he broke the record for living underwater. He did all of this in the name of science—to understand how the human body handles long-term exposure to pressure. This mission is called Project Neptune 100, and because those 100 days are finally up, we’re taking a deep dive into the underwater habitat to hear what is to be learned from so many days below the waves. We recorded this interview with Dituri on Day #94 with a live virtual audience, whom you’ll hear from later. Ira talks with Dr. Deep Sea, aka Dr. Joe Dituri, a biomedical engineer and associate professor at the University of South Florida, and Dr. Sarah Spelsberg, wilderness emergency specialist and the medical lead for Project Neptune 100 coming to us from the Maldives. To see some photos of Dr. Dituri's undersea life, visit sciencefriday.com.   Unmasking Owls’ Mysteries Don’t let owls’ cute faces fool you—they’re deadly predators. This duality is part of what makes them so mysterious to humans. And their contradictions don’t end there: Their hoots are among the most distinctive bird sounds, yet owls are nearly silent when gliding through the air to catch their prey. Scientists are learning more about why owls are such good predators—how their hearing and night vision are so sharp, and their flight so silent. With new technology, researchers are also decoding owl communications, increasing our understanding of their social structures and mating habits. John Dankosky talks about all things owls with Jennifer Ackerman, author of the new book, What An Owl Knows: The New Science of the World’s Most Enigmatic Birds.   To stay updated on all-things-science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters. Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

This is Science Friday. I'm Iroflato. Did you know that sometimes facilities like refineries and gas wells get a free pass to emit more chemicals than they're technically allowed to? Yes, it happens for safety reasons. Like if there's a hurricane or a fire, and that means releasing massive amounts of chemicals like nitrogen oxides and carbon monoxide into the air all at once. This is called an excess emission event. And it makes sense, right? to avoid some bigger catastrophe. But you guessed it, that's not great for climate change or air pollution and potentially not for people's health. This week, Grist published an investigation into this asking, are all these emission events necessary? And are the companies being held responsible for what they emit? We teamed up with Grist for this story,

and joining me now are there two reporters. The Venus Hadassavam is a senior staff writer at Grist based in Oakland. Clayton Alderman is a senior data reporter at Grist based in Seattle, Washington. Welcome both of you to Science Friday. Thanks for having us. Yeah, thank you. You're welcome. Okay, Navina, get us started.

Tell us what exactly happens during an excess emission event. Sure. So excess emissions basically refers to pollution from chemical facilities that are beyond what's permitted. So if you operate a chemical facility, the state gives you a permit that defines how much pollution you can release into the air, but they make an exception for certain circumstances, right? So if your facility has to shut down or it has to start up or if it malfunctions, you're allowed to pollute above those limits as long as you report to the state environmental agency that you basically did that and essentially you didn't have any other option.

I get it. And you start your story talking about Hurricane Laura. Yeah, sure. So when Hurricane Laura began forming in the Atlantic towards the end of August, August 2020, a number of chemical facilities either began malfunctioning or they decided to shut down. So as they started shutting down, they began purging a lot of the chemicals in their system. And if you look at the reports that they submitted to the state, you'll see a whole bunch of these emission events, right? So on August 24th, Motiva's refinery shuts down. It releases 36,000

pounds of sulfur dioxide, hydrogen sulfide, a bunch of other pollutants. Then the next day, another Motiva Chemicals facility emits another 48,000 pounds, a Phillips refinery in Louisiana shuts down, another chemical plant in Louisiana catches fire, which for context is almost as much as the toxic load that was being carried on the train that derailed in East Palestine in Ohio earlier this year. But in fact, extreme weather isn't even the majority cause here. Facilities might release pollution in this manner for a variety of reasons. A plant might unexpected. lose power or maybe a valve or a pump or, you know, some other piece of complex machinery malfunctions. And in all these cases, a polluter might have cause to spit out excess emissions.

And the crux of this story, so I understand it, isn't just that these big polluting events happen, but they don't really get counted, right? Yeah, basically, that's right. Since 2002, at least in taxes, companies are supposed to notify this state about these excess emission events within 24 hours of them happening that basically states how much they polluted for how long and why it happened. But it's extremely routine for companies to claim that they had no choice but to pollute. So even when in some cases you could argue that with better technology or, say, for shutdown practices, they could have avoided some of these emissions, right? And the state basically takes them at their word.

one recent analysis found that Texas only labels less than 1% of these cases as, quote, unquote, excessive emission events. So overall, it's quite rare for companies to face any sort of punishment for using the exemption. And Clay, I understand you crunched your own numbers for this, right? What did you look into? Yeah. So using public records requests, we compiled a data set of about 20 years of excess emissions data. that's about 300,000 of these events and all told, it appears excess emissions events between 2002 and 2021 or so they sum to about 1.1 billion pounds of under the radar pollution.

