by Edith Widder
At the same time that we are pulling out every last fish, shrimp, and squid, we are filling the ocean with our plastics, trash, and toxins. It is estimated that by the year 2050 the ocean will contain more plastic by weight than fish. Traces of radioactive waste, PCBs, mercury, and chlorofluorocarbons are detectable in the depths of the ocean and for all we know are already impacting the life down there.
We are poised on the brink of massive destruction of oceanic ecosystems—systems that are vital cogs and wheels in the extraordinary machinery of all life on planet Earth. The enormity of the ocean has managed to protect us from ourselves for a long time, but our exploding population and mismanagement of resources are beginning to overwhelm even its phenomenal buffering capacity.
For the past couple of centuries, the ocean has been working mightily to keep the all-important carbon cycle in balance by absorbing much of the vast quantity of carbon dioxide we have been releasing through the burning of ancient sequestered carbon, that is, fossil fuels. In the process, the ocean has been acidifying, because when carbon dioxide dissolves in seawater, carbonic acid is formed. Let’s pause for a moment to grasp the gravity of that statement. We are changing the chemistry of a staggering quantity of water—a volume of three hundred million cubic miles! This change is beginning to alter the food web, making it difficult for keystone species like corals, shellfish, and sea butterflies*5 to construct their skeletons and shells.
The ocean has also been absorbing much of the extra heat that has been accumulating because increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide and methane, in our atmosphere are preventing heat from radiating from the Earth’s surface and escaping into space as readily as it used to. That heat buildup has many worrisome implications.
Warming waters and melting ice are potentially altering the flow of the great rivers in the sea like the Gulf Stream. More than sixty miles wide and a half-mile deep, the Gulf Stream transports a volume of water that exceeds that of all the rivers in the world by twenty-five times, carrying warm water from the equator along the east coast of North America and across the great Atlantic to northwestern Europe. This is one of several massive rivers that flow throughout the ocean in a complex pattern known as the Great Ocean Conveyor Belt. Arising from density differences between colder, salty water masses and warmer, fresher water masses, the conveyor belt has major impacts upon weather as it moves heat around the globe. Changes in these flow patterns may already be linked to increasing droughts, floods, hurricanes, and wildfires; destabilization of agriculture and fisheries; and untold increases in human suffering.
The list goes on and on: plastics pollution, chemical pollution, nutrient pollution, overfishing, invasive species, bottom trawling, seafloor mining, deep-sea drilling, destruction of estuaries and wetlands, loss of coral reefs and sea ice habitat, and—one of my personal favorites, from the darkest recesses of my anxiety closet—the thawing of subsea and land-based permafrost,*6 causing the release of substantial quantities of greenhouse gases as microbes go to work on the vast amounts of organic matter therein. This could lead to a tipping point, sometimes referred to as the permafrost bomb, akin to the kind of feedback loop I was facing when water was coming into the Deep Rover. Once we reach that point, there’s no going back.
There have been endless books, science papers, magazine articles, documentaries, and social media posts detailing the doom and gloom—to little avail. We are still essentially fiddling while the planet burns. There are a couple of psychological components to this.
One is illustrated by the boiling-frog story that claims if a frog is dropped directly into boiling water it will have enough sense to jump out, but if it is placed in warmish water that is heated slowly, it will hang around until it is stewed to death. Personally, I suspect frogs are smarter than that, and I certainly want to believe humans are.
The other rationale for our inaction is the simple fact that the swelling drumbeat of decimation engenders such a sense of helplessness that people want to plug their ears and cover their eyes. But the beat goes on, growing ever louder, with the hope that if we just point out how truly dire the situation is becoming, the appropriate checks and balances will be brought to bear, like taxing carbon and switching from burning fossil fuels to alternatives like solar, wind, hydroelectric, geothermal, and nuclear energy. Clearly that’s not happening, at least not on the time scale we need it to happen. In fact, in many cases the drumbeat seems to be having the opposite effect.
It has been said that Martin Luther King, Jr., did not mobilize the civil rights movement by preaching, “I have a nightmare.” *7 Nonetheless, that’s what many on the environmental front lines are doing. We need a different outlook, one that focuses on our strengths rather than our weaknesses. Exploration has always been the key to our survival, which is why I believe we need explorers now more than ever. Explorers are, by necessity, optimists who have to see beyond imagined limits to find a way forward. They push past the scary monsters at the edge of the map and have the persistence needed to pursue solutions in the face of seemingly impossible odds. Their tenacity often arises less out of an abundance of courage than from an abiding curiosity.
Throughout our lives, unexplored places that promise fantastic discoveries entice our imaginations. The stories that mesmerize us when we’re young revolve around discovering portals to other worlds: unearthing the entrance to an ancient tomb full of treasures, discovering a hidden gate that leads to a secret garden, or following a rabbit down a hole to a fantastic wonderland. Mysterious, unexplored places draw us. What few people realize is that most of our planet remains mysterious and unexplored. The ocean’s depths hold some of the most fantastic secrets about life on Earth and answers to questions we haven’t even thought to ask.
