Exploring the ocean through whales with Eric Stackpole

[00:00:04] 3,000 feet down in the ocean, there is no light, no sun, no surface, just cold, high pressure, and lots of dark. The deep ocean, the largest living space on this planet, is still functionally a rumor. But someone decided that needed to change. So he worked on a tool that could finally help us see into the depths of the ocean. A scrappy little camera.

[00:00:34] It got clipped onto a whale, and the whale went deep down into the ocean. And for the first time ever, we went with it. This is TED Tech, a podcast from TED. I'm your host, Sherrell Dorsey. Today's episode comes in two pieces about what happens when technology stops optimizing and starts looking.

[00:01:03] First, we're sharing a special talk from Eric Stackpole. He's a mechanical engineer and spent a decade working in marine tech R&D. But during COVID, he joined an expedition aboard a research vessel. They met up with a whale biologist who built a camera tag that suctioned to a sperm whale. They turned an experimental camera into a deep diving exploration tool. What it brought back is a whale's eye view of the ocean.

[00:01:33] Footage of a world no person has ever seen before. Then we're complimenting Eric's talk with a TED-Ed lesson about why whales sing. Because once you've seen where whales go, the next question is what they're saying when they get there. It's the best explainer I've found on the architecture of whale song, the grammar inside it, and what's at stake as the ocean gets louder.

[00:02:02] So for today's episode, join me on a dive to the bottom of the ocean and the new worlds that technology can help us see, hear, and feel. Here's Eric Stackpole on the TED stage. During COVID, everyone was sequestered in their own corners of the world. I had the strange fortune of being sequestered here aboard the Ocean Explorer, one of the most advanced research vessels on the planet, filming a show for National Geographic.

[00:02:31] The ship was designed not just for research, but also for storytelling. My job was to travel the world and show people what exploration is like from the perspective of an engineer. When I tell people this, they usually have three questions. What was it like? What did you learn? And how did you get the job? I'll go backward. I wasn't always a great engineer. I wasn't even a good student. I spent more time tinkering than doing homework. But I love engineering, and that has led me on an incredible journey.

[00:02:58] With friends, I built low-cost underwater robots designed to democratize exploration, and that democratization drew the attention of the show's producers. You can watch the show to see what we discovered. But for me, the most powerful moments were seeing things that no one had ever seen before, using the tools that we had built. In the Azores, we teamed up with Rui Pareto, renowned whale biologist who spent decades studying sperm whales. These giants can dive to over a mile deep to hunt,

[00:03:28] and we know very little about what they do when they're down there. So to find out, Rui had put together a very DIY tag. It used a taken-apart action camera. It had a light. There was a radio beacon, and it had suction cups designed to stick to the whale for a few hours and then pop up and float to the surface. It was very DIY. But even on an advanced research ship, building your own tools is often the way to get the information you need. It barely worked. We had to spend nights soldering and improvising to try to get it going.

[00:03:56] And at like two in the morning, we finally got it going. And while I overslept, Rui was already out on the boat. He placed the tag on a whale, and I remember him radioing back. The tag was on. Okay, a huge amount of suspense. Would it ever come back to the surface? Or would it flood with water? Would the battery die? Would the camera work? We had no idea. But it did come up. We found it. We took it back to the ship, and fingers were crossed. Finally, we opened it up. There was no water inside. Oh, my God. We pulled out the SD card. And like with bated breath,

[00:04:25] we put it in the computer and waited for the files to load. And oh, my God. We had footage from the back of a sperm whale. Oh, my God. Rui and I were losing it. The first thing we saw was the whale's head and back as she descended into the bottom. You could hear the water rushing by as she swam faster and faster into the deep particles rushed by the camera. And the water pressure was so immense from the speed that eventually the suction cup started to come loose. I thought that was going to bit. We were going to lose it.

[00:04:53] But one suction cup miraculously held on, and it caused the tag to rotate backward. And now we can see the sail's massive fluke. These can be 16 feet across on some whales, driving her into the depths. And as it got deeper, we started hearing on the camera's microphone clicking. You guys hear that? That is echolocation. That is the sound of the sperm whale hunting by listening for echoes bouncing off of prey. I couldn't believe it. And it didn't seem like she caught anything that time,

[00:05:21] but as she came shallower in the light group rider, we were just, like, amazed at what we were seeing. It didn't seem like this was possible. And then we started hearing a different sound. It was a rapid series of clicks. Dot, dot, dot, dot. That's called codas. This is the way sperm whales used to communicate with each other. So we were hearing her talking to another whale. We could not believe our ears. And then we couldn't believe our eyes. Rui and I were losing it. The other whale came into the shot, and they were talking back and forth.

[00:05:50] They were swimming and bumping alongside each other for minutes we watched in disbelief as we watched this exchange of these two whales. Friends, family, lovers, we can never know for sure. But what we were witnessing was something no one had ever seen before. I remember seeing the bond that they had with my eyes and also feeling it with my heart. The footage we had seen was not just data. This was an experience of life.

[00:06:19] It was reminding me why exploration really matters. It's not just about understanding the world with our logical minds. I believe exploration has huge potential to allow us to experience things with emotion and feel the context of why we're here on Earth. We saw that they even dived together, and that is really something that moved me. That one last dive, seeing that maybe it's not even such a lonely place down there after all. We are all here together, and that is something extremely powerful.

[00:06:48] So we are living in an era now where our tools can give us amazing ability to understand the world in ways never before possible. The same advances that have put computers in our pockets and access to almost unlimited information on our screens can also allow us to explore in brand new ways. Our tools no longer limit what we can understand. It's more that our understanding is limited by curiosity. So the question isn't, what can we explore?