And that has to spell bad news for the people who live near these refineries and breathe in that air. Navina, tell us what's happening to them. When I travel to Texas, I met a gentleman by the name of Christopher Jones. Chris lives in the Charlton Pollard neighborhood in Beaumont and is the Neighborhood Association President. The neighborhood sits right next to this massive Exxon Mobil facility and that whole area is surrounded by industry. And when I visited, Chris described constantly smelling all sorts of strange smells. But there's Simone's where when I wake up and it's putrid outside and it's hard to tell who or what industry comes from. Yeah, and he told me last year he was.

driving back to Beaumont one day and his phone just started blowing up. He started getting a series of calls from his friends and neighbors about a massive flare at the Exxon Refinery. And one resident told him her eyes were watering and others were telling him they were feeling unwell. And many of these neighbors had lived in that area for a really long time, but they described this particular flare as different. They were saying, you know, they were spewing this very thick black plume and it didn't look like anything that they had seen before. So the next morning, Chris then told me he drove to Exxon just to see this for himself. It was still black and it rolled my window down.

And I said, oh, it do make your throat burn. Exxon has basically posted on its social media that it was conducting maintenance that day and the event was not reported to the Texas Access Emissions database. I reached out to Exxon with questions and the Exxon spokesperson said that, the company, quote, operates under an aggressive state and federal regulatory system and reports emissions to the U.S. EPA and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality in a consistent and timely manner in accordance with all laws, regulations, and permits. You speak of all laws, regulations, and permits. What about the Clean Air Act and the EPA? Is there no protection

afforded by them? Yeah, that's a great question. This has been kind of a longstanding problem. and the EPA, depending on the administration, has gone back and forth on how to regulate these excess emission events. So in 2008, a court basically ruled that the exemption for excess emission events, you know, during these startups, shutdowns, malfunctions, that it's basically illegal and not in line with the Clean Air Act. So during the Obama administration, the EPA basically said, you know, Texas wasn't allowed to use this particular exemption. But then, of course, you know, President Trump took office and that decision was reversed. And now earlier this year, the Biden administration has basically reversed that reversal. And both Texas and Louisiana have to come up with a

new plan for overseeing chemical facilities without allowing them to use these exemptions. It will probably take a couple of years for the new plan to take effect. So in the meantime, companies continue to use this exemption. And so this is a potentially dangerous cycle to be stuck in. I mean, you have climate change making storms worse, so refineries release more emissions, and that's certainly not helping climate change, right? Yeah, yeah, that's right. We work to isolate the effects of extreme weather on the types of events we're talking about here. And our statistical model says that for a given facility in a given year,

basically a 1% increase in precipitation corresponded to roughly a 1.5% increase. in the mean magnitude of an excess emissions event. We also extrapolated from a recent study of sea surface temperatures and precipitation intensity. And given that study, we can estimate that about a 1 degree Celsius rise in temperature in our data set would have led to about 52 million pounds of excess emissions. And 70% of chemical facilities are in vulnerable areas. Well, that's not great to hear. how necessary is it to release emissions when there's an emergency like a hurricane? I mean, is it

avoidable? You know, there are certainly some emergencies when excess emission events are just completely unavoidable, right? Even environmental and public health advocates will tell you that these excess emission events are sometimes acceptable in cases because it means the facility can operate safely and it is the least harmful approach in those situations. But the reality here is that those are not the only situations when facilities are making use of this exemption. So for instance, if you need to shut down a massive facility before, let's say, a hurricane, you can reduce the amount of emissions you have to release by doing it slowly and over a longer period of time. But instead, what you actually see happening is facilities will often shut down

three or four days before a hurricane makes landfall. And they keep the facility running as long as they possibly can, and then they quickly shut down, just flaring and burning off most of the chemicals in the system. And that is basically an attempt to maximize profits, right? And then the other thing also is that even with these exemptions, companies are still routinely trying to downplay their emissions. Right. What do you mean by that? How is that? You know, take the Valera Refinery in the Houston neighborhood of Manchester, right? So in early 2022, a power outage caused the company to flare a massive amount of chemicals for a couple of hours. And air monitors near the plant showed particulate matter levels spiking. But when the company submitted its official excess

emissions event report to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, it claimed the event had taken place over 15 and a half hours. If instead the company had averaged the emissions over a two-hour period, it would have violated limits for particulate matter and nitrogen oxide and hydrogen sulfide emissions. Amazing. Okay, Nevinas. So what happens now? Is there a solution? I mean, apart from better regulations, I assume. Yeah, better regulations, but also better enforcement of the regulations will make a big difference, I think, because like I said earlier, Texas rarely pursues cases against polluters. I did reach out to the Texas Commission on environmental quality to get their response to some of our findings, and they pointed out that they have made great strides in

