SciShow Tangents - Beaches

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hello and welcome to SciShow Tangents, the lightly competitive science knowledge showcase. I'm your host, Hank Green, and joining me this week, as always, is science expert sari riley hello and also our resident everyman sam schultz hello as you may have noticed or known or heard sasha tanges is now a youtube channel with a youtube videos yeah and those you to in those youtube videos i can see that i keep my notes slightly to the left of where my camera is so i just spend the entire episode like this yeah that's how you've always looked to us so i'm used to it yeah yeah yeah yeah but i don't care about you it's all about the people sam people are gonna just have to deal with it sorry yeah and nobody knows but hiding behind the graphics is tuna he's here and we can see him but they can't yeah he's just he can do whatever he can have his duck doing stuff he could just

Starting point is 00:01:13 walk away which is what he just did it's great you guys will never know what a great time we're having all the goofy things all the goofy lovely things tuna is up to so right now in my life i'm currently suffering from a debilitating case of dealing with copyright uh which is not a normal thing i feel like for most people but we're all we're all to some extent youtubers so we know the the life yeah look um i had to pay 150 for a video of for scishow and i said look i do the scripts for free you could pay 150 for this video of a scientist inflating a moth oh why is that the butt thing yeah yeah yeah so so a while back like a you know six weeks ago on tangents we talked about koromata

Starting point is 00:02:07 the inflatable butt tentacles that some moths have the worst butt on planet earth yeah terrible butt situation and i wrote a i wrote a side show about it and then everybody was like we can't find any footage of this and i was like well usually you pay for the script and in this case you don't so you can afford to pay juk Media $150 for a clip of a person inflating a moth butt. They got their hands on it, huh? Jukin got it. And in the video, there's a party blower noise that happens when the Coromata come out. That's so disrespectful.

Starting point is 00:02:40 I had to put in the script, take out the party blower noise. I don't know what you're talking about. That is completely natural, Hank. That's the noise that it makes? Yeah, of course. Anytime something unfurls in nature, it's a party blower noise. And all the nature documentaries edit it out because they're like, that would be too startling. This is too silly.

Starting point is 00:03:00 We weren't ready for this. Yeah, we're trying to make something relaxing right now. This isn't a party. Yeah. Nature isn't fun yeah nature isn't fun nature isn't fun it's relaxing it's soothing speaking of relaxing and soothing this is a science podcast and every week here on tangents we get together to try to one-up

Starting point is 00:03:21 amaze and delight each other with science facts while trying to stay on topic and also failing. Our panelists are playing for Glory and for Hank Bucks, which I'll be awarding as we play, and at the end of the episode, I will crown one of them the winner. Now, as always, we introduce this week's topic with the traditional science poem, This Week from Sari. Listen to the crashing waves and spread your toes in toasty sand. The salty spray... I'm already there. the crashing waves and spread your toes in toasty sand the salty spray the salty spray rarely behaves where humans lay to become tanned but lo what's that volcanic glass the striking green of olivine red from an iron oxide mass or garbage worn down till it shines pentagonal poles of basalt stand tall or a half-worn away limestone cliff

Starting point is 00:04:06 concretions sticking out like balls low tides revealing petroglyphs from scattered seashells to glowing tides no two the same on which we roam so really what is a beach besides a rocky threshold some call home hot damn nice geological that was a real poem man thank you yeah i felt inspired yeah sometimes we do real poems and it's like i don't know can we keep going no we never can't the topic for the day is beaches not the movie but I guess, geological formation. I never thought about it like that until just now. Is beaches a movie? Yeah. It's a resort, too.

Starting point is 00:04:50 I feel like I've seen the commercials. You were definitely not born when the movie Beaches came out. No, no. I was, but I was eight, so I wasn't, like, super into it. So it wasn't for you. I was one years old. So also not really watching that one. You know this song, Wind Beneath My Wings?

Starting point is 00:05:11 That's what I'm seeing right now. Wind Beneath My Wings. She's fast. She's fast. Songs. One, Under the Boardwalk. Is that one a hit classic too? Well, I think that one was a hit before Beaches. That's a really, really old song.

