The Professor is back from his adventures at sea with lots of exciting new updates. He talks us through some of his key findings from this already iconic deep-sea expedition. We also get to hear from an often overlooked figure in these expeditions: the ship's captain. Alan and Captain Stuart Buckle have a shared history of seagoing. Travelling the world together onboard the DSSV Pressure Drop during the Five Deeps expedition and during the Professor's recent venture to the Japanese trenches. Cap...
Oct 07, 2022•1 hr•Ep. 28
Here’s our first ever episode of The Deco-Stop; a deeper look into the humans behind deep sea science and technology. We’ve done our science dive, and now it’s time to decompress, and discuss tales at sea, career paths and the social & political aspects of deep sea science. Read the show notes and find the full episode here: https://www.armatusoceanic.com/podcast/deco-stop-001 In our first ever episode, we talk to Kat Bolstad, the leader of the AUT lab for cephalopod ecology and systematics ...
Sep 30, 2022•24 min
Our short and to the point PRESSURISED version of episode 2. If you don't have time for the full episode and want to get right to the science without any of our waffle, this is the place to be! Read the show notes and find the full episode here: https://www.armatusoceanic.com/podcast/002-exploring-the-mariana-trench-guest-don-walsh In this episode we have an amazing interview with legendary oceanographer, Don Walsh. In 1960, Don and Jacques Piccard were the first people ever to reach the ocean’s...
Sep 23, 2022•30 min
Our short and to the point PRESSURISED version of episode 27. If you don't have time for the full episode and want to get right to the science without any of our waffle, this is the place to be! Read the show notes and find the full episode here: https://www.armatusoceanic.com/podcast/027-caves With the Professor out at sea, Thom goes off the rails and finally gets his answers on cave biology. What are the similarities and differences between the deep-sea and cave ecosystems? How are they linked...
Sep 16, 2022•25 min
Full episode notes With the Professor out at sea, Thom goes off the rails and finally gets his answers on cave biology. What are the similarities and differences between the deep-sea and cave ecosystems? How are they linked? Do we know more about the moon than cave biolo…. just kidding! We speak to the legendary Professor Thomas Iliffe, who has shaped the field of biospeleology (cave biology); discovering over 250 species, and 3 new orders (now you don’t hear that every day)! He talks us through...
Sep 02, 2022•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 27
Our short and to the point PRESSURISED version of episode 1. If you don't have time for the full episode and want to get right to the science without any of our waffle, this is the place to be! Read the show notes and find the full episode here: https://www.armatusoceanic.com/podcast/episode1 In the very first episode of The Deep-Sea Podcast we let you know who we are and why we felt the world really needed a podcast about the deep sea. Alan rants about how the statement ‘we know more about the ...
Aug 26, 2022•23 min
Our short and to the point PRESSURISED version of episode 26. If you don't have time for the full episode and want to get right to the science without any of our waffle, this is the place to be! Read the show notes and find the full episode here: https://www.armatusoceanic.com/podcast/026-vision After recovering from you-know-what last episode, we’re excited to complete our open-water/pelagic trilogy with this week’s guest Professor Justin Marshall. Justin is an expert on all things vision, and ...
Aug 19, 2022•22 min
Read the show notes and find out more about us at: https://www.armatusoceanic.com/podcast/026-vision After recovering from you-know-what last episode, we’re excited to complete our open-water/pelagic trilogy with this week’s guest Professor Justin Marshall. Justin is an expert on all things vision, and talks us through all of the intricacies and oddities of vision in the deep sea. We discuss how fish eyes have evolved in order to adapt to the darkness of the deep, and how exactly they are able t...
Aug 05, 2022•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 26
Our short and to the point PRESSURISED version of episode 25. If you don't have time for the full episode and want to get right to the science without any of our waffle, this is the place to be! Read the show notes and find the full episode here: https://www.armatusoceanic.com/podcast/025-biolum Last episode we learned 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 b...
Jul 22, 2022•23 min
Our short and to the point PRESSURISED version of episode 24. If you don't have time for the full episode and want to get right to the science without any of our waffle, this is the place to be! Read the show notes and find the full episode here: https://www.armatusoceanic.com/podcast/024-pelagic We have a confession to make. We talk a big game about how we are busting myths, tackling deep-sea tropes and showing the deep ocean as it really is… but we have been guilty of one of the big ones. The ...
Jul 08, 2022•16 min
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....
