025 – Bioluminescence with Edie Widder

https://www.armatusoceanic.com/podcast/025-biolum

Sorry that this episode isn’t the perfectly polished jewel that this show usually is. Thom’s family got a visit from both COVID and chickenpox so there hasn’t been the time or energy to edit as well as he usually does. But we couldn’t abandon you without an episode this month as some great stuff is still covered.

Last episode we leaned about the pelagic zone, the largest habitat on earth, a boundless 3D space where enormous migrations take place. We learned that this isn’t a world of darkness but rather one of biological light, where bioluminescence is used to attack, to defend and to communicate. While producing your own light may seem alien to us, it is likely the most common form of communication on the planet.

To learn more about this world we speak with Edie Widder, who has studied bioluminescence for her whole career and used the same adaptations found in the animals to design her own equipment. She developed the Eye in the Sea, a camera system invisible to most deep-sea animals, and a lure which emulated a bioluminescent jellyfish, the e-jelly. The gear worked extremely well and along with a lot of behaviours observed for the first time this also captured the first footage of the giant squid, Architeuthis dux.

In recent news we talk about how plate tectonics impact our climate, what we can learn from the evolution of cave animals and generating power from the thermocline. We hear from a listener about their bigfin squid archive. Larkin drops by to tell us what a ‘Tron Dolphin’ and Don Walsh tells us why those same Tron Dolphins are a nuisance to submarines.

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Glossary

Bioluminescence – Biologically generated light

Cenozoic era – 50 million years ago when the earth started cooling

Cretaceous hothouse – 145-66 million years ago where temperatures were 10°C

Deep Worker – a small, single person sub

Electronic jellyfish – A bioluminescent bait

Esca – The lure on anglerfish

Eye in the sea – A red light illuminated camera with a electronic jellyfish as bait

Fermi bubbles – Listen to the end

Magnapinna – The genus of the bigfin squid

Marine snow – The biological material (bodies, poop and shells) singing into the deep sea

Moribund – Something that is dying and cannot be saved

Olm – A type of blind cave salamander

Photomultiplier – Tech that boosts very weak sources of light

Promachoteuthis – The genus of squid that was seen on Edie’s camera system

Squid jig – A lure used to fish for squid

Stoplight fish - Deep-sea dragonfishes of the genus Malacosteus that can both see and produce red light

Thermocline – layer of sudden temperature change in the sea

Tubeshoulder – Deep-sea fish with a specialised organ that squirts bioluminescent material

Wasp suit – A deep-sea diving suit

Links

Mötley Crüe - Hooligan's Holiday

Video

Spotify

Finding the Samule B Roberts, deepest wreck.

Tyler Greenfield on Twitter

Alien species invasion of deep-sea bacteria into mouse gut microbiota

Plate tectonics and climate

Paper

Blind cave animal evolution

Power generation from deep, cold water

Magnapinna Archive

Edith (Edie) Widder

Wikipedia

ORCA

Ted Talk

Cookie-cutter shark paper

Below the Edge of Darkness

Larkin’s YouTube channel, Instagram and TicTok

Credits

Theme – Hadal Zone Express by Märvel

Logo image

Public domain images

Holder, Charles Frederick (1892) Along the Florida Reef, New York City, NY: D. Appleton and Company, p. 263

Jordan, David Starr (1907) Fishes, New York City, NY: Henry Holt and Company