reducing excess emission events. In fact, they told me in the last few years during the pandemic, emissions have dropped significantly. They attributed this to a series of interventions they've made, including conducting meetings, workshops, web events with the industry, and initiating enforcement action to deter non-compliance. But what is important to also remember here is that emissions basically fell across the board the last few years during the pandemic as businesses shut down or they otherwise adjusted the operations. Wow, a lot to think about here. I want to thank both of you for bringing us the story. Thanks so much for having us. Yeah, thank you, Ira. The Venus Hadassivan, senior staff writer at Grist based in Oakland, California. Clayton Aldern

is a senior data reporter at Grist based in Seattle, Washington. And if you want to read the full story, head to our website, ScienceFriday.com, slash. emissions. Up next, we go under the sea for the science of living under pressure. We talk to a man who's been living beneath the waves for a hundred days. We'll be right back. Stay with us. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. A hundred days ago, Dr. Joe Detoury put on his scuba gear, dove 30 feet below the surface, and entered a hundred square foot underwater lodge. This former U.S. Navy diving officer hasn't come up for air until today, day number 100, and during his stay, he broke the record for living underwater weeks ago. But what's the point? Well, he did all of this

in the name of science to understand how the human body handles long-term exposure to pressure. This mission is called Project Neptune 100, and because those 100 days are finally up, We're taking a deep dive, well, maybe not that deep, into the underwater habitat to hear what is to be learned from so many days below the waves. We recorded this interview on day number 94 with a live virtual audience whom you'll hear from later. So joining me now is Dr. Deep Sea, Dr. Joe DeTorey, a biomedical engineer and associate professor at the University of South Florida, joining us from the bottom of a lagoon in Key Largo, Florida. Also, Dr. Sarah Spellsberg, Wilderness Emergency Specialist and Medical Lead for Project Neptune 100, coming to us from the Maldives. Welcome to Science Friday. Thank you. Thank you very much for having me.

Hey, thank you for having us. We appreciate it. Nice to have you. You've been living there underwater for more than 90 days. Is there an action or something about your body that has surprised you the most about living underwater for so long? Interestingly enough, two things. The compelling shortness, I was 73 inches when I started this thing, and I used to scrape my head right on the emergency escape hatch. I no longer scrape my head. I believe I'm shrinking, although the doctor will tell us the details when I come to the surface on that measurement. Secondly, for instance, last night I slept about seven and a half hours. Five of those hours, five of those hours were in three. deep or REM sleep. Unheard of sleep cycles down here like you would not believe. Wow. Do we know why that is? I go into these research projects without trying to go in without preconceived notions and trying not to spend too much time obsessing about the data early on until we have enough to do the

statistics. And I think the noise and I think the depth and I think the pressure and gentle gentle vibration down there. I think they all play a role in in kind of creating this sleep bubble. And Joe, tell us what you're trying to accomplish with this 100-day mission. So it's a three-fold purpose, actually. And the first part

is, I have a PhD in biomedical engineering, therefore I want to do biomedical research on the human. You leave it in an isolated, confined extreme environment for 100 days. What happens? 19 psychological and psychosocial tests before all the way through the dirt,

and then afterwards. 200 blood, urine, and saliva tests. You know, we basically do electrocardiograms on the heart on a regular basis, electroencephalograms for the brain to see what happens with the, you know, coherence, what happens to the phase leg while it's down here, the alpha theta ratios. We're checking all that stuff and we're just pointing it in the direction. We're also doing pulmonary function tests to see if there's a decrease in, you know, vital capacity or whatever happens after you leave somebody in this high partial pressure of oxygen environment.

And that's only the first thing that we do. And the second thing is we get to do outreach to kids. And to date, we've gone almost 4,000 kids that we have physically talked to that I have physically talked to in some way, shape, or form in less than 100 days, right? So the numbers are staggering and we're just, we're out there doing good stuff. We're talking to them about science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. these kids are so much better at technology and they're born scientists. So I'm just, just reiterating to them that they can do stuff that's fun in a fun place like the ocean where I

have. Right. And then, Ferdin, finally, I'm talking to the greatest scientists on the planet about preserving, protecting, and now rejuvenating the marine environment. PhDs in marine science in shark research, in sponge research, anything that's going on, in theology. And we're just trying to figure out how we can do this better. For instance, we learned how to transplant and replant coral on a coral reef and rejupe the coral. Oh, absolutely. I was just talking with a whole group of kids two days ago. It was great. That's terrific. So Sarah, tell me you're an explorer and a doctor and sometimes both at the same time. Why did you get involved in this project? And what do you view as your mission? I mean, my mission is to make Joe's vision a reality and to protect the data. And, and to protect the

