Brief Candle in the Dark

by Richard Dawkins

  This was the beginning of a lovely friendship with the Boyd family, which has continued to this day. Two years after the Japanese Christmas Lectures I was awarded the valuable Nakayama Prize for Human Sciences and Lalla and I went back to Tokyo for the presentation. The Boyds invited us to stay at the Residence and we were delighted to accept, although the hotel would no doubt have been very luxurious too. There happened to be an earthquake while we were there. Lalla and I were in our bedroom and were somewhat alarmed to see the walls shake and the chandeliers swing. We were reassured when His Excellency himself came through the door with the broad grin of a man who has seen it all before, waving a pair of safety helmets for us. At breakfast next morning, a visiting British Member of Parliament who was also staying at the Embassy indulged the obvious wisecrack when Lalla and I walked in: ‘And did the earth move for you last night?’

  The Boyds graciously came to the Nakayama prizegiving ceremony. I don’t remember much about it, except for the group photograph which was taken afterwards. The photographer had an assistant, impeccably neat and bustling smart in a little black suit. It was this petite young woman’s job to line us all up for the photograph, and she took it very seriously. Those of us sitting in the front row had to have our hands precisely folded in our laps, all with the same hand on top. Our knees had to be held tight together and our shoes precisely aligned. John Boyd and I, having had our limbs adjusted in the middle, became aware of suppressed giggles and snorts of laughter to our right. We dared a quick look away from our regimented eyes-front position and were rewarded with a sight to remember. Our wives, sitting together, were being sorted out by the photographer’s assistant. But whereas we males only had to have our shoes and knees lined up, the ladies had to have their tights straightened too. And to do this the photographer’s assistant was reaching up inside their skirts. Hence the poorly suppressed giggles.

  By the time of Lalla’s and my next trip to Japan in 1997, John Boyd’s ambassadorship had come to an end,1 so we were denied the pleasure of another stay in the Embassy compound, although the new Ambassador did kindly host a reception for us. I was back in the country to collect another award, the even more lucrative International Cosmos Prize, and it was an enormous honour, the ceremony to take place in Osaka in the presence of the Crown Prince and Princess. I was asked to choose a piece of music which the Court Orchestra would play in my honour. There was a strict time limit for the music, which restricted my choice. I sought advice from Lalla’s old friend Michael Birkett, and after a lot of thought he suggested a suite of exactly the right length by Schubert who, by happy coincidence, happens to be my favourite composer. It had the advantage of a provocative change of mood halfway through, and the orchestra performed it beautifully, contributing to making the whole occasion, including a private tea with the Crown Prince and Princess, and the prizegiving ceremony itself, extremely gracious.

  Here are the opening paragraphs of my formal acceptance speech. You may guess from the wording how much help I must have received from the professional diplomats at the British Embassy:

  Your Imperial Highnesses, ladies and gentlemen. It is a great pleasure to be here and I’d like to start by expressing my sincere gratitude to their Imperial Highnesses, the Crown Prince and Princess for attending today’s ceremony. I am especially grateful to the Crown Prince for his gracious and very thoughtful words [his speech had recalled his two years at the University of Oxford]. I’d also like to express my appreciation to the Prime Minister for sending his message of congratulations today. [Three paragraphs of diplomatic thanks cut here.]

  Anyone with a passing interest in Japanese history and culture is aware of the importance that the Japanese place on harmony with nature. The traditional Japanese arts, whether it be archery, calligraphy or tea-making, all have at their core the endeavour by the individual to achieve harmony with the world. The four seasons are each celebrated in their own way, and provide much of the inspiration for Japanese art and design. I myself feel positively Japanese when I think of the delight that you take in the pleasures of viewing cherry blossom in the spring, or gazing at the autumn moon.

  On the other hand, the world’s view of Japan in recent decades is of a country driven by technology and wealth-creation. We have looked on in admiration, and some envy, as a seemingly endless stream of impressive new products has flowed from Japan’s factories. In the process you have built up the second largest economy in the world. But I know that the Japanese government is also moving actively to promote basic curiosity-driven science. I confidently expect that the next century will see a great flowering of basic scientific research in Japanese universities and institutes, including – in accordance with the aims of the Foundation – research on the environment and its problems. Impressive as Japanese achievements have been to date, I have a feeling that – to borrow an English colloquialism – ‘We ain’t seen nothin’ yet!’

