May 4, 2024 • 53 mins
In this classic episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe discuss the science of whale spout, as well as various misconceptions about just how watery, caustic or explosive these plumes really are. (Originally published 04/27/2023)
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
And I am Joe McCormick, and it is Saturday. We
are going into the vault for part two of our
series The Arsy Blows about whale spout. This one originally
published April twenty seventh, twenty twenty three. Let's see if
this whale spout burns our skin off.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
And I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with part two
in our series on that most charismatic anatomical feature of whales,
the blowhole, also known as the spiracle or the spout.
If you are just joining us and you haven't heard
Part one, on a hot back in the timeline and
listen to that one first. That's where we go over
(01:04):
a lot of the basic science of the blowhole. But
as I mentioned last time, this is a subject that
I was tempted to look into because there is a
whole chapter about the spout in the classic nineteenth century
American novel Moby Dick by Herman Melville. Now If you've
ever read Moby Dick, you'll probably recall that it is
(01:26):
not all high speed whale chases and heroics by Queek
Wegg and mad sermons of vengeance by Captain ahab An.
Awful lot of the book is made up of chapters
that could be considered strange, thoughtful little essays on objects
both technological and biological. Technological subjects like various pieces of
(01:47):
whaling equipment and things on ships and biological subjects like
the various parts of a sperm whale's body. And one
of the latter chapters is called the Fountain. It concerns
the blowhole, and I thought this was this would make
an interesting subject for us, in particular because the chapter
raises a number of practical controversies about the biology of
(02:10):
whale spouts, as well as some tantalizing but questionable claims
about sprays of blubbery venom from the hole. Now, among
the primary controversies that concern the narrator Ishmael in this
chapter is the question what is it exactly that shoots
out of the whale's spout? What are the plumes that
(02:30):
whaling ships used to locate these animals out on the
high seat, And of course these are still you know,
people looking for the whale blow? Is still what like
whale watchers today would use to look for these animals?
Is it a towering jet of water blasting as if
from a fire hose, as it is often depicted, I'd say,
(02:51):
most often depicted, or is it nothing more than gas,
vapor or mist? And to get us started here, I
want to read from the this chapter in Moby Dick
articulating this first question. Are you all right if I
read this?
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Rob go for it?
Speaker 2 (03:06):
Okay, okay, this is what Ishmael says. You have seen
him spout? Then declare what the spout is? Can you
not tell water from air? My dear sir, In this
world it is not so easy to settle these plain things.
I have ever found your plain things the naughtiest of all.
And as for this whale spout, you might almost stand
in it and yet be undecided as to what it is.
(03:29):
Precisely the central body of it is hidden in the snowy,
sparkling mist enveloping it. And how can you certainly tell
whether any water falls from it?
Speaker 1 (03:39):
When?
Speaker 2 (03:39):
Always, when you are close enough to a whale to
get a close view of his spout, he is in
a prodigious commotion, the water cascading all around him. And
if at such times you should think that you really
perceived drops of moisture in the spout, how do you
know that they are not merely condensed from its vapor,
Or how do you know that they are not those
(04:01):
identical drops superficially lodged in the spout whole fissure which
is countersunk into the summit of the whale's head. For
even when tranquility swimming through the midday sea in a
calm with his elevated humps sun dried as a dromedaries
in the desert, even then, the whale always carries a
small basin of water on his head. As under a
(04:21):
blazing sun, you will sometimes see a cavity in a
rock filled up with rain.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
Whoaoa, whoa, whoa, this kind of went off the rails. Yeah,
and here what.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
You do not agree that whales always have a pool
of water on top of them, like a rock filled
up with rain.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
Right, Or that they keep their elevated humps sun dried
as a camel's in the desert. Yeah, that is.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
A good cause. I don't know if there's anything to
that claim or not, Like, would a whale ever keep
a part of its body consistently exposed over the surface
or do they? I mean, what I feel like I've
seen most of the time is repeatedly going on and
then coming back up to breathe and then returning correct.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
Yeah, I think I think there'll be a hint of
this in one of the sources I refer to in
a bit concerning depictions and iconography of whales, which very
often still do picture the whale as having a large
portion of its head above the water, as if that's
just how it rides around. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Now, we already discussed discussed this question to some extent
in the last episode, and the consensus of experts, marine biologists,
and just whale watchers that we were reading last time
seemed to be that what comes out of the whales
blowhole is not primarily water. It is not a jet
like from a fire hose, but it is the explosive
(05:42):
exhalation of gas from the whale's lungs, and to be clear,
that can be quite explosive, because when a whale breathes out,
especially after it has been under for a long time,
it nearly totally collapses its lungs. It is like a
blast of breath, and that excellent can create a very
watery looking blow for several reasons. First of all, the
(06:06):
exhaled breath contains vapor, which condenses into mist and droplets
when it leaves the warmer environment of the whale's lungs
and airways and enters the colder environment of the atmosphere above,
similar to how you can see your own breath on
a cold day. Then, of course there's also some droplet
content in the whale's breath that is just mucus being exhaled,
(06:29):
kind of like when we sneeze. And then there's probably
also some splashing of sea water, which may happen if
the exhalation begins before the blowhole breaks the surface of
the water, so some water is just getting sort of
splashed up by the blast, or if there was some
amount of seawater trapped in the airways robbed. Is that
(06:50):
about the gist of it, you think?
Speaker 1 (06:52):
Yeah? Yeah, And like I say, from my family's trip
down to Mexico to observe the gray whales and their lagoons,
very much the cave with those exhalations that occur below
the surface of the water. Those can be quite explosive
and create what feels like a fountain next to you
in the water.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
But that does not mean the whale spout is shooting
a jet. It is breathing out, and that breath is gas,
though it contains probably some mucus droplets and bits of water.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
Now of note, I've run across various descriptions, both in
literature and in just you know, discussions of whale behavior
of the spout with a rainbow within it. You know,
the spout mist goes up into the air and you
can see the reflection, the refraction and the dispersion of
(07:42):
light in the water droplets. I don't have much to
say about that other than it is neat to see,
and you've certainly seen it see that. It has captured
people's imaginations over the years, and you can find various
photos of this today from whale watchers. Rob.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
When you mentioned this, did you know that this actually
connects to the final paragraph of this chapter in Moby Dick.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
Moby Dick was coming up in my searches, and I've
never actually read Moby Dick. I've only seen the film adaptations,
but I did suspect that Melville also touched on this.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
I actually he writes about it quite beautifully, so if
you don't mind it. In the last paragraph, he says,
and how nobly it raises our conceit of the mighty
misty monster. To behold him solemnly sailing through a calm,
tropical sea, his vast, mild head overhung by a canopy
of vapor engendered by his incommunicable contemplations. And that vapor,
(08:39):
as you will sometimes see it, glorified by a rainbow,
as if Heaven itself put its seal upon his thoughts.
For do you see, rainbows do not visit the clear air.
They only irradiate vapor. True science fact. And so through
all the thick mists of the dim doubts in my mind,
divine intuitions now and then shoot in kindling my fog
(09:02):
with a heavenly ray.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
That's beautiful. Yeah, And really, I mean, this is what
it's like to be in the company of whales. Like
the idea that Heaven is glorifying them with a rainbow
does not feel hyperbolic to me having been in their presence,
Like being in the presence of a whale invites hyperbole
because it's just such an overwhelming experience.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
Haven't had the experience myself, but I can't disagree. It
seems quite true to most observers who write of it.
But I want to come back to this misconception, the
idea that the whale spout shoots a jet of water
like from a fire hose. Do we have any idea
like where does this misconception come from? How far back
does it go? And like why were people saying this?
Speaker 1 (09:45):
Yeah, it's interesting to try and tease this apart getting
into these older descriptions of whales and older understandings of
whale behavior and biology. You know, there's a lot we're
still unraveling about wales today. But historically there was a
great deal that wasn't known about these creatures, and they
were frequently the subject of myth, legend and folklore, and
(10:07):
and even people who are trying to, you know, skeptically
understand them were often having to depend on the word
of sailors and second and third hand accounts of what
they do. And then you throw whalers into the mix,
and of course, you know that also skews things in
different directions. But they were, you know, generally, they were
(10:27):
often interpreted as fish, as monsters, as gods, as shape shifters,
and more. Now concerning whale blow or whale spout in particular,
there are a few main myths and misconceptions yea to discuss,
you know, first hitting on this one about the about
the spout being a jet of water. Again, this is
something that not only do you find in old bestiaris
(10:50):
and woodcuts, some of those old maps. You see these
fabulous like beat twaals with two you know, almost like Martian,
old school Martian style blowholes on the top of their
head that are depicted just spouting big jets of water
like their fire engines.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
They have almost horns made of water or like antinnae.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
Yes and then just poking around. If you have your
smartphone with you and you pull up, pull up somebody
in there, do you know a text? And if you
go into throwing some whale emojis, chances are, I don't know,
if your phone's like mine, you'll have two to choose from.