Jul 01, 2022•1 hr 20 min•Ep. 25
https://www.armatusoceanic.com/podcast/024-pelagic We have a confession to make. We talk a big game about how we are busting myths, tackling deep-sea tropes and showing the deep ocean as it really is… but we have been guilty of one of the big ones. The deep sea is not just the bottom! Most of the deep sea, in fact, most of the habitat of this planet is the huge open 3D environment of open water or ‘pelagic’ water. In this staggering volume the planets largest migration takes place twice a day. A...
Jun 03, 2022•59 min•Ep. 24
https://www.armatusoceanic.com/podcast/023-deep-aquaria Can we safely bring deep-sea organisms to the surface and keep them alive? Certain species, such as the giant isopods and giant Japanese spider crabs have been kept in aquaria in the past but the number of animals we can maintain long-term is quite small. The Monterey Bay Aquarium’s new Into the Deep exhibition has succeeded in keeping animals never before put on public display, some are even new to science. Not only that, but they have eve...
May 06, 2022•1 hr 17 min•Ep. 23
https://www.armatusoceanic.com/podcast/022-dive-streaming One of the most exciting parts of our job is going to places that no one has ever been before and seeing things that no one has ever seen. It turns out, we were making that far harder than it needs to be, we can do all this from home! Several of the big names in deep-sea exploration live-stream (or dive-stream if we’re being cute). With just a few seconds delay, you can see deep-sea exploration as it happens and may be present for very si...
Apr 01, 2022•1 hr 15 min•Ep. 22
We have often talked about how difficult it is the get data from the deep sea… but would you believe that the bottleneck to our understanding of the deep ocean, at least as far as visual data, is processing those images? Turning a picture of the deep sea into a list of species, habitat type, sediment type etc. is a time-consuming process that requires a wide range of skilled people. Due to time/funding constrains a lot of valuable information is lost. A team looking at a specific question will h...
Mar 04, 2022•56 min•Ep. 21
It’s February, the month of love and there’s love in the deep ocean too. We talk reproductive strategies in the deep sea with Professor Craig Young , Dr Autun Purser and Dr Mike Vecchione . How do you find a mate in the sparsely populated deep ocean? How can egg and sperm meet when you are fixed growing on a rock? How can your babies disperse and find a suitable habitat, especially if you live in a rare habitat like a hydrothermal vent? We find the solutions to all these problems and more. We al...
Feb 04, 2022•1 hr 18 min•Ep. 20
As promised in the Christmas special, we call the ‘squid-phone’ – a special line used by scientists globally when they seem something strange and squiddy. On the other end of that line is Mike Vecchione, the expert on cephalopods. We talk giant and colossal squid (to audible groans from Mike); the bigfin squid ( Magnapinna ), most famous for being the squid with the long trailing arms that’s often used as an example of terrifying deep-sea creatures, but also a species, genus and Family that Mike...
Jan 07, 2022•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 19
We like to let our hair down a little for the Christmas episode and do something a little different. We recorded video this episode! You can find the video version of this podcast on our YouTube page. Me and Alan crack out some mulled wine and decide to interview each other for this episode. Things get a little off the topic of deep sea but it’s all in good fun (if a little dark at times). We won’t leave you totally without some deep-sea updates though. We still have our news section which inclu...
Dec 03, 2021•1 hr 3 min
https://www.armatusoceanic.com/podcast/018-sound We think of the deep sea as an eerily quiet and spooky place but that isn’t completely true, animal communication, seismic activity, human noise and even the sound of rain and waves from 10 km above. We chat with undersea audio expert Dr David Barclay about the fascinating audio properties of the deep ocean. As we are talking audio data on an audio medium, lets have some fun with a game of ‘what can we grenad-hear’ where Thom tries to guess the de...
Nov 05, 2021•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 18
https://www.armatusoceanic.com/podcast/017-going-to-sea We love going to sea, it is probably the best part of the job. That’s where most of our adventures happen, that’s where most of the exciting discoveries and firsts happen and it’s where we meet some of the most interesting people. We want you to have a great time at sea too and not be put off by a bad first experience. Poor packing or a faux pas could spoil the whole experience and we don’t want that. We put together some advice for your fi...
Oct 01, 2021•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 17
https://www.armatusoceanic.com/podcast/016-biodiscovery We are in desperate need for new bioactive compounds. Superbugs are on the rise as evolution finds a way of thwarting our antibiotics. We are also continually on the hunt for compounds that can fight disease, ease suffering or get your teeth super white. The natural world has been experimenting for millions of years and has come up with solutions far more elegant than we could come up with. Don pops by to make us aware of bioprospecting. Th...