data and make sure we get all of the data that we're that we're trying to get here. When he told me about this project, I was, I was really enthralled and just thrilled at the opportunity to be a part of it, much less the lead MD for this study. And I'm interested, too, because I've always been interested in hyperbaric, and I feel like it's, you know, somewhat of an underutilized technology. When it comes to diseases, it has applications for wound healing and obviously decompression sickness. And now with Joe's research on, you know, traumatic brain injury, it's showing a lot of promise there as well. And I think that I think there's promise here for inflammatory conditions and other pathologies for people who are at high risk for cardiovascular disease from what we're seeing from the data so far.

So I knew getting on board that this was going to be a big deal and exciting. and I don't think I knew quite how big and quite how exciting it was going to become. Sarah, and you visit Joe to get samples. I do. What's that life? It's a unique house call. I don't know that I've ever heard of another physician scuba diving down to their patients. And it's fun and exciting for me.

And as we've spoken, I'm in the Maldives. I love diving. I love swimming. I love snorkeling. I love marine life. And cleaning up the ocean. is a particular passion of mine. So, yeah, I dive down there.

I surface in the moon pool. I get myself cleaned up so I don't drip all over everything. He's already collected the blood and the saliva specimens, but then I draw his blood underwater, and we've ultrasounded him underwater to take a look at his heart and lungs, and we've done all of these interesting house calls underwater. Is there any difference between collecting blood, drawing blood on land versus underwater?

Yes. I wasn't sure what to expect the first time because you know how a potato chip bag, if you go up in a plane, it becomes really big. Well, when you go down at depth, it gets really small. And so when I draw his blood at depth and then I dive to the surface with it, I was deeply concerned that it was going to explode. And so what I did was I drew twice as many vials, but only half full. And the thing that I think surprised me the most was how fast it came out.

he has a normal blood pressure and a very normal heart rate and the blood just shot out. Like when I first stuck it in and tried to connect the vacuum tube, it almost shot me off the power and the pressure. Wow. And it was just like, whoa, okay, that's happening. And while we're filming it, of course. But we got it back on and got the rest of our samples. And it just, it comes out really fast, really fast. Joe, is that because you're pressurized?

How pressurized are you down there as opposed to being on? the surface? We're at 25 pounds per square inch. Surface is 14.69 and, you know, the vacuum tube is zero. So it's a much greater, much greater pressure. So it makes sense. And we knew this and we had talked it through. We even did a trial run in the moon pool of a of a syringe full of water just to see what happened. And I was a little daunted at that point. Let's just put it that way. Got it. I got it. Sarah, you told us about bringing those samples back to the surface. Do you have any results from the blood samples? We do. We do have some results. And I think, and we have a lot. As he said, we've done hundreds of tests. So probably the most compelling to me are that his, a lot of his

inflammatory markers have dropped and stayed down. So it'll be very interesting to me than what happens after he's been back at the surface for a period of time and we redraw, because if they stay down or if they or if they come back up, it opens up the door for hyperbaric to be a treatment option for a lot of autoimmune and inflammatory conditions like ulcerative colitis and Crohn's, rheumatoid arthritis. And then the other thing is his cortisol has gone down. His like total pooled cortisol, which is a stress hormone. It's like the fight or flight hormone. When you, when you're in a chronic state of stress, you might have chronically elevated cortisol, and it can have a lot of effects on the body.

And having it go down is, yeah, it's very exciting. So your immune system is tweaked up and you're relaxing more. And you're relaxing more. Yeah, and your testosterone's up. You're like your total testosterone has just gone up. So you can rip a phone book while being very relaxed. And do you notice? It's like the life, right?

Well, do you notice? Can you feel any difference, Joe, from these things happening? I feel amazing because I'm getting much better sleep. Being in 60 to 66% REM sleep is unheard of projutory, right? I mean, that wasn't the way that I slept. I was in the military for 28 years. I was always constantly on guard. I had a traumatic brain injury, therefore I didn't generally sleep very well.