One is a more thankfully scientifically accurate whale, but the
other is what we've seen a million times and emojis
(11:36):
and clip art. It is a cartoon whale spouting a
fountain out of its single blowhole on the top of
its head.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
The same way it is most off and drawn with
the fountains splitting in a kind of fork two ways.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
Yeah, which, as we discussed in the previous episode, you know,
the spout has different shapes and different intensities depending on
the species of the whale. Some do kind of squirt
off in two directions, but it's the way you see
it in clip art and the simple plistic cartoon illustrations. Yeah,
it tends to look just like a fountain. Now, in
trying to in getting into this ended up, I kept
(12:11):
pulling up older sources. But one of the more interesting
older sources on this is an eighteen eighty four book
by naturalist Henry Lee titled See Fables Explained, and it
took on this misconception about whales spout more than a
century ago.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
Now a brief note on Henry Lee. He was a
nineteenth century English naturalist who specialized in marine organisms, and
for a time he was the director of the Brighton
Aquarium in England. But he is notable for writing measured
skeptical investigations of cryptozoological legends, and in this latter capacity
(12:48):
he has actually come up on the show before, I
think on some episodes that we just recently did for
Vaults on Saturdays. So Lee was the author of the
eighteen eighty seven monogram called the Vegetable Lamb of Tartary,
a curious fable of the cotton plant. We discussed this
at length in those episodes on the vegetable lamb, which
(13:09):
of course was a legendary organism with accounts going back
to ancient times, usually described as a basically a mammal
that grew from a plant, a furry, flesh and blood
mammal that had meat and bones and blood that came
out of a stalk that was attached to the ground
through roots and grew somewhere in Central Asia. While there
(13:30):
have been multiple skeptical attempts to make sense of these
legends going back hundreds of years, Lee offered an, I think,
in both of our views, an extremely persuasive argument that
these accounts actually go back to observations and misunderstandings of
the cotton plant. So, by the standards I would normally
apply to a I don't know, a multidisciplinary skeptical treatise
(13:54):
involving literary, historical, and biological knowledge from the eighteen eighties.
I recall being extremely impressed with the last work of
Lee's that we looked at.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
Oh. Absolutely yeah. And I feel like this book. What
I read from it, which is basically the chapter on
whale spout, I thought it. Thought it was a very
level and in many ways ahead of its time. So
in this chapter he cites an example of this whale
spout misunderstanding in the work of the second century Greco
Roman poet Opium, And this is the quote uncouth the
(14:27):
site when they, in dreadful play discharge their nostrils and
refund to see while noisy finfish let their fountains fly
and spout the curling torrent to the sky. So beautiful,
you know in translation obviously, But yeah, this idea of
refunding the sea letting the fountain fly a curling torrent
(14:50):
up to the sky, it's at least a landsman's idea
of what whale spout consisted of.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
Based on what I've read, it seems like the most
common understanding was that whales were sh jets of water
out of their blowholes because they like swallowed a lot
of water through their mouths while eating, and then they
would have to squirt it back out, but couldn't do
that through their mouths for some reason.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
Yeah, Yeah, which I think is one of those things
that certainly by this point naturalists knew that this is
not how an organism worked, and certainly not how to
how a whale works. And so Lee Yeah, he basically
lays out that this had been already been refuted time
and time again by naturalist but that the image was
just too entrenched in the popular imagination and popular imagery
(15:34):
of whales to be fully dismissed. And also more people
are casually taking these images in than they are actually
listening to the naturalists, and we have to I guess
we also have to bear in mind like today so
many of us have access, whether we're actively watching them
or not, to fabulous documentaries about the biology and behavior
(15:55):
of whales, so many opportunities to see for yourself what
the whales spoel was like. And this of course was
not always the.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
Case, right, So back then there might have been more
correct knowledge about whales and their mammalian biology in books,
but that it really hits home more when you just
like see some video of them moving and swimming and spouting.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
Right, right, So he rails against quote sensational pictures in
which whales are presented with their heads above the surface
and throwing up from their nostrils columns of water like
the fountains in Trafalgar Square. Now he cites another erroneous
description from a sixteenth century map by map master Olaus Magnus.
(16:39):
This is somebody we've talked about on the show before
and concerning old maps and sea monsters.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
Right. I think he came up extensively in my interview
with chet van Duzer on the history of monsters on maps,
but I think he's come up in other capacities as well.
This is a recurring guest.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
Here, yes, Lee right the following, quoting Magnus quote four.
To the danger of seamen, he will sometimes raise himself
above the sail yards and cause such floods of water
above his head which he had sucked in, that with
a cloud of them, he will often sink the strongest
ships or expose the mariners to extreme danger. This beast
(17:21):
hath also a large round mouth like a lamprey, whereby
he sucks in his meat or water, and by his
weight casts upon the foe or our hinder deck. He
sinks and drowns a ship hinder deck, hinder deck, hinder deck.
I think, I don't know anyway, you get the idea like,
here's this big monster and there and he fears some
(17:42):
woodcut illustrations to this article, and you can you can
easily find these as well, depicting the same sort of
like you know, beaked monstrosity we just described, with these
creatures like coming up to a ship and spitting out
that you know, using their their strange blowholes to just
flood a ship and make.
Speaker 2 (17:59):
It see brutal, not real though.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
Yeah no, and Lee continues to rail against this. He
shares that after previously trying to set the record straight
on this in a publication, he received letters stating that, Okay, sure,
while lesser whales might not spout water like this, the
great whales are doing it. They're totally doing it. You're wrong.
So he goes on to discuss the basics of blowhole
(18:24):
anatomy and function, driving home that there's no way this
system could be the system that you find in a
whale's head, great or small. There's no way that the
system could be used to squirt jets of pure water.
It's just not how their bodies work right.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
So, as we said before, in certain cases, there might
be a lot of splashing from a whale's explosive exhalation,
but it's exhaling gas, and that maybe some splash is
getting caught up in that exhalation, but it is not
squirting water. What's coming out is from its lungs.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
Right, And he lays all this out and discusses everything
we've just mentioned before that yeah, it's not water coming out,
but if the exhalation comes below the surface of the water,
it's liable to carry up a lot of water and
have this explosive watery appearance.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
Now, given all this, I did want to be fair.
I want to come back and add that to the
partial credit of Ishmael, the narrator of Moby Dick. He
does come down on what we now know to be
the correct side of the water jet versus mist or
vapor debate. So he says it is missed, but he
gives a fairly hilarious reason for thinking it is missed.
(19:33):
His explanation is as follows. Quote I account him meaning
the sperm whale no common shallow being, inasmuch as it
is an undisputed fact that he has never found on
soundings or near shores all other whales sometimes are. He
is both ponderous and profound, and I'm convinced that from
(19:55):
the heads of all ponderous profound beings such as Plato,
per the Devil, Jupiter, Dante, and so on, there always
goes up a certain semi visible steam. While in the
act of thinking deep thoughts, while composing a little treatise
on eternity, I had the curiosity to place a mirror
(20:15):
before me an eir long saw reflected there a curious
involved worming and undulation in the atmosphere over my head,
the invariable moisture of my hair while plunged in deep
thought after six cups of hot tea in my thin
shingled attic of an August noon. This seems an additional
argument for the above Supposition's so good, I get sweaty
(20:38):
one time too.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
Yeah, these are some some wonderful mental gymnastics which again
land him in the right spot, but some unnecessary twists
and turns now. It's worth noting for the most part,
(21:00):
this misunderstanding of whale anatomy is victimless, right. I Mean,
It's like, okay, if worst case scenario you think that
a whale shoots water out of its blowhole. I mean,
what's it? Or if you encounter a whale you'll be
set right on this. But it's worth noting that the
myth of whale spouts and water can even prove actually
(21:21):
dangerous to wales. This, according to Dan Jarvis of the
British Divers Marine Life Rescue Organization, is quoted in a
twenty twenty one Melissa Hobson article on Nationalgeographic Dot cot
a UK. Apparently there have been cases where people who
are not familiar with the anatomy of Wales, who still
have this idea of the whale fountain in their mind.
(21:42):
They have happened upon a stranded whale on the beach
and thinking that this great fish needs water, start pouring
water into its blowhole, which can drown the whale. Oh no, yeah,
So you know there are cases where not knowing what's
going on, even is a non biologist, it can lead
to something like this. So don't go pouring water into blowholes.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
Certainly not but okay, I think we can mostly close
the book on the idea of the water jet. It's
not a water jet. But returning to c fables explained
by Henry Lee. Lee also briefly addresses a strange claim
in the same chapter of Mobi Dick that caught our
attention and we wanted to investigate further and to refresh you.
We mentioned this in the last episode, but this is
(22:28):
the allegation made by Ishmael that the whale spout is poisonous,
a claim that seemed prima fasse unlikely to both of us.
But to read again from Mobi Dick, just so you'll
know what he's saying. He says that for even when
coming into slight contact with the outer vapory shreds of
(22:49):
the jet, which will often happen, your skin will feverishly
smart from the acridness of the thing so touching it.
And I know one who coming into still closer contact
with the spout, whether with some scientific object in view
or otherwise, I cannot say, the skin peeled off from
his cheek and arm. Wherefore, among whalemen the spout is
(23:11):
deemed poisonous, they try to evade it. Another thing I
have heard it said, and I do not much doubt it,
that if the jet is fairly spouted into your eyes,
it will blind you. The wisest thing the investigator can do, then,
it seems to me is to let this deadly spout alone.