  For the public lecture that I later had to give on a scientific subject I chose as my topic ‘The selfish cooperator’ – and later expanded the speech to become the chapter of that name in Unweaving the Rainbow.

  I love going to Japan, although I confess to being squeamish about some of the raw food – such as the raw holothurian guts to which I was introduced on my very first visit to the country in 1986. I was there as one of half a dozen scientists invited to give supporting talks at a conference in honour of Peter Raven, distinguished botanist and very nice man whom I hadn’t met before, and who was being awarded the International Prize. On this occasion I was also introduced to karaoke (which did not impress me any more than the raw fish) and to the contemplative peace of Kyoto’s temples (which did).

  To my shame, I have never achieved any dexterity with chopsticks. How does even an expert tackle a dish consisting of nothing but a whole large turnip sitting solitary and proud in a bath of water? I was completely baffled by this very conundrum at one formal dinner where I was the guest of honour under the eyes of some twenty other guests at long, low tables arranged in a hollow square around two chalk-white geishas performing the tea ceremony. I’m afraid I simply gave up. But as far as I could see, none of the other diners made any significant inroads into their turnips either.

  My most recent visit to Japan was in quest of a prize of a different kind: the giant squid. I had become friendly with Ray Dalio, brilliant financier and enthusiast for science. In pursuit of his passion for marine biology, he had bought a beautiful research vessel, the Alucia, and had now teamed up with two television companies, one in Japan and one in America, in a search for the giant squid, fabled sea monster of yore, in the deep seas off Japan. Dead or nearly dead specimens, or bits of them, had been brought up in trawls. But Ray was inspired by the small band of dedicated biologists, from Japan, New Zealand, America and elsewhere, who for decades had been trying to find a giant squid, alive and swimming in its natural habitat, the deep ocean. The Alucia was prepared for action, expert biologists from all over the world were mustered, and, to my great joy, Ray invited me along for the ride. The expedition was highly confidential and I was sworn to secrecy, because the two television companies, in the event that they succeeded in filming a live giant squid, wanted to save the news up for maximum impact.

  Unfortunately, that trip was postponed; I forgot about it and went about my normal business. Then, some months later, in the summer of 2012, I received a telephone call out of the blue. It was Ray. Characteristically, he didn’t beat about the bush.

  Ray: ‘Can you get on a plane to Japan tomorrow?’

  Me: ‘Why, have you found the giant squid?’

  Ray: ‘I am not at liberty to say.’

  Me: ‘Right. I’ll be there.’

  And I was, although it wasn’t literally the next day, more like a week (fact struggles to keep up with fiction). Ray explained that I would have to take a 28-hour ferry ride from Tokyo to the Ogasawara archipelago, where the Alucia was anchored. These volcanic islands are sometimes known as the ‘Galápagos of the Orient’. Lik
e Galápagos, they’ve never been part of a continent, and they’ve evolved their own unique flora and fauna. But they are much older than Galápagos, and the plate tectonic forces that created them placed them near the Mariana Trench, where the sea floor is further below the surface than anywhere else on the planet.

  I still didn’t officially know that they had already found a giant squid, and I scrupulously kept silent about the suspected reason for my precipitate summons. Only Lalla knew why I had flown so suddenly to Japan, and she too maintained strict secrecy. To no avail, at least on one occasion. She met David Attenborough at a social event, and he asked after me. Lalla replied that I was on a ship in Japanese waters. ‘Oh,’ said Sir David without hesitation, ‘he’s obviously after the giant squid.’ So much for our careful reticence.