So when I was able to sleep and catch up on sleep, now I'm like, wait a minute. wait a minute, wait a minute, I'm so much more productive. I'm literally, you know, I'm literally buzzing while I'm down here. And, and, you know, I do all kinds of interviews and I'm engaged probably 16 to 18 hours a day. Wow. That's amazing. That's amazing. Let me go to our questions from our audience. Nikun has a question about monitoring your heart. Nikunj, go ahead. Yeah, I was just wondering if there was any effect on the, on the heart. You were talking about the blood pressure, whether echocardiograms done, you know, have we looked at things like pulmonary hypertension, stuff like that? I'm actually in the Navy myself, and I'm a pulmonary and critical

care physician, so this is a very intriguing topic. Thank you. Electrocardiograms are done twice a week. Absolutely. We're checking it. Now it is just the six-leady KG, but we're doing blood pressure testing, and we see no substantial increase in blood pressure the entire time. oxygen testing with the little pulse oxymeter. And we're also doing pulmonary function testing every two weeks on this. Now, I'm at 36% oxygen being as I'm breathing 21% from the surface at this increased pressure. So Boyle's law squishes it down and Dalton's law says that the whole has to equal the son of its parts. So effectively, I'm breathing 36% oxygen at this step. and the possibility of pulmonary oxygen toxicity is very real.

So especially in the last couple of weeks, we have been reducing the amount of time, and we do this regularly and often because we want to make sure. We want to see what heat intolerance is, right? And then we've used a butterfly ultrasound to try to get pictures of the heart and the lungs about once a month. But we haven't done any really invasive pulmonary hypertension testing. He swims every day.

I try to minimize how many holes I poke in it. Joe, is your diet and exercise plan different underwater? She talked about swimming than it was up on the surface. So exercise plan is different. Diet is exactly the same. I'm a creature of habit. I was in the military for a lot of years. I just eat three eggs in the morning, a salad with a lot of protein on it in the afternoon.

And then at dinner, I just have high protein and something green as a vegetable. But what we're doing is we're testing out these katsu bags. and we're using resistance band technology. And what we're trying to do is build muscle. Everything distal to this cup when it's pumped up will be engorged with blood. When it's engorge with blood, you increase mitochondrial plumpness, you know, and you're helping to basically tire the muscle more quickly. Then when you let it up and you let the oxygen or the blood back in,

so you get to remove that lactic acid buildup and work the whole. whole left side of the Krebs cycle, which is epic for building muscle. And here we are, you know, at the bone crushing depth, still keeping the same muscle. And that is all I have done down here. Zero health exercise whatsoever, just the resistance bands. So, and we've done muscle size testing. And we'll see how I'm doing. I mean, I lost eight pounds when I first came down here. But we've done measurements. We've done measurements. And the muscle masses stayed, stayed the same. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. Let me go to another question. Earl from Davis, California. Earl has a question about your process while scuba diving. Hi, Earl. Go ahead.

Yes, hi. As a scuba diver, it sounds like you're out of the depth where you wouldn't have to worry about the bins per se with surfacing if you did it slow enough. But I wonder when you go outside the chamber, how close do you get to the surface? I don't approach anything closer than 10 feet that cuts my depth in half. And that's what Halvane said initially is if you cut your pressure in half, you don't want to cut your pressure in any more than that. So basically, I'm just trying to limit and split the difference between it. In saturation diving, we call it excursions. There's a lot of math involved in calculating your decompression. And when you do it, you realize, wow, there actually is decompression. So while the Navy tables, another table say the word unlimited, that's not exactly

true. Can you get bent? Yes. Have people been bent from this step? Absolutely has happened, treated at the hospital right here in the Keys. So I know of them because I get the call all the time. So it has happened. Right. I have to ask you, being isolated down there, has anything gone wrong medically speaking? I love that you're laughing at this question. It's got to be something. what what it happened was on day 12 i called sarah and i said what can you do for a cracked tooth and she said you did what he said yeah day 12 i cracked the molar that's the worst yeah it's been a rough couple of months but you know the dentist couldn't get me in until july anyway you're all pulled up until july and i'm like oh you're killing me i'm like i happen to be

underwater so but it poses unique problems you know like normally what would happen if you have a standard duration between the time you can get to the dentist. You pack it and you seal it with a kit from Walmart, right? Or someplace off the shelf, right? But you cannot do that underwater because if you seal it here, you have barotentalgia. You come up and that air has to expand. It's physics. It works.

How your tooth explodes when you come to the surface if you seal it when you're underwater. So, you know, it's kind of a unique, kind of suck it up sort of a situation. You're a week from resurfacing. What do you miss most about life online? And don't say a pizza. Please just don't say that. No, no, absolutely not. No, honestly, that's what I missed the most, the sun. So realistically, when I came onto water, I'm a creature of the sun. I'd wake up in the morning. I'd go to the gym, and then I'd go watch the sunrise.