So that's a number of strange claims. He says, Okay,
(23:32):
I've got a friend who got some whale blow on
him and that made his skin peel off. Whaleman generally
say that the blow that comes out of the spout
is poisonous and if you get it in your eyes,
it will make you blind.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
So Lee doesn't spend a lot of time with this.
He mentions it. He doesn't really have much to add,
but he kind of dismisses it out of hand, and
also throws in there that Herman Melville is quote not
a naturalist, and he doesn't seem to have much to
add beyond that, aside from mentioning an account from a
(24:06):
steamship whaler. He writes, quote, he believes that the blast
was strong enough to blow a man off the spiracle
if he were seated on it. Now, I don't know. Okay,
that also feels kind of like a tall tail, but
maybe a more believable. It's not saying that it will
blow your skin off and blind you, but he's just saying, well,
(24:27):
it's pretty explosive if you were seated right on it.
I bet it would blast you into the air. I
think it definitely would make you move so on just
strong enough to blow a man off the spiracle. I
believe he would not remain on the spiracle if you
were somehow balanced there for the spout.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
Right, So it might knock you off, but it would not,
as often depicted in cartoons and illustrations, create a jet
that then leaves you floating in the air above it.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
Yeah. Yeah. And the idea of it being used as
an offensive blast against ships, yeah, that's pure fantasy. One
thing I did find interestingly he doesn't go into this,
but he mentions that this being an account from a
steamship whaler, And I can't help but wonder about during
the age of steam power, if there's not some level
(25:13):
of technological comparison going on in one's mind where steam
comes out at the top of a ship. Steam, of course,
is very hot and can damage you and burn the
skin off of your body, things like that, And so
if there's some sort of like comparison that gets made
between the ship and the whale, which of course is large,
(25:35):
travels in the water and also emits these blasts that
don't look unlike steam like maybe it's the kind of
thing where there's just kind of like a sub conscious
comparison being made.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
That's interesting. I never thought about that, but that does
seem plausible. So I did my own digging around for
answers on the question of the supposedly poisonous whale spout,
and like you, Rob, I found no support whatsoever or
for the claim that the blow from the blowhole is poisonous,
meaning that it contains a chemical toxin or venom with
(26:09):
directly injurious effects on nearby mammals through either topical contact
or ingestion. I found nothing on that. In fact, I
didn't even find that many references to this passage in
Moby Dick, which I was surprised by. I thought I
would come across more. I don't know scientific sources referencing it,
even if only to contradict it or maybe try to
(26:29):
get at the source of this belief. But it just
doesn't seem like this this idea gets a lot of stick.
One example of the kind of reference I found was
in not even really a scientific book, just a sort
of book on grey whales called Grey Whales Wandering Giants
by Robert Bush from nineteen ninety eight, which mentions the
(26:50):
claim in Moby Dick that the spout is poisonous, only
to say that it's not poisonous at all, but that
sometimes it does have a very powerful smell, and the
author quotes John Steinbeck from a work called The Log
from the Sea of Cortes. In Steinbeck wrote, a whale's
breath is frightfully sickening. It smells of complete decay. The
(27:13):
author here Bush says, I don't know, It's never really
smelled that way to me.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
Yeah, I was in a position to smell a lot
of gray whale breath and I don't know. I mean,
there is a breathiness to it, I guess at times,
but yeah, I wouldn't say it stinks. Now. One thing
to keep in mind, though, is like these are organisms.
The blowhole is, you know, a breathing orifice. So I
have read that you do have situations where you can
have a sick whale, So that could impact what you're smelling.
(27:41):
I suppose that.
Speaker 2 (27:42):
Yeah, and Bush says the same thing. Maybe when it
maybe it's breath smells worse when it is diseased or
wounded or something. So beyond this, I was just I
was like Okay, I'm going to expand my circle of
interest here. I was looking to find any evidence of
any mammal or any animal for that matter, that is
believed to have poisonous or venomous breath, and I really
(28:05):
could not find anything that fits the description. Despite the
popularity of creatures with toxic breath in Dungeons and Dragons
in video games. It's a good area of effect type attack,
but I couldn't find really any evidence of this in reality.
Maybe there is such a thing and I just wasn't
searching the right way. But the closest stuff I could
find is what we're all more familiar with, like animals
(28:27):
that might spit venom or something, but not having toxic breath.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
Yeah. About the only thing that really comes to my
mind is vultures, say vomiting, which there are a few
different interpretations of that behavior, but it's not quite a
Dungeons and Dragons area of a fact attack.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
And still that would be vomit from the digestive system,
not toxic breath.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
Right right, not toxic gas emitted from the mouth.
Speaker 2 (28:52):
So is this claim in MOBI to just completely made up?
Maybe Melville just made it up to make you know,
just for interesting fictional effect, or maybe it was something
he heard he heard from people that was an actual
belief among whalers, but they just made it up. Well maybe,
but then again maybe not. While I think it's clear
(29:13):
that the exhalation of wales is not poisonous or venomous,
I think this could be a misunderstanding of something that
does seem true, which is that I found evidence that
sometimes after certain types of contact with marine mammals, including whales,
people do report reactions. In fact, this is a great
(29:35):
bit of listener male. We heard from a listener after
part one of this series who has a bit of
relevant personal experience. So Rob, I'm going to read Tabitha's
email here, all right. Tabitha says, dear Robert and Joe,
regarding the consequences of getting a face full of blowhole ejecta.
I have a family experience. As a child, I went
(29:58):
on a dolphin watch boat trip. When dolphins started swimming
alongside the boat and playing in the bow waves, my
sister and I were allowed to lie on the deck
and stick our heads out under the railing to watch them.
It was the nineties. One dolphin surfaced and exhaled directly
into my sister's face from close range. Initially she was fine,
(30:20):
if a bit slimy and embarrassed. Later that day, however,
her eyes turned red, weepy, and swelled almost shut. I
don't really remember the aftermath except for thinking it was hilarious,
but as far as I recall, it got better in
a day or so, suggesting an allergic reaction rather than
bacterial infection. So maybe a certain number of people are
(30:43):
just really allergic to cetaceans. Maybe a lot of people,
but we don't have the opportunity to find out very often.
I can imagine a whaling crew having one case of
whalesnot face rash, and the story spreading until it reaches
the flesh dissolving, eye melting tall tail stage. Love the
show as always, Tabitha, well fascinating, and thank you so
(31:03):
much for sharing this, Tabitha, So I totally agree that
it is not hard to imagine some nineteenth century whalers
could observe experiences like this and conclude, incorrectly from it
that the whale spout is toxic, is venomous or poisonous,
like the venom of a spitting cobra or something. But
(31:24):
I was wondering more about the mechanism, what is actually
going on here? Now, I honestly could not find much
of anything documenting what we're directly classified as allergic reactions
to cetacean blow. But I did find a very interesting
source documenting similar reactions in the context of human zoonotic
(31:47):
diseases from marine mammal vectors. Now, this is something I
really had never thought about before we did this series.
Of course, when you think about zoonotic diseases, you think
about bats, You think about livestock animals, you know, maybe pigs, birds,
and so forth. I had never thought of the idea
that humans could catch diseases from whales, seals, dolphins, and
(32:12):
so forth.
Speaker 1 (32:13):
Yeah, yeah, I mean neither.
Speaker 2 (32:14):
But now allow me to introduce you to the paper
health Risks for Marine Mammal Workers, published in the journal
Diseases of Aquatic Organisms the year two thousand and eight
by Tanya Hunt at All. This is a paper where
the authors say, there have been, you know, isolated, documented
cases of humans acquiring zoonotic diseases from marine mammals. There
(32:35):
are certain diseases that are well known and even have
interesting little names, such as seal finger. If you want
to be grossed out. You can look up images of
seal finger. But they wanted to design a survey to
get a broader range of responses. So they wanted to
survey professionals and volunteers who regularly work directly with marine
(32:58):
mammals to see how common very types of injuries and
work related illnesses were in people who have contact with
these animals. So what did they find to read from
their abstract? First of all, they characterized the people who
responded to the survey. Most respondents eighty eight percent were
researchers and rehabilitators. And then they say, quote, of all respondents,
(33:22):
fifty percent reported suffering an injury caused by a marine
mammal and twenty three percent reported having a skin rash
or reaction. Marine mammal Work related illnesses commonly reported included
seal finger, which is now known to be traceable to
a bacterium called Mycoplasma conjunctivitis. That's very interesting because that
(33:49):
conjunctividis is irritation and swelling of the eyes. That of
course connects to Tabitha's story, but also connects to the
idea that getting whale blow in your face could make
you blind but to go on viral dermatitis, bacterial dermatitis,
and non specific contact dermatitis. This is rash or irritation
(34:09):
of the skin, although specific diagnoses could not be confirmed
by a physician. Through the study, severe illnesses were reported
and included tuberculosis, leptospirosis, brucellosis, and serious sequeli to seal finger.
Risk factors associated with increased odds of injury and illness
included prolonged and frequent exposure to marine mammals, direct contact
(34:33):
with live marine mammals, and contact with tissue, blood and excretions.