I have a quote pinned next to my office window, overlooking one of Florida’s ocean inlets: “The world will not perish for want of wonders, but for want of wonder.”*8 Our survival on this planet depends on fostering a greater sense of connection to the living world, and wonderment is key to forging that link. I have long believed that bioluminescence provides a means to reveal the wonder in this unseen world to a public that is alarmingly unaware and, thus, largely indifferent to what makes life possible on our planet. I believe it is a light capable of exciting the imagination and firing the inborn curiosity that defines the core of what it means to be human. I hope it can fire the imaginations of the next generation of explorers and in so doing provide a beacon of hope for the future of life on Earth.
Skip Notes
*1 Notwithstanding, I have found the memory useful when dealing with stressful situations. Could be worse—could be seawater in the sub has proven to be a serviceable mantra for restoring perspective.
*2 Just a very close second.
*3 John Loengard, Life Classic Photographs: A Personal Interpretation (Boston: Little, Brown, 1988).
*4 In a highly efficient reaction, one photon is equivalent to the hydrolysis of about 6 ATPs (the energy currency of life). In a less efficient reaction, it may be ten times that. So a single-celled microscopic dinoflagellate (a.k.a. sea sparkle) that emits about 1010 photons per flash is using up that currency at a rate of between sixty billion and six hundred billion ATPs per flash.
*5 Also known as pteropods, they are an important food source for many fish, whales, and seabirds.
*6 A thick subsurface layer of organic-rich frozen soil.
*7 I’m not sure who first put forth this notion. I have heard a number of people use it, but I think it originated with statistician Nic Marks in his wonderful 2010 TED talk “The Happy Planet Index.”
*8 Usually attributed to the poet and theologian G. K. Chesterton, but sometimes to the scientist J. B. S. Haldane.
PART I
DEEP SEEING
The only true voyage of discovery,
the only f
ountain of Eternal Youth,
would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes.
—Marcel Proust
Chapter 1
SEEING
Light is what, exactly? For something that has no mass, it sure carries a lot of existential weight. It is both an energy source and an information carrier. It can be injurious and it can be healing. It is one thing that can manifest as two things—a wave in the future and a particle in the past. In a vacuum, it travels at the maximum speed allowed by the universe, and it does so without ever decaying. It gives up its energy only when it interacts with other particles, like those that make up the visual pigments in our eyes, and it is through these interactions that we interpret the world around us.
For most life-forms on Earth, light is the paramount stimulus that makes life as we know it possible. Green plants harness energy from light to synthesize sugar from carbon dioxide and water. In the process, oxygen is generated as a by-product. As magic tricks go, forming food and breathable air from what seems like nothing is hard to beat. Still, it’s not especially flashy. Creating dazzling light from food and air, however, is very flashy. That’s the magic of bioluminescence. Of course, to appreciate that particular alchemy, you need something equally miraculous: vision.
Being able to see provides a huge advantage in the game of life; it is for this evolutionary reason that 95 percent of all animal species on Earth have eyes. These range from microscopic, such as some single-celled algae that have an eye no bigger than one-tenth the diameter of a human hair, to giant squid with an eye the size of your head.*1 The different ways that such disparate eyes see the world reveal much about the biological needs of their owners. In fact, figuring out what different eyes are best adapted to see is such a valuable tool for probing the nature of life that it has become a whole field of study called visual ecology.
If you compare the life of a giant squid inhabiting the deep sea with that of microscopic plankton living in sunlit surface waters, the difference in eye size makes sense: a giant eye collects many more photons than a tiny one and is therefore better adapted for living in a dim light environment. But what about another deep-sea inhabitant, the cockeyed squid? Its name derives from its mismatched eyes: the left eye is giant and bulging and directed upward toward the sunlight, while the right eye is smaller, recessed, and aimed downward into the inky depths. This seemingly makes no sense—until you learn that bioluminescent light organs encircle the small eye. While the large eye hunts overhead for dim, distant silhouettes of prey against a dark, lead-gray background, the bottom eye can use its built-in flashlights to illuminate more proximate prey. Clearly, to understand the visual ecology of the largest living space on Earth, one needs to appreciate the nature and function of bioluminescence alongside the nature and function of eyes.
It is inevitable that when we try to figure out what different animals see, we relate it to what we can see. That is a major challenge in the deep ocean, though, where our very presence alters the visual environment. It’s difficult to envision a place you are unable to observe in its natural state. Our eyes are adapted for a much brighter existence, which means that when we explore darkness, we must bring artificial lights so intense that to visual systems adapted to the deep sea, they are probably as bright as looking directly into the sun. Since it is such a challenge to observe animals in this realm without disturbing them, sometimes the best way to gain insight into their lives is to learn as much as possible about their eyes.
The most important questions to ask about eyes are: What information do they accept, and what do they exclude? All eyes act as filters, allowing in only data streams about the outside world that optimize their owner’s chances for survival. Anything that doesn’t serve that purpose falls under the banner of too much information. Spending time and energy on producing ultraviolet receptors, for example, and processing and interpreting their output is counterproductive if UV light plays no useful role in detecting vital stuff like food, mates, or predators.