Starting point is 00:05:24 Okay. Two, Wind Beneath My Wings. Three, I've Still Got My Health. two well i think that one was a hit before that's a really really old song okay two when three yeah i've still got my health all by betty miller you don't know movies either no i don't don't. Well, no, Bette Midler is... Oh, Bette. Yes, Bette Midler. She's both. You've seen Hocus Pocus.

Starting point is 00:05:50 No, I haven't. I've seen Hocus Pocus. You've never seen Hocus Pocus? I've never seen Hocus Pocus. Oh, my God. The topic of the day is beaches. No, it's Bette Midler now. Safe is about to call me a beach.

Starting point is 00:06:02 Bette Midler would not hesitate. Yeah. So, Sari, what is a beach um so it is as far as i can tell coastal zone so in between water and land so you can have a lake beach you can have a ocean beach you can have a river beach i've been to one yeah you can have a river all the time between waterland and it's where sediment is accumulated and deposited and sediment is feels like a loose word geologically because you can have rocky beaches you can have very big sediment you can have like meter law big rocks and that's still a beach that's still a beach that's not a beach if they're meter large

Starting point is 00:06:45 that's just a coast like a cliff isn't a beach that's more than one meter yeah there's a line between cliff and beach but i have to be able to lie down on a beach i disagree you can walk on a beach but not lie down on it because there's some beaches that are like jaggedy rocks yeah you would not want to lie down on it your there's some beaches that are like jaggedy rocks yeah you don't want to lie down on it your butt would hurt your back would hurt i just don't know that that's a beach anymore i think you'd look at it and say that beach sucks and it's yeah i think i disagree i think that the sediment has to you have to be able to pick up the sediment that's the the line if i can no longer lift a piece of the beach it's not a beach

Starting point is 00:07:26 anymore what if the strongest person on the planet could lift up a rock on the beach that'd be fine if they like magnus magnuson or whatever so there's more beaches to magnus magnuson in the world than there are no no no he is the person who defines the beach his current level of strength defines all beaches i like we all have different things that we can call a beach. A different threshold for a beach. Yeah, like we're not allowed to call it a beach. The older and weaker you get, the fewer beaches there are in the world. That used to be a beach back in my youth, but now I can't bend over.

Starting point is 00:08:00 There also, I think there might be a size at which the sediment can be too small for it to be a beach and then it's just mud oh yeah yes there's like marshes or swamps that are by oceans but i think yeah it gets so small that it's dirt or mud yeah then it's no longer apparently an important part of being a beach is that there's no plants or like there's an area that's not very planty yeah i agree with that because otherwise you're like that's just a wetland uh-huh the sand is gets there by by transport from rivers and uh and one of the scary things i learned i don't know if i don't want to ruin your facts or anything one of the scary things i learned about beaches is that they take time of stability to form and so if the ocean gets much

Starting point is 00:08:47 higher than it is right now you don't just like get a new beach further higher up it just eats the beach and you don't have a beach for a long time unless you make one artificially so uh a world where the sea level increases substantially as a world without natural beaches which is a bummer not the biggest of the bummers that will come along with that world, but one of them. Sari, do you know anything else about beaches? I know where the word beach comes from. It was invented by Bette Midler in 1988. Yes, and then she sang about it. She was like, let's go to the beach each, whatever the Nicki Minaj song is.

Starting point is 00:09:24 Yeah, Nicki remade that Bette Midler song. Yeah, she did a cover, right? There's only been one song about a beach in the entire history of music, and that's it. And it's just been covered and recovered. Sarah is starting to get into music, so she doesn't know that one Nicki Minaj song. You gotta start somewhere.

Starting point is 00:09:40 Beach actually came before Bette Midler, and it was used in Old English. It came from, I tried to look up the pronunciation of this, B-E-C-E, which is Bisha, I think, somewhere between, close to what it was. That meant stream, and eventually meant the pebbles that you can find in streams or along the seashore so okay beach was used for rocky beaches in europe which there are a lot of think about that hank look i agree that if you can pick it up it's oh yeah all right but a strand was used to describe what we would now like i if i if you a beach, you're expecting small sand that can, like, run through your fingers as opposed to petals. And that's what, in Old English, they called a strand as, like, a shore or the border between the land and the sea, which comes from the root S-T-E-R, which means to stretch out.