And I was looking at another paper tracking marine mammals
zunoses in humans. This was by waltzik at All in
Zunocees and Public Health from twenty twelve and it also
tried to collect all of the literature on zoonotic infections
(34:56):
from marine mammals and humans and it concluded that the
most common type of zoonotic reaction to marine mammals was
localized skin infections in humans, which again makes you think
about the discussion about like peeling skin and skin reactions
that Melville mentions. So those are human diseases that have
(35:19):
been tentatively linked at least circumstantially to contact with marine mammals.
But we need to introduce some caveats. Number one. This
includes a wide range of different marine mammals, so not
just whales, but all kinds of marine mammals, and a
wide range of different types of contact, including touching of skin, bites,
(35:39):
contact with blood and inner organs, etc. Not just exposure
to say, mucus and droplets from the blowhole of whales.
So what if we were to come at this question
from the other direction and ask what is in whales?
Not specifically when a whale breathes out, there's got to
be plenty of bacteria and stuff in there. Has anybody
ever documented what microbes are present in the blow of
(36:02):
a whale and whether that list contains anything that could
cause skin or eye infections or otherwise create the impression,
even the false impression that the spout is poisonous or venomous. Yes,
there have in fact been investigations microbiological investigations of whale blow.
The first one I wanted to mention was a paper
(36:22):
from twenty seventeen. This was published in m Systems two,
which is an American Society for Microbiology journal. It's by
amy April at all, and it's called extensive core microbiome
in drone captured whale blow supports a framework for health monitoring.
This study was interesting because it used a drone to
(36:43):
fly above the water surface and collect blow from two
populations of healthy humpback whales, one Pacific group off of
Vancouver Island and an Atlantic group off of Cape Cod
And I was thinking, wow, that's a good use for drones. Yeah,
So they took these samples, but then they compared the
microbes present in them to what was present in just
(37:05):
samples of straight seawater from around because obviously some seawater
gets in with the blow, so you're looking to see
what's in the blow that's not just in seawater. And
the author's right quote. The blow microbiomes were distinct from
the seawater microbiomes and included twenty five phylogenetically diverse bacteria
common to all sampled whales. This core assemblage comprised on
(37:26):
average thirty six percent of the microbiome, making it one
of the more consistent animal microbiomes studied to date. The
closest phylogenetic relatives of twenty of these core microbes were
previously detected in marine mammals, suggesting that this core microbiome
assemblage is specialized for marine mammals and may indicate a healthy,
non infected pulmonary system. So that's interesting. These two geographically
(37:51):
distinct populations of healthy humpback whales from different oceans share
a common baseline of non pathogenic bacterial species. Of course,
the fact that a bacterium is not pathogenic in its
normal whale host doesn't necessarily tell you how it will
behave when sprayed onto the skin or into the eyes
of a human being. But then, the other study I
(38:14):
wanted to mention is one that was published in Nature
Scientific Reports by Raverty at All in twenty seventeen, called
Respiratory microbiome of endangered Southern resident killer Whales and Microbiota
of surrounding sea surface micro layer in the Eastern North Pacific. So,
to summarize from a news report on this article I
(38:37):
was reading from the University of British Columbia. Stephen Raverty,
he was the lead author on the study, is a
professor or an adjunct professor at University of British Columbia's
Institute for the Oceans and fisheries, and this study was
looking at the microbiome of endangered southern resident killer whales
in what's known as the Salish Sea. It's the sea
(38:58):
around I think to the inside of Vancouver Island. It's
the sea around that stretch throughout British Columbia and Washington State.
And this study was focused on the health of orcas,
not on humans, so this was not studying human diseases.
But it did find that the breath of these killer whales,
when sampled droplets from that blow, contained all kinds of
(39:20):
bacteria and fungi that are known to cause disease in humans,
so bacteria like salmonella, like Staphylococcus aureus, and then fungi
like penicillium and foma. And it's not clear that these
common bacteria that could also cause disease in humans would
be present in the breath of all whales. It's also
(39:41):
not clear that they have always been present, even in
these killer whales, because there's a possibility that these are
sort of recently introduced microbia loads that are a result
of human activity. We don't know, but it's a possibility.
Giving a quote to this news article, the lead author
Raverty says, quote, we're not sure if these mic robes
naturally occur in the marine environment or if they may
(40:03):
be terrestrially sourced. These animals are long ranging as they
migrate along the coast, and they are exposed to agricultural
runoff and urban discharge which may introduce a variety of
microbes into the water. So ultimately, in this case, we
don't know for sure, Like we can't take a sample
of what, you know, whalers might have been getting blown
(40:25):
in their faces from sperm whales or whales in general
in the nineteenth century. But here at least there are
cases today of whales that are ejecting breath from their
lungs that contains droplets of mucus with bacteria that we
know do cause disease in humans. Whether that is sort
of a recent loading onto these whales or whether that
(40:47):
would have been present a long time ago, we can't
say for sure. But if you combine this with the
other observations that people, you know, people who work directly
with marine mammals report a lot of sort of skin
infections conjunctividis and things like that, it does not seem
implausible to me that this story about the whale blow
being poisonous could emerge from different types of infections people
(41:12):
get after getting whale mucus or other types of whale
body fluids on their skin or in their eyes.
Speaker 1 (41:20):
Yeah, there are a number of additional considerations to make
based on this information, because, on one hand, just by
the nature of tall tales and sailor lore, how many
times would it need to happen really for the stories
to generate, You know, just one incident of somebody really
swelling up after being exposed to whale blow might be enough.
(41:41):
At On top of that, if there are myths and
legends pre existing that to tie into some of this,
those could add to the energy of these tails and
could even in their origin be partially inspired by such experiences.
And then I think the other thing to keep in
mind is that the whalers you're just talking about, all
the different things that one might have reactions to have
(42:04):
exposed to, including like blood and organs, Like the whaler
was not just out there to to see the whale,
not just out there to experience the whale. They were
out there to kill and butcher the whales. So it
seems entirely likely that yeah, if you're gonna have an
allergic reaction to one aspect of the whales anatomy. There
(42:25):
are going to be multiple additional opportunities to be infected
by blood, viscera, et cetera.
Speaker 2 (42:31):
I absolutely agree with all that. So yeah, I can't
say for sure, but my best guess is if this
is not just a made up story, if there are
if there were actually folk tales among whalers that the
spout was poisonous, it probably came from people getting some
kind of infection after being around whales.
Speaker 1 (42:58):
Now I have I have a few other things for
us to take into this first one kind of ties
into several different things we've discussed because it definitely concerns whaling,
It concerns the idea of a liquid spout, and it
also concerns exposure of the whaler to various parts of
the whales anatomy. So this concerns the red spout. In
(43:23):
the book Red Leviat and the Secret History of Soviet Whaling,
author and previous guest on the show, Ryan Tucker Jones
discusses the destruction wrought by the Soviet industrial whaling industry,
and in this one particular case, the Soviet industrial whaling harpoons.
So these were not like the harpoons of the classical
age of whaling as depicted in Moby Dick. We're talking
(43:45):
about things that are fired, and in this case grenade
tipped so that they explode upon hitting the whale and
impacting the whale. He points out that the ideal first hit,
ideal for the whalers, of course, not the whale, would
be for one of these to go off near the
whale's vital organs. Wherever it hit, blood would pour into
(44:07):
the cavity and the brain would eventually succumb. But if
the lungs were punctured, quote, blood would soon fountain out
the blowhole. This was termed by the Soviet whalers a
red spout, and the whale would drown in its own fluids.
And he goes into a great deal more detail about
all of this, but suffice to say like two to
six harpoons were often required to kill the whale. So
(44:33):
worth keeping this in mind. I think and thinking about
all of this, and also it brings to mind an
account that I was reading regarding a mythic monstrous whale.
So we have the word cetacean, you know, referring to
our whales. This I've read is connected to the name
(44:54):
of the of the sea monster in Greek mythology Ketos
or ctoss, and this leave by some, at least in
some tellings, to be based on or interpreted as a whale.
In Menilius's Monster by K. M. Coleman from nineteen eighty three,
the author points to whale like qualities of spouting in
the writings of first century Roman poet Manilius. Ovid, however,
(45:19):
doesn't write of spouting with these with this creature, but
of vomiting bloody water. So the author of this paper, Coleman,
contends that Manilius was possibly incorporating observational or even for
the time natural insight into his treatment of the myth.
But I also think this depiction that Ovid gives of
(45:39):
the spouting of bloody water this also brings to mind.
I mean this, I can't help but compare it to
this idea of the red spout, and wonder if it
might be connected to some you know, ancient world older
accounts of harpooning a whale, piercing the lung and observing
this reaction.
Speaker 2 (45:57):
Wow, but now I'm picturing this. So the key toss
or the sea monster that is here being interpreted as
a whale, I think was the monster in the Perseus
and Andromeda story. So like when when Cassiopeia offers up
Andromeda as a sacrifice to the sea monster, we should
maybe picture at not like a big scaly man thing
(46:20):
coming out of the water track see and Clash of
the Titans, but instead a whale vomiting bloody water.
Speaker 1 (46:26):
Yeah, yeah, and you know this idea of the vomiting whale.