When I went home in the evening, I would go watch the sunset. And I didn't realize how much it affected my psyche. So while I have normal circadian rhythm and sleep is amazing, you still miss that sun, that awesome orange orb. So the only supplement I'm taking while underwater for this 100 days is 2,000 I use of vitamin D because my great doctor told me to make sure of that because there will be no sun down there. I insisted on that. That was the only thing I said, you have to take vitamin D.

We're not going to mess with the soup other than that, but you have to take vitamin D. If you're just joining us, I'm talking with Dr. Joe Dutori, a biomedical engineer and associate professor at the University of South Florida. He is joining us from the bottom of a lagoon in Key Largo, Florida, where he's testing the effects of pressure on himself. I'm also joined by Dr. Sarah Spelsberg, Wilderness Emergency Specialist, and the medical lead for this project. We'll all be right back after this break. Stay with us. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. If you're just joining us, I'm talking with Dr. Joe DeTorey.

He is joining us from the bottom of the bottom of the science Friday. Bottom of a lagoon in Key Largo, Florida. I'm also joined by Dr. Sarah Spelberg, Wilderness Emergency Specialist, and the medical lead for this project. Let's talk about what you do for fun. Down there all by yourself, right? What do you do for fun down there? So, you know, I'm busy for like 14, 12 hours at least a day I'm busy. And, you know, I'm diving and I'm doing, you know, I'm doing my experiments and doing the outreach and so forth.

So realistically, when you say fun, I mean, this is fun. for me. I mean, I'm being very literal when I say, this is my job. Yeah. So my job is fun and it's a passion of mine. So I get to do this. I get to do this research on a regular basis. And I get to excite a kid about science, technology, engineering, and math. And I get to learn from the world's experts and, you know, about the marine science and the world of marine science. So short of that, that's basically it. You know, I get to relax a little bit. I get to look out this window. My favorite thing to do is look out this window at night and vary the color of the light and just watch the circle of life happen.

You know, the plankton comes out, then the worms. Have any of the critters adopted you while you've been down there? I see you looking out at them all the time. Come up. My friend Fred, the lobster lives right on a shelf. Oh, my God, he's right there. Okay, so he's right there right now, right? It's literally right there right now.

and I saw Fred malt. Okay, so lobster's malt. Wow. So I saw him doing this type of emotion, and I'm like, what's wrong with Fred? So I just jumped in, got on my scuba gear, swam out there. And when I did, his body was lying motionless. And I'm like, Fred? And then I saw this pink gelatinous gooey thing just skulking away.

And I was like, Fred, Fred. And then Fred was gone. And I was like, wait, they molt. He multed. Fred malted in front of my eyes. I know what I'm doing it. That's a great story. That's a great story.

Sarah, you treat people. How can you take what you learn from this mission and apply it to your patients? Some good information here? Are we going to change medicine at all? I think we might, actually. I think we might. From what we've learned here, I am very curious to see what happens with our results once we get him back to the surface.

and if the improvements, the decreased cortisol, because he had higher cortisol. He was working hard and he was under a fair bit of stress when we tested him at the surface. And so now it's gone down well into the green zone. And then in our second draw, it dropped yet again. And so if we can find a way to utilize some of this technology to decrease people's stress or somehow decrease the inflammation, I think we could help. We could help a lot of people. We could treat a lot of disease.

Joe, how would you answer that question, Joe? So I think we need a fundamental shift in the way we do research in general. And that's truly what I think is going to come out of this is a fundamental shift. Everybody wants to know drug companies want to know what's the one thing that the one variable. If I give you this drug and isolate everything else, then, you know, then we can prove that the drug is safe. Well, that proves the drug and that's it. But if you're treating people from a holistic perspective, you need to research entirely differently. You need to look at every single thing and see what changes.

And then just kind of make some good assumption, you know, I realize it's all rooted in science. But goodness, you know, we got to stay off the drug company modeling onto a possibility of actually doing a different kind of research for the human body. I was just going to say that the sleep quality and the time to exercise, I think if we gave that, if I could encourage every patient of mine to prioritize getting quality sleep and prioritize focusing on getting exercise every single day, I think a lot of these markers would improve in them also. Do you think we could adapt hyperbaric chambers for more things than we normally do now, Sarah? Yes.

I'm hopeful that the answer to that is yes. All right. Joe, you've been down there almost 100 days. Can you top this? What do you want to do next? because you look like a guy who is still raring to go about something. I do, in fact, I'm doing my zero-g flight, and I'm going to prove these cups and these resistance bands in zero gravity.