Starting point is 00:10:44 And it's there and stretch and also in strand and also in strand yeah like the current the current definition of strand and so i thought that was interesting because you usually say something like in my head beached and stranded are synonymous and i never thought to connect those but like that's like the lingering meaning of strand is like oh you're stranded ashore but it's like the lingering meaning of strand. It's like, oh, you're stranded ashore. But it's because the beach used to be called a strand. I mean, but you can be stranded anywhere now. You don't have to be stranded on a beach.

Starting point is 00:11:13 Yeah, that's true. In fact, all of the places I've ever been stranded were not beaches, unfortunately. Usually airport. Which is kind of the beach of the air, isn't it? It is an air beach. Yeah, airport or gas stations are my main places i've been stranded sure um and gas stations are like the beach of the road that's absolutely true sidewalk is a little closer but uh uh uh gas station is like the dock of the road yeah it's

Starting point is 00:11:40 a road dock yeah oh boy call it that everybody wouldn't like yeah seems right that seems cool i like that yeah that's better excellent That seems cool. I like that. That's better. Excellent. I feel much more informed about beaches than I did a mere 15 minutes ago. Would you guys like to play a game? Okay. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:11:55 I've been looking forward to it all day. Oh, really? Yeah. That feels good. That's so nice. We're going to play a game of Tangents, Truth or Fail today. It's going to be about beaches. Because when you think of beaches, you probably think of summer and warm weather but even when the weather turns cold

Starting point is 00:12:08 and people are not flocking to the beaches they are still there and they're maybe even going through some excitement of their own the following are three stories of winter time on the beach but only one of them is true which one is it winter beach cold you don't think about winter beach we went to amsterdam for for vidcon a while ago and we went to like a resort town and the beach was it was freezing and we were all wearing huge coats but there were there were dutch people frolicking around in their swimsuits and i was like this is cold beach this is the life that you live yeah i like a cold i like a cold beach. This is the life that you live. Yeah. I like a cold beach, honestly. I don't like to get baked. Waste of a beach.

Starting point is 00:12:49 Beach gotta be hot. It's still a beach. It's still a beach. It's still beautiful. But which one of these things is true? Are you ready? Yes. Fact number one.

Starting point is 00:12:57 Next to Lake Michigan, the combination of snow, wind, and shoreline creates sheets of ice that stack up on top of each other until eventually enough pressure builds up underneath that it erupts into a volcano of ice. Or it could be fact number two. A current called the Kuroshio current transports sand mixed with algae from beaches to the northern Pacific Ocean, and in winter those bits of algae and sand begin to ice together creating a frigid beach in the middle of the ocean or it could be fact number three off the coast of california's beaches are forests made of kelp that house a massive amount of wildlife and as the cold sets in and the kelp begins to die off this is good news for the local sea otter population which uses the dying kelp to create floating mats

Starting point is 00:13:45 to insulate them like adorable little otter sleeping bags i was really excited to hear what word you were gonna come yeah what that thing was called okay so it could be uh ice volcanoes along the beach it could be the beach in the middle of the ocean or it could be little comforters for sea otters sourced from a kelp forest so the first one we have a mutual friend alexis who lives in michigan and does science communication and posts a lot of pictures of lake michigan or videos of how icy it gets and i feel like if there was an ice volcano she would have gotten a picture of pictures of Lake Michigan or videos of how icy it gets. And I feel like if there was an ice volcano, she would have gotten a picture of it. Because she's on the lake all the freaking time.

Starting point is 00:14:30 And I've seen those big ice sheets and they are quite dramatic and crashy. But never an ice volcano. Yeah. I got really hung up on this one because I lived in Chicago by, I think, Lake Michigan. That's Lake Michigan, right? It was hell in the winter. It was just like, it was like another world over there.

Starting point is 00:14:47 It was like you were on Venus or something. It was just like wind, ice. So I could totally believe that that would happen. But I feel like I'm too hung up on that one just because I lived in Chicago. So I gotta open my mind. I don't think it could be the otters though because I don't think they need to be insulated.