Thinking about eyes and what they do and don’t see is a mind-stretching exercise. We are blind to so many things in our world—some because of biological constraints, and many more because we simply don’t know how to look. Environmentalist Rachel Carson once said, “One way to open your eyes to unnoticed beauty is to ask yourself, What if I had never seen this before? What if I knew I would never see it again? ” An even better way to achieve heightened visual awareness is to lose sight and then regain it. As Joni Mitchell sang, “Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone?”
* * *
—
That Joni Mitchell song, “Big Yellow Taxi,” was released my first year in college. I started at Tufts University in the fall of 1969 as a biology major, with the aim of becoming a marine biologist. But before I had completed my first semester, it was clear that goal would be unattainable without medical intervention. During my precollege physical, I mentioned a pain I’d been having down the back of my left leg. Since I was pretty active—a skier and skater in the winter and a water skier in the summer—I figured I must have pulled a muscle. X-rays revealed otherwise: My back was broken. The doctor illustrated the extent of the break by making two fists with his hands, stacking one on top of the other, and then sliding the top one halfway off the bottom one. The slippage was pinching a nerve going down my left leg, causing the intense and persistent pain I felt whenever I sat down.
I’m pretty sure I know when I broke it. I spent a lot of my childhood climbing up into and jumping out of trees in our leafy suburban neighborhood just outside Boston. My favorite tree was an old misshapen willow down by the pond*2 near our house. Its trunk ramped up at a forty-five-degree angle away from the water and then branched into two large horizontal limbs, each with thick vertical branches that created separate “rooms” that made it the perfect pirate ship, tree house, or castle. The limbs were about seven feet off the ground: a comfortable jump that I made hundreds of times with ease. But I remember one Sunday, when I was eight or nine years old and dressed for Sunday school in some stupid frilly dress I hated, the jump didn’t go as planned.
When we came back from church, I couldn’t change into my beloved jeans, because we were going someplace fancy later, but I was allowed to be outside until it was time to go, as long as I promised to stay clean. I wandered off to climb my favorite tree, but when I went to jump down, I remembered my promise and landed in a way that protected my dress instead of myself. A searing pain ripped through my back—like nothing I’d felt before. But it didn’t last long, and I shrugged it off.
Until that college physical, I thought low back pain was something everybody had. I couldn’t remember a time without it. By my first semester at Tufts, it was so bad that I couldn’t stand for any extended period, and sitting was equally miserable because of the pain in my leg. The only way I could do homework was by lying flat on my back with a pillow under my knees. This was not conducive to good study habits, as I would often fall asleep and bonk myself in the face with whatever tome I was attempting to wade through—a very effective form of negative conditioning. When it became clear I couldn’t go on like this, a spinal fusion was scheduled for the beginning of February.
* * *
—
According to the Urban Dictionary, “crumping” is a slang medical term indicating that a patient’s condition is rapidly worsening. See also: “circling the drain.”
I crumped; not during the spinal fusion, which went fine, but afterwards, in the recovery room. I went from okay to Oh shit in a New York minute,*3 flipping around in the bed like a fish on a dock while hemorrhaging nearly everywhere. I had a blood disorder called disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC). The cause is unknown, but it’s often associated with major trauma and manifests as overactive clotting factors in the blood, causing clots to form in the small blood vessels of the body, blocking blood flow to vital orga
ns. In extreme cases, the clotting factors and platelets are consumed to such a degree that severe bleeding ensues. The result, in my case, was that I wasn’t just bleeding into my surgical sites but also into my lungs, depriving me of air, hence the fish-out-of-water imitation.
Two factors conspired to allow me to survive this medical Armageddon. In fact, I was the first person ever to survive it at Mount Auburn Hospital. The first was that my orthopedic surgeon had recently attended an American Medical Association conference on DIC, which allowed him to recognize the symptoms. Usually, a doctor who sees his patient hemorrhaging will administer coagulants to stop the bleeding, but that just leads to more clotting in the small blood vessels and increased likelihood of organ failure. Instead, my surgeon knew to give me the anticoagulant heparin, thereby averting organ failure but greatly exacerbating the bleeding problem.
The second lucky break was that the famous Harken*4 “chest team” happened to be at Mount Auburn that day. The chest team’s first order of business was to start my heart, which had stopped. Next, they needed to clear the blood from my lungs, which required flipping me from my back onto my side. Then the whole process had to be repeated as my heart stopped again and my lungs refilled with blood. In total, I had to be resuscitated three times.
I had three resuscitations, but only one near-death experience. My NDE involved a classic out-of-body experience, or OBE, in which I was looking down at myself from above. There was another consciousness there with me—no physical presence, just a noncorporeal being—and we were trying to make a decision about the outcome of the current situation. I remember feeling completely neutral, fine either way. As someone who has personally experienced an NDE, I understand the temptation to assign a spiritual explanation. It certainly didn’t feel like a dream; it felt real. As a scientist, though, I have learned to be comfortable with ambiguity, and I choose to keep an open mind on the subject.