He goes. There's some other accounts of this as well,
because I was poking around looking for just any other
interesting like whale spout myths that connected into what we're
talking about here. And there are various myths about whales
being you know, monsters or gods and so forth, but
(46:47):
not all of them are necessarily insightful concerning the spout
or the blowhole. But I happened to cross something in
Irish traditions that I can't help but wonder if this
is something that ended up helping in warm sailor's lore,
especially as discussed in Moby Dick. I found this initially
in an eighteen ninety nine publication Notes and Folklore from
(47:10):
the Renez copy of The Dencentez by TJ. Westrop, published
in the Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland,
The Dencentez. This is the tales of the Tales of
the Duns, the lore of Places. It's a class of
texts from early Irish literature, and these were apparently added
(47:31):
to by various writers up until the eleventh or twelfth centuries.
So here's a quote from this particular author. Quote. A
very dangerous monster, the rose Sualt is also described, which
spouts at muhrisk in Mayo and a pestilence ensues. This
is stated of the whale in other ancient works. When
(47:55):
the whale spouts upwards, flying creatures die. When downward it
kills the fish and win at the land, a plague ensues. WHOA,
So this is the idea of a whale shooting birds
out of the air with its poisonous spout, and occasionally,
you know, coming close to the shore and being a
(48:15):
bringer of plagues, vomiting up plague upon the shore and
letting that plague or like roll across the countryside as
a vapor, a bringer of miasthma.
Speaker 2 (48:25):
Okay I was confused about the timeline for a second.
But okay, so this is an eighteen ninety nine publication,
but it is discussing these earlier like medieval Irish texts.
Speaker 1 (48:36):
Correct. Yes, and for there's a little background. Marisk is
in fact a village in County Mayo in Ireland, and
also according to a different text in eighteen ninety two text,
I was looking at this roast salt, and I apologize
that I'm butchering. This was sometimes understood as a sea animal,
and I think sometimes translated as a walrus. Not that
(48:58):
we should necessarily think of it as a walrus, but
you know, sometimes there's a shift in what these terms
are referring to over time. So since we had a
sea monster here, especially one of European origin, I turned,
as I always do, to the books of Carol Rose.
She has these wonderful pair of encyclopedias, one dealing with
monsters and giants and other one dealing with fairies and leprechauns.
(49:19):
And there's some crossover between the books, but they're both great.
So I looked it up. And Rose has a little
more insight on the re salt, which she says is
an alternate name for the moorisk, a monster fish of
Irish tradition. She writes that it was said to inhabit
the region of crow og Patrick, and it was super poisonous.
(49:41):
If it vomited in the water, all the sea life
around it would die. The fumes from its mouth would
cause dead birds to fall out of the sky, and
it could breathe on a coastal region and bring disease.
Speaker 2 (49:52):
Okay, that sort of matches what we were reading a
minute ago, right right, yeah, yeah, at the coast, it
brings the pestilens. It kills the birds if it shoots up,
and it kills the fish if it shoots down, right.
Speaker 1 (50:03):
And I also found another source referring to this. This
is from P. W. Joyce in nineteen oh six is
a smaller social history of Ancient Ireland, and this author
added basically says the same thing, but added that it
was quote able to vomit in three different ways three
years in succession. He adds that the vomiting into the
(50:24):
water also wrecked ships, and when it vomited towards the
land in the third year, hit the whale caused quote
a pestilential vapor to creep over the country that killed
men and four footed animals.
Speaker 2 (50:38):
No not the four footed animals.
Speaker 1 (50:40):
The four footed animals are just at the forefront of
strange death. I mean, this is how many times are
we going to in this year last have we talked
about strange reasons that four legged animals are dying? And
in the British Isles.
Speaker 2 (50:55):
We never considered this as an explanation for the cattle
mutilation panic. What if it was actually a risk?
Speaker 1 (51:03):
Yeah? Yeah, what if a whale vomited? So this is
this is all interesting Again. I don't think that I
think potentially one has to, you know, take into account
these these myths and legends about poisonous vomit coming out
of these whales or whale like creatures. These also first
hand accounts of potentially getting some sort of an infection
(51:25):
after contact with a whale spout or whale blood, et cetera.
But I also can't help but wonder if there's some connection,
particularly between this story and perhaps encounters with beached and
dead whales, where there's of course decomposition going on, and
therefore there's going to be a very strong, awful odor,
the kind of odor that we would, you know, we
(51:47):
would associate with with illness. Perhaps, so I wonder I
wonder if there's any connective tissue there as well.
Speaker 2 (51:55):
Well, Rob, I think this has been a mighty fun
and interesting exploration. Even though we didn't get a definitive
answer on the poisonous whales thing, I think what we
did find out has been enlightening. And as Melville would say,
through all the thick mists and the dim doubts, you know,
the divine intuitions now and then shoot, so our fog
has been enkindled with the heavenly ray.
Speaker 1 (52:16):
Oh very nice. All right, we're gonna go ahead and
close it out then, But yeah, we'd love to hear
from everyone out there if you have additional insight, experience, etc.
Just general thoughts and what we've talked about in this
pair of episodes or our previous episodes on gray whales
in particular. Right in we'd love to hear from you.
Just a reminder that's stuffed able. Your Mind is primarily
a science podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays,
(52:39):
but on Mondays we do listener mail. On Wednesdays we
do a short form artifact or monster fact episode, and
then on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to
just talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 2 (52:50):
Huge thanks to our audio producer JJ Posway. If you
would like to get in touch with us with feedback
on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic
for the future, or just to say hello, you can
email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind
dot com.
Speaker 3 (53:11):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
And I am Joe McCormick, and it is Saturday. We
are going into the vault for part two of our
series The Arsy Blows about whale spout. This one originally
published April twenty seventh, twenty twenty three. Let's see if
this whale spout burns our skin off.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
And I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with part two
in our series on that most charismatic anatomical feature of whales,
the blowhole, also known as the spiracle or the spout.
If you are just joining us and you haven't heard
Part one, on a hot back in the timeline and
listen to that one first. That's where we go over
(01:04):
a lot of the basic science of the blowhole. But
as I mentioned last time, this is a subject that
I was tempted to look into because there is a
whole chapter about the spout in the classic nineteenth century
American novel Moby Dick by Herman Melville. Now If you've
ever read Moby Dick, you'll probably recall that it is
(01:26):
not all high speed whale chases and heroics by Queek
Wegg and mad sermons of vengeance by Captain ahab An.
Awful lot of the book is made up of chapters
that could be considered strange, thoughtful little essays on objects
both technological and biological. Technological subjects like various pieces of
(01:47):
whaling equipment and things on ships and biological subjects like
the various parts of a sperm whale's body. And one
of the latter chapters is called the Fountain. It concerns
the blowhole, and I thought this was this would make
an interesting subject for us, in particular because the chapter
raises a number of practical controversies about the biology of
(02:10):
whale spouts, as well as some tantalizing but questionable claims
about sprays of blubbery venom from the hole. Now, among
the primary controversies that concern the narrator Ishmael in this
chapter is the question what is it exactly that shoots
out of the whale's spout? What are the plumes that
(02:30):
whaling ships used to locate these animals out on the
high seat, And of course these are still you know,
people looking for the whale blow? Is still what like
whale watchers today would use to look for these animals?
Is it a towering jet of water blasting as if
from a fire hose, as it is often depicted, I'd say,
(02:51):
most often depicted, or is it nothing more than gas,
vapor or mist? And to get us started here, I
want to read from the this chapter in Moby Dick
articulating this first question. Are you all right if I
read this?
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Rob go for it?
Speaker 2 (03:06):
Okay, okay, this is what Ishmael says. You have seen
him spout? Then declare what the spout is? Can you
not tell water from air? My dear sir, In this
world it is not so easy to settle these plain things.
I have ever found your plain things the naughtiest of all.
And as for this whale spout, you might almost stand
in it and yet be undecided as to what it is.
(03:29):
Precisely the central body of it is hidden in the snowy,
sparkling mist enveloping it. And how can you certainly tell
whether any water falls from it?
Speaker 1 (03:39):
When?
Speaker 2 (03:39):
Always, when you are close enough to a whale to
get a close view of his spout, he is in
a prodigious commotion, the water cascading all around him. And
if at such times you should think that you really
perceived drops of moisture in the spout, how do you
know that they are not merely condensed from its vapor,
Or how do you know that they are not those
(04:01):
identical drops superficially lodged in the spout whole fissure which
is countersunk into the summit of the whale's head. For
even when tranquility swimming through the midday sea in a
calm with his elevated humps sun dried as a dromedaries
in the desert, even then, the whale always carries a
small basin of water on his head. As under a
(04:21):
blazing sun, you will sometimes see a cavity in a
rock filled up with rain.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
Whoaoa, whoa, whoa, this kind of went off the rails. Yeah,
and here what.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
You do not agree that whales always have a pool
of water on top of them, like a rock filled
up with rain.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
Right, Or that they keep their elevated humps sun dried
as a camel's in the desert. Yeah, that is.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
A good cause. I don't know if there's anything to
that claim or not, Like, would a whale ever keep
a part of its body consistently exposed over the surface
or do they? I mean, what I feel like I've
seen most of the time is repeatedly going on and
then coming back up to breathe and then returning correct.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
Yeah, I think I think there'll be a hint of
this in one of the sources I refer to in
a bit concerning depictions and iconography of whales, which very
often still do picture the whale as having a large
portion of its head above the water, as if that's
just how it rides around. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Now, we already discussed discussed this question to some extent
in the last episode, and the consensus of experts, marine biologists,
and just whale watchers that we were reading last time
seemed to be that what comes out of the whales
blowhole is not primarily water. It is not a jet
like from a fire hose, but it is the explosive
(05:42):
exhalation of gas from the whale's lungs, and to be clear,
that can be quite explosive, because when a whale breathes out,
especially after it has been under for a long time,
it nearly totally collapses its lungs. It is like a
blast of breath, and that excellent can create a very
watery looking blow for several reasons. First of all, the
(06:06):
exhaled breath contains vapor, which condenses into mist and droplets
when it leaves the warmer environment of the whale's lungs
and airways and enters the colder environment of the atmosphere above,
similar to how you can see your own breath on
a cold day. Then, of course there's also some droplet
content in the whale's breath that is just mucus being exhaled,
(06:29):
kind of like when we sneeze. And then there's probably
also some splashing of sea water, which may happen if
the exhalation begins before the blowhole breaks the surface of
the water, so some water is just getting sort of
splashed up by the blast, or if there was some
amount of seawater trapped in the airways robbed. Is that
(06:50):
about the gist of it, you think?