Starting point is 00:15:04 Number one. I don't think they're be the otters though, because I don't think they need to be insulated. Number one. I don't think they're that smart. Number two. Well, I was with you on number one. I was like, look, maybe otters are so amazing. Who knows? I don't think they need to be smart. They're like a cat.

Starting point is 00:15:16 They have so many abilities and powers. Cats are also smart. They have so many abilities and powers that they don't need to be that smart. Otters are smart and they're every bit as smart as you that well okay i don't think they do they they did you pass ap calculus no neither did an otter what if i had said yes you picked one you knew i didn't do yeah you could have gone for ap art history or something like that didn't do that no that's there were some ap classes i did pass but that weren't

Starting point is 00:15:51 so so what do you think what do you think i think it's pretty much got to be number the middle of beach in the middle of the ocean i think i would have seen that i think i would have seen the ice volcano on the news when i lived there so i think it's number two just by process of elimination i think it's the otters as much as you you are against the otters i feel like we talk ourselves out of the correct one every freaking time okay i'm not gonna argue with you because you're a nemesis but well we're now we're not working together this episode no no that didn, that didn't work. No, we both failed. Yeah, I'm going to say the otters at the kelp forest. Well, I'll tell you what. You two do tend to talk yourselves out of the right answer because ice volcanoes, Google it, it's real.

Starting point is 00:16:36 That doesn't necessarily happen every year. But in February of 2020, you could find ice volcanoes along the shores of Lake Michigan. They're not actually volcanoes, but they sure do look like them. They're cone-shaped mounds that form under very specific conditions that Lake Michigan happens to provide. Very cold temperatures, a lot of snow, and a lot of waves. So as snow falls on the lake, it begins to form like a slush, and then that eventually gets floated to shore, and then mounds of slush begin to accumulate and uh and then eventually the water pressure builds up underneath the ice to the point that it erupts and it shoots like water up like 15 10 15 feet according to one meteorologist the eruption sound like a slurpy getting dropped on

Starting point is 00:17:19 the ground i should have known there was no amount of weather-based depravity Lake Michigan wasn't capable of. So as far as a beach in the middle of the ocean, not that beach in the middle of the ocean. But in 2006, when on a boating trip in the South Pacific, some people happened upon what looked like a beach in the middle of the ocean. It was actually a floating mass of pumice stones that had ended up there because of an undersea volcanic eruption further out. So basically like rock got gas from the eruption, trapped inside of it, floated up and became this like big mat. Sadly, these kinds of islands don't last very long. A year later, it was mostly gone. The last one, kelpp forests definitely a thing there are

Starting point is 00:18:06 definitely sea otters that like to swim around in them but they do not make blankets out of the kelp uh despite how because they're stupid and they don't need to i'll give you they don't need to i'll give you they don't need to. Go visit Monterey Bay if you haven't been able to. Go to the aquarium and check out the otters. You can see them close up at the aquarium and you can see them out in the wild in the kelp forests. Yeah, no, I'll help you with your math homework, apparently. No, they won't.

Starting point is 00:18:36 They didn't tell us either. They'll only do art history. Yeah. All right. So, it's a tie ball game here at Zero to Zero. And we're going to head off for a short break and then we'll be back for the fact off. Hello everybody, welcome back. It's time for the Fact Off. Our panelists have all brought science facts to present to me in an attempt to blow my mind. And after they have presented their facts, I will judge them and award Hank Bucks to the one that blew my mind the most,

Starting point is 00:19:20 and also that I would be most inclined to make a TikTok video about. But to decide who goes first, we have a trivia question. In 2013, Canadians were facing a major challenge. Large flocks of Canada geese would show up at beaches and poop so much the water was becoming a public health threat. So the city of Ottawa decided to turn to drones to scare off the geese. decided to turn to drones to scare off the geese. The drone was designed and run by Steve Wambolt, who equipped it with lights and audio recordings of goose predators like foxes and eagles.