[00:07:17] So much is already within our reach. The real question is, what will we wonder about next? Thank you very much. That was Eric Stackpole at TED Next 2025. A camera the size of a lunchbox went somewhere no human has been and came back with images that expand our understanding of what life on Earth can look like. But seeing isn't the whole story.

[00:07:46] Whales don't navigate the dark by sight. From hunting to socializing, they navigate all of it by sound. The ocean, it turns out, is not silent. And it never has been. It's full of a language we are only beginning to have the tools and the humility to hear. This next TED-Ed lesson is all about how whales communicate. It breaks down the architecture of their songs,

[00:08:14] the grammar inside their language, and what's at stake as the ocean grows, noisier around them. I'm excited for you to hear it in full. Communicating underwater is challenging. Light and odors don't travel well, so it's hard for animals to see or smell. But sound moves about four times faster in water than in air. So in this dark environment, marine mammals often rely on vocalization to communicate.

[00:08:45] That's why a chorus of sounds fills the ocean. Clicks, pulses, whistles, groans, boings, cries, and trills, to name a few. But the most famous parts of this underwater symphony are the evocative melodies, or songs, composed by the world's largest mammals, whales. Whale songs are one of the most sophisticated communication systems in the animal kingdom.

[00:09:13] Only a few species are known to sing. Blue, fin, bowhead, minky whales, and of course, humpback whales. These are all baleen whales, which use hairy baleen plates instead of teeth to trap their prey. Meanwhile, toothed whales do use echolocation, and they and other species of baleen whales make social sounds, such as cries and whistles, to communicate.

[00:09:41] But those vocalizations lack the complexity of songs. So how do they do it? Land mammals like us generate sound by moving air over our vocal cords when we exhale, causing them to vibrate. Baleen whales have a U-shaped fold of tissue between their lungs and their large inflatable organs, called laryngeal sacs. We don't know this for sure because it's essentially impossible

[00:10:08] to observe the internal organs of a living, singing whale, but we think that when a whale sings, muscular contractions in the throat and chest move air from the lungs across the U-fold and into the laryngeal sacs, causing the U-fold to vibrate. The resulting sound resonates in the sacs like a choir's singing in a cathedral, making songs loud enough to propagate up to thousands of kilometers away. Whales don't have to exhale to sing.

[00:10:39] Instead, the air is recycled back into the lungs, creating sound once more. One reason whale songs are so fascinating is their pattern. Units like moans, cries, and chirps are arranged in phrases. Repeated phrases are assembled into themes. Multiple themes repeated in a predictable pattern create a song. This hierarchical structure is a kind of grammar. Whale songs are extremely variable in duration,

[00:11:08] and whales can repeat them over and over. In one recorded session, a humpback whale sang for 22 hours. Whale songs are also used to deter other males. And why do they do it? We don't yet know the exact purpose, but we can speculate. Given that the singers are males, and they mostly sing during the mating season, songs might be used to attract females. Or perhaps their territorial, used to deter other males. Whales return to the same feeding and breeding grounds annually,

[00:11:38] and each discrete population has a different song. Songs evolve over time, as units or phrases are added, changed, or dropped. And when males from different populations are feeding within earshot, phrases are often exchanged, maybe because new songs make them more attractive to breeding females. This is one of the fastest examples of cultural transmission, where learned behaviors are passed between unrelated individuals of the same species.

[00:12:08] We can eavesdrop on these songs using underwater microphones called hydrophones. These help us track species when sightings or genetic samples are rare. For example, scientists have been able to differentiate the elusive blue whales populations worldwide based on their songs. But the oceans are getting noisier as a result of human activity. Boating, military sonar, underwater construction, and seismic surveys for oil

[00:12:37] are occurring more often, which may interfere with whales' communication. Some whales will avoid key feeding or breeding grounds if human noise is too loud. And humpback whales have been observed to reduce their singing in response to noise 200 kilometers away. Limiting human activity along migratory routes and in other critical habitats and reducing noise pollution throughout the ocean would help ensure whales' continued survival.

[00:13:06] If the whales can keep singing and we can keep listening, maybe one day we'll truly understand what they're saying. In our oceans, there is a world with something that functions like conversation. And all I could think of after that TED-Ed lesson is how we're drowning it out. Things like fossil fuels, container shipping, sonar, drilling, the same industrial engine that built the modern world is also filling the ocean with noise.

[00:13:37] Whales navigate, hunt, and talk by sound. And we are making their world louder, faster than they can adapt to it. Just over 25% of the ocean has been mapped in any meaningful detail. And sometimes I wonder if the fact that we know so little about the ocean, especially compared to other parts of the planet, makes it easier to take advantage of it, makes it easier to harm because we don't know what kind of damage we could be doing.

[00:14:08] That's where technology like Eric's whale-watching camera can be so powerful. A lot of other technological developments focus on optimization. We've definitely talked about those topics on this show. But Eric's talk made me think of an entirely different question. It's more about orientation, about where we aim our curiosity and what we decide is worth knowing before it's gone. He doesn't ask what can we explore.

[00:14:37] He asks what will we wonder about next? That's not a soft question. It's a question about design, policy, and funding. It's a question about what kind of world we're trying to understand and whether we're moving fast enough to understand it before we've changed it past recognition. The whales have been talking this whole time. So now it's up to us whether we build the tools to block out the noise and listen.

[00:15:09] TED Tech is a podcast from TED. This episode was produced by Rahima Nasa. Our editor is Alejandra Salazar. And the show is fact-checked by Julia Dickerson. Special thanks to Constanza, Gallardo, Daniela, Belarreso, Maria Ladias, Tanzika Sangmanivan, and Roxanne Hailash. If you're enjoying the show, make sure to subscribe and leave us a review so other people can find us too. I'm Sherelle Dorsey. Let's keep digging

[00:15:39] into the future. Join me next week for more.