And then, hey, Elon, if you're listening, sir, somebody owes me 100 sunrises and sunset. So with the speed of rotation of the International Space Station, that's about six and a half days on the ISS. So I'll trade you straight up. Well, there you have it. I want to thank both of you for taking time to be with us today. Quite fascinating and quite really informative. Dr. Joe DeTorey, Biomedical Engineer, Associate Professor, University of South Florida. He was joining us from the bottom of a lagoon in Key Largo, Florida, and Dr. Sarah Spelsberg, Wilderness Emergency Specialist and the Medical Lead for Project Neptune 100, coming to us from the wonderful Maldives. Thank you both, and good luck to you. Thank you for having us. Great time. Thank you, Ira. I want to bring you a conversation about a distinctive animal, one that is both a vicious predator and incredibly cute. I'm talking about owls. Here with me is our resident owl enthusiast, John Dan Koski. John, why are you so enthralled by owls?

Oh, boy, Ira, I literally drink coffee in the morning out of one owl mug that I have and I drink tea in the afternoon out of another owl. owl mug. I just, I love these birds. I find them mysterious. In recent years, too, I've been seeing a lot of them in the woods near my house. I love how they can just hunt so silently, but also make really distinctive sounds when they want to be heard. I could go on forever, but needless to say, I really, really love owls. Yeah, yeah, I've been always fascinated by them myself, if not a little terrified. I remember once a few years ago, an owl once tried to attack my neighbor's dog. Oh, no. Yeah, and she had to like, shoe it, muscle it away from flying in because they pack so much power into such a small package, don't they? Yeah, they really do. And I hope the dog is okay.

I mean, it's one of the things that really excites me about them. As you said, they have these beautiful, calm, just really cute. faces, but they are deadly predators. And scientists are learning a lot more about why they're such good predators, how they're hearing and their night vision is so sharp, and how their flight is just so quiet. So here to talk more about all things owls is my guest, Jennifer Ackerman. She's the author of a new book What an Owl Knows, the new science of the world's most enigmatic birds. She's based in Charlottesville, Virginia. Jennifer, welcome back to Science Friday. It's such a pleasure. Thank you for having me.

of the owl is probably the most recognizable bird call that we have, but it's not just hoots that owls make or shrieks. They've got a very sophisticated form of communication. What have scientists learned about how owls communicate? Yeah, well, they've learned that a hoot is not just a hoot, you know, it's one of the really delightful surprises I learned in my research. Als have very elaborate vocal repertoires that are really teeming with meaning. You know, they have greeting hoots and territorial hoots and emphatic hoots. And they don't just hoot. You know, they chitter, squawk, squeal, and their different calls communicate really highly specific information about their sex, their size, their weight, their individual identity, and even their state

of mind. And decoding some of these vocalizations using machine learning has revealed something pretty interesting that owls might not be as monogamous as we thought? It's true. And the way we've learned this is that it turns out that adult owls have highly distinctive voices, and they can actually recognize one another by voice alone. And now we too can identify individual wild owls living in the woods by these unique territorial hoots. And that means two things, that researchers can actually monitor these out populations more accurately. And that is a really important tool for conservation. But also, they can actually observe, by listening who's mating with whom and whether couples are in fact staying together. And, you know, the wisdom had been that most species of owls were monogamous.

You know, pairs made it for life. And it turns out to be not so, you know, to the great surprise of scientists, there's often so much mate switching among the owls they're monitoring that it's hard to keep up. There are so many distinctive owl species. And you talk about so many of them in your book. I want to talk about a few of them. And we'll start with the Great Gray Owls. this kind of iconic bird, it's really impressive when it comes to its hearing. And one of the facts in your book that fascinated me the most is that they're able to hear a vole scurrying under a foot of snow. How are they able to do this?

Yeah, this is, this was the thing that just blew me away about a great gray owl is, you know, they can from the air, they can hear a vole or a mouse tunneling under as much as 18 inches of snow. That's just so remarkable. It was really almost four or five decades ago in the 1960s that the famous biologist Roger Payne, you know, he showed that an owl can actually catch a mouse in the pitch black relying only on sound. And it turns out, you know, owls that hunt by ear like barn owls and great gray owls, their heads are really just designed for listening. They have these big facial discs and that act like a kind of big feathered external ear. It's kind of like a satellite. dish for collecting sound. And this facial just channels the sound toward their ears. And it's what inside those ears that's really so remarkable. And scientists have begun to tease apart lately that they describe an owl's inner ears as the race cars, the Ferraris of sound sensitivity. And it's true. You know, the owls have these really big cochlea. They're the hearing organs in the brain. In a bird like the barn owl, like the cochlea is just, crazy long. It's like three or four times as long as the cockley of most other birds. And that gives