Starting point is 00:19:56 Wambolt would show up to the beach at 4 a.m. to ward off any initial geese and then return throughout the day to run the drone again. And his efforts paid off. At the beach he was working at, a flock of 150 geese would usually show up each summer but with his goose goose fighting drone that number went down on average how many geese showed up once the drone started to do the drone work i like how we never name scientists on this but we named this guy who flew the goose drone very important job he just sat at the beach all day and flew his freaking drone if that's the like look we don't need universal basic income we need universal basic goose scaring drone jobs yeah everybody like then everybody be like all right i'm set i like my life yes i get to i get to scare geese with The economy is based on terrorizing geese now.

Starting point is 00:20:45 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So there was 150 on a normal year. How many were there on the goose year or the drone year? What? Like how many? They would just land once?

Starting point is 00:20:54 Oh, well, I'll just guess. I think the answer is a big goose egg. Zero. Okay. I can't go below that, Terry. No. I'm going to say, i don't know 30 can you say any other number besides 30 uh no i don't want to win i'll say maybe 32 all right sam is the winner the answer is 15

Starting point is 00:21:21 which was exactly between zero and 30, which you would know Sam. If you took AP calculus. Yeah. I did the, I did those integrals in my head and was like, I don't know why make time. That's not calculus,

Starting point is 00:21:34 is it? No. It's just division. Yeah. That's what I thought. It's part of the reading, writing, arithmetic,

Starting point is 00:21:42 Sam. Well, look, I thought maybe if that was calculus i'm really good at math and i didn't know it yeah all right so sari intentionally threw it which means that sam gets to decide who goes first i'll go first ready yes yeah per and poly fluoroalkyl substances, or PFASs. Is there an easier way to say that? PFASs?

Starting point is 00:22:07 Can I say PFASs from now on? Yeah, PFASs. I think that people say PFASs. Are a chemical used in a variety of products. It's super hydrophobic, so it's used in stuff like waterproof fabrics and paints. And it's super heat-resistant and tough, so it's used in firefighting foams and non-stick pans. PFASs are made up of carbon and fluorine bonds and carbon and fluorine bonds are one of the strongest bonds in chemistry. So the chemical will basically exist in nature forever. So PFASs have been dubbed the forever chemical, which is great for waterproofing and

Starting point is 00:22:38 non-stick pans. It's a wonder chemical of the mid-century. And like so many other wonder chemicals of the mid-century, it's got a lot of fucked up stuff going on for it too. For one, it's been linked to all sorts of health effects like ulcerative colitis, infertility, and cancer. Generally, exposure to them is pretty low, but they tend to stick around in the body and accumulate and cause problems if you just are exposed to them too much. Another issue, the forever part of forever chemicals becomes an issue when they end up in the environment. So people throw things with PFASs in them away, or they pee and poop out PFASs that end up inside of their body. And then those end up in the water, which end up in the

Starting point is 00:23:17 ocean. And there the PFASs stick to plankton, which get eaten by fish, which get eaten by whales and seals and bigger fish and all the guys in the ocean that eat fish. And that is not good for them because it impacts ocean life's health, just like it impacts ours. But honestly, it sort of seems like we took the sucks to be them approach to this whole situation. So the PFAS genie is out of the bottle. They're in the ocean. And if they're in the ocean, at least they aren't floating around in the atmosphere for human beings to breathe in and ingest. So the prevailing theory was that they would end up stuck to debris and drift to the bottom of the ocean and just get sealed up in a watery grave.

Starting point is 00:23:53 Immediately adjacent to the ocean is, you guessed it, the beach. So let's picture the beach. We've already done this with Sarah, but we'll do it again. Warm sand, bright sun, gulls flapping in the salty breeze. Love it. A little crab is maybe walking around. Oh, nice. And the waves breaking against the shore, a misty spray shooting up into the air and gently misting you with toxic chemicals.