  After the long flight I spent a night in a Tokyo hotel before boarding the ferry together with Colin Bell, an Australian friend of Ray’s who was also bound for the Alucia. We shared a cabin. Most of the very numerous passengers slept on futons on the floor in large dormitories. I can’t remember how we passed the time; reading, I suppose. When we docked, we were met by members of the Discovery Channel team from the Alucia, and a little later we were in a small boat speeding out to where the ship was riding at anchor. The Alucia has a large, wet loading bay at the back, on which are perched its two submersibles, a Triton and a Deep Rover, and there was a large party of rather wet people standing there as we arrived. These included Ray, who greeted us warmly. We still didn’t officially know that they had found a giant squid, but Ray tipped us the wink when we arrived, and said that they had organized a seminar on board, that very evening, to talk about the momentous discovery and how it was made. Meanwhile, would we like to go to the bottom of the sea? Of course we would. Right then, be ready in ten minutes.

  I was to go down in the Triton three-person submersible, Colin in the two-person Deep Rover. The highly skilled pilot in the Triton was Mark Taylor, an Englishman, and my fellow passenger was Dr Tsunemi Kubodera of Tokyo’s National Museum of Nature and Science. He had been the scientist mainly involved in the live sighting of a giant squid and I think this wasn’t the only reason Mark treated ‘Dr Ku’ with enormous respect under water, as everyone did on the surface.

  The three of us climbed through the top hatch of the Triton while it was still on board the Alucia and took our seats in the spherical, transparent bubble, Mark on a raised seat, behind Dr Ku on the left and me on the right. The hatch was securely battened down, and then the Triton was lifted on a hoist and deposited into the sea, where we bobbed around waiting for the similar launch of the Deep Rover. I was entranced by the sight of the blue water the other side of the bubble as we danced around in the waves. Mark gave us a routine safety briefing and explanation of how our life-preserving hydrostat worked, including an interesting technical difference between our own craft and Deep Rover. He explained that we would be at normal atmospheric pressure throughout, despite the megapascals that would soon assail the outside of our bubble. We would therefore need no special precautions against the bends when resurfacing, even though we were going down 700 metres.

  It would have been too much to hope that Dr Ku would see a giant squid again on the dive that I did with him, but we did see some ordinary squid, and lots of fish including sharks, jellyfish, rainbow-shimmering ctenophores and much else that might populate a zoologist’s dreams. That evening, in the saloon of the ship, the zoologists of the expedition gave us the promised seminar on the science behind the successful filming and sighting of the giant squid. There were two illustrated talks. The first was by Dr Edith Widder, a marine biologist good enough to have won a MacArthur ‘genius award’. She’s an expert on bioluminescence and she knew that at the sort of depths giant squids favour the only light is generated by living creatures, often actually by bacteria that they carefully cultivate in luminescent organs for the purpose. Unlike the whales with which they share the deeps, giant squid have giant eyes, so they probably hunt, at least partly, by sight. Such considerations led Edie to invent the Electronic Jellyfish, a luminous lure designed to appeal to giant squid. It succeeded brilliantly. Lowered together with an automatic camera and towed behind the ship on a 700-metre cable, it bided its time – with ultimate, climactic success. The spectral, almost nightmarish shape of the giant squid pouncing on the luminous bait is a sight I cannot forget.

  Also unforgettable is the film of Edie’s face as she later scanned her way through the huge computer files of empty images and suddenly saw the legendary sea monster powering in from the side of the frame. She and her colleagues were filmed by the television crew as they stared at the computer screen and their facial expressions and exultant cries made me tremble with the joy of vicarious discovery (even if, as killjoys can be relied upon to suspect, the scene was re-enacted later).