barn owls, great gray owls, a sense of hearing that's really almost unequaled in the animal world. So they're very sensitive to sound. They hear very well. But what makes them such efficient predators is then they like don't make any noise. Prey can't hear them coming. Even the most silent predator birds other than owls, you can hear them flapping down. What is it about owls' wings? make them so silent? Yeah, it's really, I think it's one of the great wonders of the bird world is an owl's quiet flight. And they can fly quietly in part because they have what's called low wing loading, and that's that their wings are very big in relation to their bodies. So their flight is very buoyant and slow. But it's also because they have the really ingenious design

of their wings and feathers, which kind of squelch the normal sounds that bird wings and feathers make. have three really remarkable features that hush their flight. And they have this, it's called a comb, a row of really fine, hair-like bristles that kind of extend forward along the leading edge of the wing where it meets the oncoming air. And when the air hits that comb, the serrations and those little bristles, they break up the turbulence that normally causes a lot of noise on a bird's wing. and that effectively suppresses the kind of swoosh sound that usually is made by a bird's wing.

And then they have a little row of wispy vein fringes on the rear edge of the wing that serves a similar function. And then this is the really cool thing. They have this soft layer of velvet that coats the feathers in the whole wing. And that silences any kind of rubbing together noise that the feathers might make in another bird. Now, owl's eyesight is also pretty different from other birds. How is it different? For one thing, they have eyes that are really big for their body size. If our eyes were in similar proportion to our bodies as an owl's eyes are to its body,

they'd be about the size of an orange and weigh almost four pounds. So owl eyes are super big. They're also tubular and they're rigid and locked in their sockets in a kind of forward gaze like ours are. Their forward-facing eyes gives them binocular vision, which is a really big advantage in in zeroing in moving prey the way they have to. But, you know, also having your eyes locked in place that has consequences. You know, owls can't move their eyes, so they actually have to move their heads to keep something in sight. It's a myth that owls can actually rotate their heads full circle, but some species can turn their heads almost three quarters of the way around, which is like three times the twisting flexibility that we human.

have. I'm John Dankoski, and this is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. Let's talk about another iconic owl species. Burrowing owls, and I want to hear where they live and what they do, but could you first describe a burrowing owl for someone who's never seen one before? Yeah. Well, they are just the most comical, kind of adorable little creatures. They're just heads on long stilt-like legs, and they have this habit of kind of. kind of cocking their heads in curiosity. They're very cartoon-like and human-like at the same time. First of all, they live in 24 countries in North and South America, so they're very widespread in the new world. And they nest underground in burrows that are dug by, oh, prairie dogs,

woodchucks, badgers, armadillos, and sometimes even under human-made structures. You know, I've seen them nesting under piles of debris or like a little opening, beneath pavement. And one of the really cool things about these little owls that I learned in researching the book is they actually decorate the outside of their burrows with all kinds of stuff, all kinds of treasures. You know, stuff like dung, bison dung or coyote scat. They decorate with bits of wood, bones, moss, and swatches of fabrics, kind of like whatever they can find. And they actually have preferred colors of things. They like red. and white over blue and green, for instance. But what was interesting to me is that all this decorating

isn't about mate attraction or courting the way it is in some birds, because the male only begins decorating after his mate has started nesting and laying eggs. And the decorations are really meant to convey to other males that the borough is occupied. So a male is saying, you know, don't mess with me. I own this place. Look at all this stuff I collected. The research who studies these birds, David Johnson said to me, if you want to show you're a tough guy in the world of burrowing owls, decorate. I just love that. I mean, who knew? What's it like to be near an owl, to get up close and personal,

and actually see it doing its owly things? Yeah, I think the most exciting experience for me was, I was in the field in western Montana with Denver Holt, who's, I think he's considered probably one of the world's foremost experts, on owls. And I had the opportunity to hold one of these. It was a long-eared owl. And it was just an incredible experience because her legs were these big, strong legs, these killer talents, you know, talked between my fingers. But her wings were, you know, soft as rabbits fur. And that was the thing about owls, you know, they're just, they're ferocious and also they're sort of soft and

tender. This owl was incredibly cute, but also like a brutal killer. This bird, she kind of locked eyes with me in this cat-like stare. And I just felt like, you know, there we were eye to eye, creature to creature. And it just felt like such a powerful connection, you know, both of us questioning, what are you? What are you thinking? What are you feeling? And I just held her for a while and marveled at how beautiful she was and how superbly adapted to her world, really so quiet, so skilled. It was really an amazing experience. They really are remarkable animals. Jennifer Ackerman is the author of What an Owl Knows.

Jennifer, thanks so much for the book and for bringing us all these great stories. Thank you so much for having me here, John. And if you want to read an excerpt of the book, go to ScienceFriiday.com slash owls. Thanks, John. Great story. about it for this week. Have a great weekend. We'll see you next week on my reflato.