Speaker 1 (06:52):
Yeah? Yeah, And like I say, from my family's trip
down to Mexico to observe the gray whales and their lagoons,
very much the cave with those exhalations that occur below
the surface of the water. Those can be quite explosive
and create what feels like a fountain next to you
in the water.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
But that does not mean the whale spout is shooting
a jet. It is breathing out, and that breath is gas,
though it contains probably some mucus droplets and bits of water.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
Now of note, I've run across various descriptions, both in
literature and in just you know, discussions of whale behavior
of the spout with a rainbow within it. You know,
the spout mist goes up into the air and you
can see the reflection, the refraction and the dispersion of
(07:42):
light in the water droplets. I don't have much to
say about that other than it is neat to see,
and you've certainly seen it see that. It has captured
people's imaginations over the years, and you can find various
photos of this today from whale watchers. Rob.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
When you mentioned this, did you know that this actually
connects to the final paragraph of this chapter in Moby Dick.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
Moby Dick was coming up in my searches, and I've
never actually read Moby Dick. I've only seen the film adaptations,
but I did suspect that Melville also touched on this.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
I actually he writes about it quite beautifully, so if
you don't mind it. In the last paragraph, he says,
and how nobly it raises our conceit of the mighty
misty monster. To behold him solemnly sailing through a calm,
tropical sea, his vast, mild head overhung by a canopy
of vapor engendered by his incommunicable contemplations. And that vapor,
(08:39):
as you will sometimes see it, glorified by a rainbow,
as if Heaven itself put its seal upon his thoughts.
For do you see, rainbows do not visit the clear air.
They only irradiate vapor. True science fact. And so through
all the thick mists of the dim doubts in my mind,
divine intuitions now and then shoot in kindling my fog
(09:02):
with a heavenly ray.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
That's beautiful. Yeah, And really, I mean, this is what
it's like to be in the company of whales. Like
the idea that Heaven is glorifying them with a rainbow
does not feel hyperbolic to me having been in their presence,
Like being in the presence of a whale invites hyperbole
because it's just such an overwhelming experience.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
Haven't had the experience myself, but I can't disagree. It
seems quite true to most observers who write of it.
But I want to come back to this misconception, the
idea that the whale spout shoots a jet of water
like from a fire hose. Do we have any idea
like where does this misconception come from? How far back
does it go? And like why were people saying this?
Speaker 1 (09:45):
Yeah, it's interesting to try and tease this apart getting
into these older descriptions of whales and older understandings of
whale behavior and biology. You know, there's a lot we're
still unraveling about wales today. But historically there was a
great deal that wasn't known about these creatures, and they
were frequently the subject of myth, legend and folklore, and
(10:07):
and even people who are trying to, you know, skeptically
understand them were often having to depend on the word
of sailors and second and third hand accounts of what
they do. And then you throw whalers into the mix,
and of course, you know that also skews things in
different directions. But they were, you know, generally, they were
(10:27):
often interpreted as fish, as monsters, as gods, as shape shifters,
and more. Now concerning whale blow or whale spout in particular,
there are a few main myths and misconceptions yea to discuss,
you know, first hitting on this one about the about
the spout being a jet of water. Again, this is
something that not only do you find in old bestiaris
(10:50):
and woodcuts, some of those old maps. You see these
fabulous like beat twaals with two you know, almost like Martian,
old school Martian style blowholes on the top of their
head that are depicted just spouting big jets of water
like their fire engines.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
They have almost horns made of water or like antinnae.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
Yes and then just poking around. If you have your
smartphone with you and you pull up, pull up somebody
in there, do you know a text? And if you
go into throwing some whale emojis, chances are, I don't know,
if your phone's like mine, you'll have two to choose from.
One is a more thankfully scientifically accurate whale, but the
other is what we've seen a million times and emojis
(11:36):
and clip art. It is a cartoon whale spouting a
fountain out of its single blowhole on the top of
its head.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
The same way it is most off and drawn with
the fountains splitting in a kind of fork two ways.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
Yeah, which, as we discussed in the previous episode, you know,
the spout has different shapes and different intensities depending on
the species of the whale. Some do kind of squirt
off in two directions, but it's the way you see
it in clip art and the simple plistic cartoon illustrations. Yeah,
it tends to look just like a fountain. Now, in
trying to in getting into this ended up, I kept
(12:11):
pulling up older sources. But one of the more interesting
older sources on this is an eighteen eighty four book
by naturalist Henry Lee titled See Fables Explained, and it
took on this misconception about whales spout more than a
century ago.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
Now a brief note on Henry Lee. He was a
nineteenth century English naturalist who specialized in marine organisms, and
for a time he was the director of the Brighton
Aquarium in England. But he is notable for writing measured
skeptical investigations of cryptozoological legends, and in this latter capacity
(12:48):
he has actually come up on the show before, I
think on some episodes that we just recently did for
Vaults on Saturdays. So Lee was the author of the
eighteen eighty seven monogram called the Vegetable Lamb of Tartary,
a curious fable of the cotton plant. We discussed this
at length in those episodes on the vegetable lamb, which
(13:09):
of course was a legendary organism with accounts going back
to ancient times, usually described as a basically a mammal
that grew from a plant, a furry, flesh and blood
mammal that had meat and bones and blood that came
out of a stalk that was attached to the ground
through roots and grew somewhere in Central Asia. While there
(13:30):
have been multiple skeptical attempts to make sense of these
legends going back hundreds of years, Lee offered an, I think,
in both of our views, an extremely persuasive argument that
these accounts actually go back to observations and misunderstandings of
the cotton plant. So, by the standards I would normally
apply to a I don't know, a multidisciplinary skeptical treatise
(13:54):
involving literary, historical, and biological knowledge from the eighteen eighties.
I recall being extremely impressed with the last work of
Lee's that we looked at.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
Oh. Absolutely yeah. And I feel like this book. What
I read from it, which is basically the chapter on
whale spout, I thought it. Thought it was a very
level and in many ways ahead of its time. So
in this chapter he cites an example of this whale
spout misunderstanding in the work of the second century Greco
Roman poet Opium, And this is the quote uncouth the
(14:27):
site when they, in dreadful play discharge their nostrils and
refund to see while noisy finfish let their fountains fly
and spout the curling torrent to the sky. So beautiful,
you know in translation obviously, But yeah, this idea of
refunding the sea letting the fountain fly a curling torrent
(14:50):
up to the sky, it's at least a landsman's idea
of what whale spout consisted of.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
Based on what I've read, it seems like the most
common understanding was that whales were sh jets of water
out of their blowholes because they like swallowed a lot
of water through their mouths while eating, and then they
would have to squirt it back out, but couldn't do
that through their mouths for some reason.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
Yeah, Yeah, which I think is one of those things
that certainly by this point naturalists knew that this is
not how an organism worked, and certainly not how to
how a whale works. And so Lee Yeah, he basically
lays out that this had been already been refuted time
and time again by naturalist but that the image was
just too entrenched in the popular imagination and popular imagery
(15:34):
of whales to be fully dismissed. And also more people
are casually taking these images in than they are actually
listening to the naturalists, and we have to I guess
we also have to bear in mind like today so
many of us have access, whether we're actively watching them
or not, to fabulous documentaries about the biology and behavior
(15:55):
of whales, so many opportunities to see for yourself what
the whales spoel was like. And this of course was
not always the.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
Case, right, So back then there might have been more
correct knowledge about whales and their mammalian biology in books,
but that it really hits home more when you just
like see some video of them moving and swimming and spouting.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
Right, right, So he rails against quote sensational pictures in
which whales are presented with their heads above the surface
and throwing up from their nostrils columns of water like
the fountains in Trafalgar Square. Now he cites another erroneous
description from a sixteenth century map by map master Olaus Magnus.
(16:39):
This is somebody we've talked about on the show before
and concerning old maps and sea monsters.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
Right. I think he came up extensively in my interview
with chet van Duzer on the history of monsters on maps,
but I think he's come up in other capacities as well.
This is a recurring guest.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
Here, yes, Lee right the following, quoting Magnus quote four.