  The second talk at that extraordinary seminar in the Alucia’s saloon was by Steve O’Shea, a New Zealand marine biologist who, like Tsunemi Kubodera, had devoted much of his life to the quest for the giant squid. His ingenious idea for a bait focused on a different sense from Edith Widder’s electronic jellyfish: smell. He made a purée of ground-up squid, in the hope that the smell, especially sex pheromones, would lure the giant through the darkness. It wafted in an alluring cloud from a pipe attached to the submersible, and did indeed prove to be an effective squid magnet – but unfortunately for ordinary, smaller squids only. No giant squid joined them. The final success in actually seeing a live giant squid fell to Kubodera, as O’Shea went on to describe (Dr Ku himself, although he speaks English, didn’t feel confident enough in the language to present the talk). Kubodera’s lure was more like a traditional angler’s bait. A diamond-back squid, pretty large in its own right though not in the same class as a giant squid, baited the line tethered to the submersible. And, mirabile dictu, it worked. Dr Ku himself was in the submersible, the very Triton that I was to share with him a few days later, and saw the Kraken seize the bait and hold on to it for long enough to provide splendid footage for the cameras. His return to the surface was an emotional moment, as the television broadcast later showed. It seemed that the whole ship’s crew turned out to pipe Dr Ku aboard and cheer this climax to a lifelong quest, generously congratulated by Edie and Steve. And, damn, I missed it by a mere couple of days.

  A minor misfortune supervened. My expected week on the Alucia, with further dives promised, was cut short by the news that a dangerous typhoon was revving itself up in the vicinity and on its menacing way towards us. I was present when the captain advised Ray Dalio that we had no choice but to hightail it to the shelter of Yokohama harbour, two days’ sailing away. That was a big disappointment for Colin and me, who had only just arrived. Nevertheless, those two days fleeing the typhoon were great fun. I gave a seminar on evolution in the saloon one evening, and Ray himself treated us to an informal breakfast tutorial on the truth behind the financial crisis, which I found riveting – as I always do when I listen to somebody who really knows his own subject and can talk about it from first principles.

  Arthur C. Clarke, best known for his mind-stretching stories about outer space, has suggested that the deep sea is almost as mysterious although it’s on our very doorstep. My brief forays into that alien world, both then and in a later trip in 2014 to Raja Ampat, off New Guinea, again as Ray Dalio’s guest on the Alucia, have been among the great privileges of my life. That second trip was not aimed at any particular biological discovery like that of the giant squid, but Raja Ampat is one of the great unspoiled marine areas, breathtakingly beautiful and with a marine fauna as rich as anywhere in the world. This time I enjoyed numerous dives in the Triton, sometimes with Mark Taylor as pilot, sometimes with one or other of his two colleagues. I was delighted that my fellow guests on this second trip included Larry Summers, the immensely distinguished economist and former President of Harvard, with his literary wife Lisa New. Mealtime conversations were an intellectual feast, with Larry the academic economist and Ray the pre-eminent pract
itioner of the markets playing off each other.

  Not that such subjects dominated: there were world-class experts on conservation aboard, and theirs was a topic that preoccupied us all. One of these experts was Peter Seligmann, chairman of Conservation International (and my cabin-mate on this trip); another was the American biologist Mark Erdman. Mark knew these islands like the palm of his hand, and he was invaluable as our Indonesian interpreter. He was on a quest for a particular rainbow fish in a river deep in the forest of West Papua, which he suspected was a hitherto undescribed species. He also suspected that it would turn out to be unrelated to other fish in the same region but closely related to fish from the other side of the great island of New Guinea. If true, this would have great zoogeographic significance, as it would tell us something about shifting tectonic plates carrying these freshwater fish with them. The Alucia anchored offshore, and the ship’s on-board helicopter ferried relays of us inland and upriver to take turns in assisting Mark in searching for his rainbow fish. The repeated drill was as follows. Mark would wade out into the fast stream holding one end of the net. One of us (Ray, or I or whoever was on that shift) would also wade out, a bit further downstream, holding the other end of the net. We crouched down in the (pleasantly cool) water and then, on a word of command from Mark, we stood up and pulled the net rapidly towards the bank, trapping whatever fish might have swum into it. We’d then lay the net out on the shore and Mark would inspect the contents for his rainbow.

  When my turn came around on the second shift, Mark was in place with his net when we landed on a sandbank in the river. We set about the search and – success! The day’s catch amounted to some fifteen of the little fish, and Mark’s expert eye confirmed that they were, indeed, of the hitherto unnamed species that he had suspected. They were carefully kept alive in a tank pending his formal description of their details, including DNA analysis – and, of course, the all-important conferring of a scientific name on the species.