Sep 03, 2021•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 16
https://www.armatusoceanic.com/podcast/015-space-pt2 We hunker down behind the blast doors and quickly record part 2 of our space episode before 426 manages to get through. That’ll make more sense once you hear the episode, or maybe it won’t! I may have gotten carried away on the sound design on this one. We are still exploring the parallels between space and deep-ocean exploration. It feels like technology and access is really accelerating in both spheres. Don calls in to teach us about the amo...
Aug 23, 2021•54 min•Ep. 15
Sorry for the lateness of the episode, we were rather ambitious with this one. Thom and Alan get access to a sound stage and get to actually record the podcast in the same room for the first time. In recent news there seems to be some pop-culture discoveries, the Eye of Sauron and Spongebob and Patrick have been found in the deep sea. Finally, we try not to get too depressed about ocean warming and deep-sea mining buy considering our own energy budgets. The topic for this double episode is, as e...
Aug 12, 2021•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 14
https://www.armatusoceanic.com/podcast/013-submarine-special Thom thought he had the podcast to himself, but it turns out the professor is back after 88 days at sea. It’s time for our submarine, or human occupied vehicle (HOV) if you’re posh, special. First we reunite ‘Vegemite and Haggis’ and talk to submarine pilot Tim Macdonald about his and Alan’s undersea adventures around Australia. Manganese nodule fields, gothic cathedrals, and an undersea UFO. Life starts to imitate art. We chat with sc...
Jul 02, 2021•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 13
Natural history collections, huge archives of carefully curated specimens, are an invaluable tool for the scientific community. They are also a place where the public get to interact with active research and meet scientists. Forget what you’d imagine working in a museum to be like, no two days are the same and both the collections and the talented people who work with them are in constant demand. One day your helping design new swimwear based on shark skin, the next settling an argument at a fis...
Jun 04, 2021•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 12
Alan is stranded out in the Pacific and Thom is left to present a show on genetics, a topic so confusing to him it may as well be magic. Luckily, friends of the show are on hand. Dr Heather Ritchie is tricked into co-hosting and we talk to Dr Johanna Weston about the things we can learn about the deep sea from genetic analysis. Alan has found a way to get audio logs to us (pretty sure a Holtzman Wave isn’t a thing) and shares what he has been up to out at sea – it turns out, a lot! Listen in for...
May 07, 2021•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 11
Tales of monsters persist to this day and there’s no better place to hide them than in the deep sea. We are joined by paleontology student and cryptozoology blogger Tyler Greenfield to look at some of the most famous sea monsters and see if there is any truth to the stories. We discuss megalodon , globsters, plesiosaurs/Nessie and all manner of strange carcasses that wash up from time to time. We have a good hard listen to The Bloop and I call upon an expert in the undersea calls of marine anima...
Apr 02, 2021•1 hr 18 min•Ep. 10
We are both biologists and a little bias toward the deep-sea critters, but the deep ocean contains a wealth of geological discoveries, after all, it is the geology which creates the deep sea. We catch up the latest news, including life discovered 100s of km under the ice, slowing water currents, vampire squid history and the rules of naming something new, be it a species or an undersea feature. We then have a chat with geologist and explorer (and friend of the show) Heather Stewart about the geo...
Mar 05, 2021•1 hr 20 min•Ep. 9
Working in the deep sea is entirely dependent on technology and the incredible forces push engineering to its limit. If you are doing something that no one has done before, chances are you are going to have to make some of your own tools. Unfortunately, we must spend a lot more on our equipment for the same data as shallower science. This makes funding difficult but also makes the deep sea quite an exclusive club. We are joined by James Cameron (yes, that one) to talk about solving the problems ...
Feb 05, 2021•1 hr 15 min•Ep. 8
We impact the deep sea in many ways we don’t realise. Some are deliberate, some are accidental, some we didn’t even notice at the time. We talk about ways we have impacted the deep sea and touch on the huge problem that is marine plastic, a particular problem in the isolated Mediterranean Sea. His serene highness Prince Albert II of Monaco tells us about his experience diving to the deepest point in the Mediterranean, the Calypso Deep ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calypso_Deep ) and his Beyond...
Jan 02, 2021•1 hr 16 min•Ep. 7