To the danger of seamen, he will sometimes raise himself
above the sail yards and cause such floods of water
above his head which he had sucked in, that with
a cloud of them, he will often sink the strongest
ships or expose the mariners to extreme danger. This beast
(17:21):
hath also a large round mouth like a lamprey, whereby
he sucks in his meat or water, and by his
weight casts upon the foe or our hinder deck. He
sinks and drowns a ship hinder deck, hinder deck, hinder deck.
I think, I don't know anyway, you get the idea like,
here's this big monster and there and he fears some
(17:42):
woodcut illustrations to this article, and you can you can
easily find these as well, depicting the same sort of
like you know, beaked monstrosity we just described, with these
creatures like coming up to a ship and spitting out
that you know, using their their strange blowholes to just
flood a ship and make.
Speaker 2 (17:59):
It see brutal, not real though.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
Yeah no, and Lee continues to rail against this. He
shares that after previously trying to set the record straight
on this in a publication, he received letters stating that, Okay, sure,
while lesser whales might not spout water like this, the
great whales are doing it. They're totally doing it. You're wrong.
So he goes on to discuss the basics of blowhole
(18:24):
anatomy and function, driving home that there's no way this
system could be the system that you find in a
whale's head, great or small. There's no way that the
system could be used to squirt jets of pure water.
It's just not how their bodies work right.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
So, as we said before, in certain cases, there might
be a lot of splashing from a whale's explosive exhalation,
but it's exhaling gas, and that maybe some splash is
getting caught up in that exhalation, but it is not
squirting water. What's coming out is from its lungs.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
Right, And he lays all this out and discusses everything
we've just mentioned before that yeah, it's not water coming out,
but if the exhalation comes below the surface of the water,
it's liable to carry up a lot of water and
have this explosive watery appearance.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
Now, given all this, I did want to be fair.
I want to come back and add that to the
partial credit of Ishmael, the narrator of Moby Dick. He
does come down on what we now know to be
the correct side of the water jet versus mist or
vapor debate. So he says it is missed, but he
gives a fairly hilarious reason for thinking it is missed.
(19:33):
His explanation is as follows. Quote I account him meaning
the sperm whale no common shallow being, inasmuch as it
is an undisputed fact that he has never found on
soundings or near shores all other whales sometimes are. He
is both ponderous and profound, and I'm convinced that from
(19:55):
the heads of all ponderous profound beings such as Plato,
per the Devil, Jupiter, Dante, and so on, there always
goes up a certain semi visible steam. While in the
act of thinking deep thoughts, while composing a little treatise
on eternity, I had the curiosity to place a mirror
(20:15):
before me an eir long saw reflected there a curious
involved worming and undulation in the atmosphere over my head,
the invariable moisture of my hair while plunged in deep
thought after six cups of hot tea in my thin
shingled attic of an August noon. This seems an additional
argument for the above Supposition's so good, I get sweaty
(20:38):
one time too.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
Yeah, these are some some wonderful mental gymnastics which again
land him in the right spot, but some unnecessary twists
and turns now. It's worth noting for the most part,
(21:00):
this misunderstanding of whale anatomy is victimless, right. I Mean,
It's like, okay, if worst case scenario you think that
a whale shoots water out of its blowhole. I mean,
what's it? Or if you encounter a whale you'll be
set right on this. But it's worth noting that the
myth of whale spouts and water can even prove actually
(21:21):
dangerous to wales. This, according to Dan Jarvis of the
British Divers Marine Life Rescue Organization, is quoted in a
twenty twenty one Melissa Hobson article on Nationalgeographic Dot cot
a UK. Apparently there have been cases where people who
are not familiar with the anatomy of Wales, who still
have this idea of the whale fountain in their mind.
(21:42):
They have happened upon a stranded whale on the beach
and thinking that this great fish needs water, start pouring
water into its blowhole, which can drown the whale. Oh no, yeah,
So you know there are cases where not knowing what's
going on, even is a non biologist, it can lead
to something like this. So don't go pouring water into blowholes.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
Certainly not but okay, I think we can mostly close
the book on the idea of the water jet. It's
not a water jet. But returning to c fables explained
by Henry Lee. Lee also briefly addresses a strange claim
in the same chapter of Mobi Dick that caught our
attention and we wanted to investigate further and to refresh you.
We mentioned this in the last episode, but this is
(22:28):
the allegation made by Ishmael that the whale spout is poisonous,
a claim that seemed prima fasse unlikely to both of us.
But to read again from Mobi Dick, just so you'll
know what he's saying. He says that for even when
coming into slight contact with the outer vapory shreds of
(22:49):
the jet, which will often happen, your skin will feverishly
smart from the acridness of the thing so touching it.
And I know one who coming into still closer contact
with the spout, whether with some scientific object in view
or otherwise, I cannot say, the skin peeled off from
his cheek and arm. Wherefore, among whalemen the spout is
(23:11):
deemed poisonous, they try to evade it. Another thing I
have heard it said, and I do not much doubt it,
that if the jet is fairly spouted into your eyes,
it will blind you. The wisest thing the investigator can do, then,
it seems to me is to let this deadly spout alone.
So that's a number of strange claims. He says, Okay,
(23:32):
I've got a friend who got some whale blow on
him and that made his skin peel off. Whaleman generally
say that the blow that comes out of the spout
is poisonous and if you get it in your eyes,
it will make you blind.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
So Lee doesn't spend a lot of time with this.
He mentions it. He doesn't really have much to add,
but he kind of dismisses it out of hand, and
also throws in there that Herman Melville is quote not
a naturalist, and he doesn't seem to have much to
add beyond that, aside from mentioning an account from a
(24:06):
steamship whaler. He writes, quote, he believes that the blast
was strong enough to blow a man off the spiracle
if he were seated on it. Now, I don't know. Okay,
that also feels kind of like a tall tail, but
maybe a more believable. It's not saying that it will
blow your skin off and blind you, but he's just saying, well,
(24:27):
it's pretty explosive if you were seated right on it.
I bet it would blast you into the air. I
think it definitely would make you move so on just
strong enough to blow a man off the spiracle. I
believe he would not remain on the spiracle if you
were somehow balanced there for the spout.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
Right, So it might knock you off, but it would not,
as often depicted in cartoons and illustrations, create a jet
that then leaves you floating in the air above it.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
Yeah. Yeah. And the idea of it being used as
an offensive blast against ships, yeah, that's pure fantasy. One
thing I did find interestingly he doesn't go into this,
but he mentions that this being an account from a
steamship whaler, And I can't help but wonder about during
the age of steam power, if there's not some level
(25:13):
of technological comparison going on in one's mind where steam
comes out at the top of a ship. Steam, of course,
is very hot and can damage you and burn the
skin off of your body, things like that, And so
if there's some sort of like comparison that gets made
between the ship and the whale, which of course is large,
(25:35):
travels in the water and also emits these blasts that
don't look unlike steam like maybe it's the kind of
thing where there's just kind of like a sub conscious
comparison being made.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
That's interesting. I never thought about that, but that does
seem plausible. So I did my own digging around for
answers on the question of the supposedly poisonous whale spout,
and like you, Rob, I found no support whatsoever or
for the claim that the blow from the blowhole is poisonous,
meaning that it contains a chemical toxin or venom with
(26:09):
directly injurious effects on nearby mammals through either topical contact
or ingestion. I found nothing on that. In fact, I
didn't even find that many references to this passage in
Moby Dick, which I was surprised by. I thought I
would come across more. I don't know scientific sources referencing it,
even if only to contradict it or maybe try to
(26:29):
get at the source of this belief. But it just
doesn't seem like this this idea gets a lot of stick.
One example of the kind of reference I found was
in not even really a scientific book, just a sort
of book on grey whales called Grey Whales Wandering Giants
by Robert Bush from nineteen ninety eight, which mentions the
(26:50):
claim in Moby Dick that the spout is poisonous, only
to say that it's not poisonous at all, but that
sometimes it does have a very powerful smell, and the
author quotes John Steinbeck from a work called The Log
from the Sea of Cortes. In Steinbeck wrote, a whale's
breath is frightfully sickening. It smells of complete decay. The
(27:13):
author here Bush says, I don't know, It's never really
smelled that way to me.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
Yeah, I was in a position to smell a lot
of gray whale breath and I don't know. I mean,
there is a breathiness to it, I guess at times,
but yeah, I wouldn't say it stinks. Now. One thing
to keep in mind, though, is like these are organisms.
The blowhole is, you know, a breathing orifice. So I
have read that you do have situations where you can
have a sick whale, So that could impact what you're smelling.
(27:41):
I suppose that.
Speaker 2 (27:42):
Yeah, and Bush says the same thing. Maybe when it
maybe it's breath smells worse when it is diseased or
wounded or something. So beyond this, I was just I
was like Okay, I'm going to expand my circle of
interest here. I was looking to find any evidence of
any mammal or any animal for that matter, that is
believed to have poisonous or venomous breath, and I really
(28:05):
could not find anything that fits the description. Despite the
popularity of creatures with toxic breath in Dungeons and Dragons
in video games. It's a good area of effect type attack,
but I couldn't find really any evidence of this in reality.