Starting point is 00:24:15 Oh, no. I was enjoying my book. In December 2021, the least beachy month of the year, a team of scientists from Stockholm, Sweden, released a paper. The findings of which suggest that a not insignificant amount of PFASs were not ending up in Davy Jones's locker as hypothesized, but actually being re-released into the air by the aerosol spray of waves breaking against the shore. So previous samples by the same team had found PFASs in the atmosphere around the ocean. In this newer study, they took 100 air samples from two beachfront towns in Norway between

Starting point is 00:24:49 2018 and 2020. One was right on the shore and one was 12 miles inland. So not beachfront, but near the beach. And they found PFAS in every single one of them, along with sodium ions indicative of the PFAS being carried in by a spray-filled ocean breeze. And the higher the sodium in the air sample, the higher the PFAS were too. So the team concluded that somewhere between 284 and 756 US tons of PFAS could be being released into the air every year and be blown far enough inland to contaminate water sources in more places than just beachfront cities.

Starting point is 00:25:24 Plus, almost half of humans live within like 50 miles of the ocean anyway so they don't even have to blow that far so i guess the moral of the story is i don't know the earth's a closed loop and we live here so maybe be careful about industrial waste that's why we live in montana sam yeah we're far come get us maybe good luck we're just peeing and pooping them downstream for other people yeah yeah exactly yeah just licking my teflon pans and peeing yeah for everybody else take that sea otters oh that's a that's a bummer yeah i feel like these chemicals aren't new they're from the 40s yeah okay we've just gotten like better at both detecting them and maybe being worried about them yeah yes i think like we figured out the health problems associated with

Starting point is 00:26:10 them i don't think you can even manufacture them in the u.s oh okay but you can't import them and use them and stuff so they're still around they're not like that i feel like if you gotta say like you can't make this anymore you gotta say you also can't use it. Yeah. It does seem a little weird. Like, it's okay to destroy the planet. Just, like, the other part. It's like, it's not other part, it's just one planet. As I was reading this, there was a lot

Starting point is 00:26:35 of moments where I was like, well, they're just gonna go in the ocean, and we're okay with that. It's just like, they're too useful for us to do anything about, really, is what it seemed like. Yeah. So, we ruined the ruined the beach it's okay we'll get another planet eventually yeah okay and sari what do you got are you gonna uplift me a little bit a little bit and then they're gonna come back down a little bit at the end too but there'll be an uplifting part so i grew up in the pac Northwest, which is a loosely defined geographic

Starting point is 00:27:05 region in Washington and Oregon in the US and British Columbia in Canada. And all my formative memories of beaches didn't involve palm trees and leisure. They involved rain jackets and a strong sense of wonder because of rocky tide pools and marine life. And so to describe a beach for the third time this episode but crabs and anemones and gulls so two of the same animal sand some of those two yeah weren't the only animals that made their home in these damp sands for thousands of years there were also fluffy white domesticated dogs raised for their companionship and shorn regularly like sheep. So the Coast Salish is a group of indigenous peoples that live along the coastlines of the Pacific Northwest, and before European colonizers wreaked havoc and displaced them, many Coast Salish nations had a

Starting point is 00:27:56 close relationship with different types of dogs, including hunting dogs and these so-called Salish woolly dogs. And a lot of what we know about Salish woolly dogs is through indigenous oral histories. They were raised on small islands separate from other canids so that they would selectively breed with each other and maintain their long, fleecy coats. They were groomed, cared for, and ate seafood-based proteins from near-shore ocean fish to marine mammals. And they either indirectly hunted and ate scraps because of their closeness with humans or were fed directly like treasured companions.

Starting point is 00:28:31 Every so often, the Salish woolly dogs would be shorn for their fur, which would be traded or mixed with mountain goat fur and plant fibers, spun into yarn and woven into fabric like blankets or clothing. Now there's only one Salish woolly dog pelt in the smithsonian museum of natural history or any museum because some european dude named george gibbs was doing anthropological surveys of the pacific northwest in the mid-1800s took or bought or somehow acquired a dog named him mutton and then donated his pelt after he died and when this pelt was excavated from a filing cabinet textile conservationists were extremely excited because it's basically impossible to tell what furs are interwoven into a blanket or

Starting point is 00:29:18 something just by looking at it but with mass spectrometry researchers could closely analyze the proteins in various fiber samples including mut mutton's fur, and more decisively determine which Coast Salish fabrics in various museum collections were made with Salish woolly dog fur. And this is where it gets kind of a bummer. I wish I could tie this up with a happy ending, but colonization sucks for a lot of reasons, especially because of how many indigenous ways of life were criminalized from languages to domesticating cute fluffy island beach dogs for fabric weaving uh and because of that salish woolly dogs went extinct sometime before the 1900s and we've not only lost cultural information but also knowledge about how dogs got domesticated in north america and we're left to piece it together from oral histories or archaeological dig sites and canid bones that we find inside and one single filing cabinet pelt yeah and that one and mutton mutton yeah when he named him mutton i was like oh no yeah

Starting point is 00:30:18 he did not eat him yeah he just like i think mutton like chasing sheep and like ate the head of a sheep pelt or something like that at some point. I mean, there's pictures of Salish Wooly Dogs, which is wonderful, because they look very cute. And I love that they were actually used as, like, a textile source. horse would never have thought of dogs being used in that way where it's like you get companionship and you get like a like a guard dog effect like a barking alarm but you also get fabric yeah get a little thing to spin into yarn what does that have to do with beaches they like lived on the beach seafood they were island dogs they lived on the beach that's what they're they were beach dogs they hung out on the

Starting point is 00:31:05 beaches and and this was part of how they were bred is like their little island lifestyle yeah so they the coastal salish were not only on islands but like along the pacific northwest but they specifically kept these dogs on really small islands so that they could roam freely like without being caged but also like hang out do the dog stuff but also not mix with wolves or the hunting dogs that were on the rest of the land little special boy island a good boy island sam yeah are you willing to concede defeat to the salish woolly dog why are you asking me because because i think that we all agree that that's really great and i gotta have to give it to that one because there were islands full of

Starting point is 00:31:52 little dogs yeah it's like but you're making me concede because you made me concede because you know you're making the wrong choice no no it's because i think that you agree with me i absolutely don't it's so barely about beaches it's about dogs you are right that it's barely about beaches and yours was very beach tied beach centric but also i don't want to think about the fact that i'm gonna poison myself if i go to the beach not a good reason to make a decision but i concede defeat hank there are all so many cute pictures of dogs. People are going to look at his TikTok and be like, ooh, what a good dog. Ooh, I'm going to listen to Tangents.

Starting point is 00:32:31 That's what the teens sound like. You guys need to remember. It's all about getting people to listen to Tangents. Anyway, congratulations, Sarah. That means you're the winner of the episode because of how you guys got no points. In the first part. Just eking by. That's my motto.

Starting point is 00:32:50 Now it's time to ask the science couch where we ask some listener questions to our virtual couch of finely honed scientific minds. At Judah Kras asks, how do whales get beached? How do they get pushed so far up inland? Is a great question. I think it's probably, it's a bunch of different things. But one of the things is that tides happen. And so, so like you start up maybe not so far up the beach, but then you're like, oh, I'm way up the beach now because the tide went out. They're not ramping.

Starting point is 00:33:23 They didn't do a ramp. Okay. They didn't do a ramp. Okay. They didn't do a sweet trick and then miss the landing. As for the question of how do whales get beached generally, how do they get them into a situation where they are so far up onto the beach that they can't get off at all? And then the tide has a chance to go out while they can't move. That is a question of some confusion. Like many things scientists are like we have some guesses but yeah i'm not entirely sure so one of them is just general topography

Starting point is 00:33:53 of the seafloor and getting confused because sometimes beaches drop off so quickly that at when the tide is deep enough the whales don't properly sense the seafloor or the cetaceans because dolphins get beached as well. And so they basically make certain regions more dangerous for deep water marine mammals because they're not as used to sussing out the seafloor. They just have this, researchers think, they have this assumption of safety so when they get too close and this can be because they're in an unfamiliar place or because they were driven there by a lack of food because of pollution or overfishing or other things and they swim into areas that they're unfamiliar with and then as the tide rushes out then they're beached or stranded. Part of it might be because of interference with sonar, whether it's because of sickness and pollution in chemicals,

Starting point is 00:34:54 like Sam's fact, or noise pollution, like sound pulses generated by human equipment underwater. They just get disoriented and end up headed in the direction of land and then a lot of the mass strandings so when you see i think anything above one adult whale or cetacean uh or a mother and child is considered a mass stranding so anywhere from two to hundreds um is because these animals are so social which is very heartbreaking and very sweet that if one is sick and beaches itself then their instinct is to help or to follow or to like stick together as a pack and so whether they all headed into an inlet and then the tide went out or if one of them got beached or is on its way to getting beached then they follow anyway to be like maybe we should

Starting point is 00:35:51 stick together we should try to do something i don't want to anthropomorphize animals but like there's some herd mentality there and then once you're on land then it's a race against time because uh the cetaceans are usually supported by water and in air their body weight often like crushes their internal organs uh toxins can build up and if like technically they're mammals they breathe air uh so if water gets in the blowhole then they can drown which is why conservationists say to like wait for or like call for help or call a volunteer because there are procedures like keeping it wet but not suffocating it or like making sure it's protected from the sun because it doesn't have sun protection naturally and can get burnt um and whatnot so oh gosh The fact that they like accidentally or on purpose kill themselves on mass

Starting point is 00:36:48 when they're trying to be like our friend, our friend. Yeah. Beaches are sad. I don't like, I don't, I never, we started out thinking beaches were great.

Starting point is 00:36:58 Turns out they're just a source of great, of great horror and sadness in our universe. If you want to ask the science couch, follow us, follow us on Twitter at SciShowTangents, where we'll tweet out topics for upcoming episodes every week. Or you can join the SciShowTangents Patreon and ask us on Discord. Thank you to Marinara or Marianara on Discord, Bill on Discord, and everybody else who asked us your questions for this episode. If you like SciShowT tangents and you want to help

Starting point is 00:37:25 us out it's super easy to do that you can go to patreon.com slash scishow tangents where you can be a patron and get access to things like our newsletter and our bonus episodes you can also leave us a review wherever you listen that uh helps us know what you like about the show and it helps other people know what you like about the show and finally if you want to show your love for scishow tang, just tell people about us. And you can watch us on YouTube and subscribe to the channel. Like and subscribe, everyone. Leave a comment.

Starting point is 00:37:53 I read all the comments because there aren't that many, and so I can. I read them and even reply to a lot of them. Thank you for joining us. I've been Hank Green. I've been Sari Reilly. And I've been Sam Schultz. SciShow Tangents is created by all of us

Starting point is 00:38:06 and produced by Sam Schultz, who edits a lot of these episodes along with Seth Glixman. Our story editor is Alex Billow. Our social media organizer is Paola Garcia Prieto. Our editorial assistants are Deboki Chakravarti and Emma Douster. Our sound design is by Joseph Tuna-Medish. Our executive producers are Caitlin Hoffmeister and me, Hank Green.

Starting point is 00:38:22 And of course, we couldn't make any of this without our patrons on Patreon. Thank you. And remember, the mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be lighted. But one more thing. If you ever see a little pile of sand on the beach that looks like a coiled squiggly poop emoji or some spaghetti noodles,

Starting point is 00:38:57 it's probably not just a coincidence and it didn't come from anyone's butt above ground. But it did come from someone's butt. It did come from a butt. Lugworms are actually hiding just beneath the surface on lots of coastal beaches and are big parts of ecosystems. They have U-shaped burrows and they eat microorganisms in the sand. And then they poop out all of the rock they can't digest as a cast onto the surface of the beach. And that's the little squiggly poop.

Starting point is 00:39:24 they can't digest as a cast onto the surface of the beach and that's a little squiggly poop so if you want to see one for yourself dig down in the sand when you see one of their poops or just google a picture or if you're watching on youtube we'll probably just show you one right now yeah here it is i if it's not there and i couldn't find a picture of it who knows what i'm showing right now on wikipedia all copyrights and Mrs. Copyright causing huge problems. I have a big picture of Mickey Mouse showing right now instead of... Take that, Walter. And we'll now watch the entirety of Star Wars, episode six, whatever one that is.

SciShow Tangents - Beaches

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