Maybe there is such a thing and I just wasn't
searching the right way. But the closest stuff I could
find is what we're all more familiar with, like animals
(28:27):
that might spit venom or something, but not having toxic breath.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
Yeah. About the only thing that really comes to my
mind is vultures, say vomiting, which there are a few
different interpretations of that behavior, but it's not quite a
Dungeons and Dragons area of a fact attack.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
And still that would be vomit from the digestive system,
not toxic breath.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
Right right, not toxic gas emitted from the mouth.
Speaker 2 (28:52):
So is this claim in MOBI to just completely made up?
Maybe Melville just made it up to make you know,
just for interesting fictional effect, or maybe it was something
he heard he heard from people that was an actual
belief among whalers, but they just made it up. Well maybe,
but then again maybe not. While I think it's clear
(29:13):
that the exhalation of wales is not poisonous or venomous,
I think this could be a misunderstanding of something that
does seem true, which is that I found evidence that
sometimes after certain types of contact with marine mammals, including whales,
people do report reactions. In fact, this is a great
(29:35):
bit of listener male. We heard from a listener after
part one of this series who has a bit of
relevant personal experience. So Rob, I'm going to read Tabitha's
email here, all right. Tabitha says, dear Robert and Joe,
regarding the consequences of getting a face full of blowhole ejecta.
I have a family experience. As a child, I went
(29:58):
on a dolphin watch boat trip. When dolphins started swimming
alongside the boat and playing in the bow waves, my
sister and I were allowed to lie on the deck
and stick our heads out under the railing to watch them.
It was the nineties. One dolphin surfaced and exhaled directly
into my sister's face from close range. Initially she was fine,
(30:20):
if a bit slimy and embarrassed. Later that day, however,
her eyes turned red, weepy, and swelled almost shut. I
don't really remember the aftermath except for thinking it was hilarious,
but as far as I recall, it got better in
a day or so, suggesting an allergic reaction rather than
bacterial infection. So maybe a certain number of people are
(30:43):
just really allergic to cetaceans. Maybe a lot of people,
but we don't have the opportunity to find out very often.
I can imagine a whaling crew having one case of
whalesnot face rash, and the story spreading until it reaches
the flesh dissolving, eye melting tall tail stage. Love the
show as always, Tabitha, well fascinating, and thank you so
(31:03):
much for sharing this, Tabitha, So I totally agree that
it is not hard to imagine some nineteenth century whalers
could observe experiences like this and conclude, incorrectly from it
that the whale spout is toxic, is venomous or poisonous,
like the venom of a spitting cobra or something. But
(31:24):
I was wondering more about the mechanism, what is actually
going on here? Now, I honestly could not find much
of anything documenting what we're directly classified as allergic reactions
to cetacean blow. But I did find a very interesting
source documenting similar reactions in the context of human zoonotic
(31:47):
diseases from marine mammal vectors. Now, this is something I
really had never thought about before we did this series.
Of course, when you think about zoonotic diseases, you think
about bats, You think about livestock animals, you know, maybe pigs, birds,
and so forth. I had never thought of the idea
that humans could catch diseases from whales, seals, dolphins, and
(32:12):
so forth.
Speaker 1 (32:13):
Yeah, yeah, I mean neither.
Speaker 2 (32:14):
But now allow me to introduce you to the paper
health Risks for Marine Mammal Workers, published in the journal
Diseases of Aquatic Organisms the year two thousand and eight
by Tanya Hunt at All. This is a paper where
the authors say, there have been, you know, isolated, documented
cases of humans acquiring zoonotic diseases from marine mammals. There
(32:35):
are certain diseases that are well known and even have
interesting little names, such as seal finger. If you want
to be grossed out. You can look up images of
seal finger. But they wanted to design a survey to
get a broader range of responses. So they wanted to
survey professionals and volunteers who regularly work directly with marine
(32:58):
mammals to see how common very types of injuries and
work related illnesses were in people who have contact with
these animals. So what did they find to read from
their abstract? First of all, they characterized the people who
responded to the survey. Most respondents eighty eight percent were
researchers and rehabilitators. And then they say, quote, of all respondents,
(33:22):
fifty percent reported suffering an injury caused by a marine
mammal and twenty three percent reported having a skin rash
or reaction. Marine mammal Work related illnesses commonly reported included
seal finger, which is now known to be traceable to
a bacterium called Mycoplasma conjunctivitis. That's very interesting because that
(33:49):
conjunctividis is irritation and swelling of the eyes. That of
course connects to Tabitha's story, but also connects to the
idea that getting whale blow in your face could make
you blind but to go on viral dermatitis, bacterial dermatitis,
and non specific contact dermatitis. This is rash or irritation
(34:09):
of the skin, although specific diagnoses could not be confirmed
by a physician. Through the study, severe illnesses were reported
and included tuberculosis, leptospirosis, brucellosis, and serious sequeli to seal finger.
Risk factors associated with increased odds of injury and illness
included prolonged and frequent exposure to marine mammals, direct contact
(34:33):
with live marine mammals, and contact with tissue, blood and excretions.
And I was looking at another paper tracking marine mammals
zunoses in humans. This was by waltzik at All in
Zunocees and Public Health from twenty twelve and it also
tried to collect all of the literature on zoonotic infections
(34:56):
from marine mammals and humans and it concluded that the
most common type of zoonotic reaction to marine mammals was
localized skin infections in humans, which again makes you think
about the discussion about like peeling skin and skin reactions
that Melville mentions. So those are human diseases that have
(35:19):
been tentatively linked at least circumstantially to contact with marine mammals.
But we need to introduce some caveats. Number one. This
includes a wide range of different marine mammals, so not
just whales, but all kinds of marine mammals, and a
wide range of different types of contact, including touching of skin, bites,
(35:39):
contact with blood and inner organs, etc. Not just exposure
to say, mucus and droplets from the blowhole of whales.
So what if we were to come at this question
from the other direction and ask what is in whales?
Not specifically when a whale breathes out, there's got to
be plenty of bacteria and stuff in there. Has anybody
ever documented what microbes are present in the blow of
(36:02):
a whale and whether that list contains anything that could
cause skin or eye infections or otherwise create the impression,
even the false impression that the spout is poisonous or venomous. Yes,
there have in fact been investigations microbiological investigations of whale blow.
The first one I wanted to mention was a paper
(36:22):
from twenty seventeen. This was published in m Systems two,
which is an American Society for Microbiology journal. It's by
amy April at all, and it's called extensive core microbiome
in drone captured whale blow supports a framework for health monitoring.
This study was interesting because it used a drone to
(36:43):
fly above the water surface and collect blow from two
populations of healthy humpback whales, one Pacific group off of
Vancouver Island and an Atlantic group off of Cape Cod
And I was thinking, wow, that's a good use for drones. Yeah,
So they took these samples, but then they compared the
microbes present in them to what was present in just
(37:05):
samples of straight seawater from around because obviously some seawater
gets in with the blow, so you're looking to see
what's in the blow that's not just in seawater. And
the author's right quote. The blow microbiomes were distinct from
the seawater microbiomes and included twenty five phylogenetically diverse bacteria
common to all sampled whales. This core assemblage comprised on
(37:26):
average thirty six percent of the microbiome, making it one
of the more consistent animal microbiomes studied to date. The
closest phylogenetic relatives of twenty of these core microbes were
previously detected in marine mammals, suggesting that this core microbiome
assemblage is specialized for marine mammals and may indicate a healthy,
non infected pulmonary system. So that's interesting. These two geographically
(37:51):
distinct populations of healthy humpback whales from different oceans share
a common baseline of non pathogenic bacterial species. Of course,
the fact that a bacterium is not pathogenic in its
normal whale host doesn't necessarily tell you how it will
behave when sprayed onto the skin or into the eyes
of a human being. But then, the other study I
(38:14):
wanted to mention is one that was published in Nature
Scientific Reports by Raverty at All in twenty seventeen, called
Respiratory microbiome of endangered Southern resident killer Whales and Microbiota
of surrounding sea surface micro layer in the Eastern North Pacific. So,
to summarize from a news report on this article I
(38:37):
was reading from the University of British Columbia. Stephen Raverty,
he was the lead author on the study, is a
professor or an adjunct professor at University of British Columbia's
Institute for the Oceans and fisheries, and this study was
looking at the microbiome of endangered southern resident killer whales
in what's known as the Salish Sea. It's the sea
(38:58):
around I think to the inside of Vancouver Island. It's
the sea around that stretch throughout British Columbia and Washington State.
And this study was focused on the health of orcas,
not on humans, so this was not studying human diseases.
But it did find that the breath of these killer whales,
when sampled droplets from that blow, contained all kinds of
(39:20):
bacteria and fungi that are known to cause disease in humans,
so bacteria like salmonella, like Staphylococcus aureus, and then fungi
like penicillium and foma. And it's not clear that these
common bacteria that could also cause disease in humans would
be present in the breath of all whales. It's also
(39:41):
not clear that they have always been present, even in
these killer whales, because there's a possibility that these are
sort of recently introduced microbia loads that are a result
of human activity. We don't know, but it's a possibility.
Giving a quote to this news article, the lead author
Raverty says, quote, we're not sure if these mic robes
naturally occur in the marine environment or if they may
(40:03):
be terrestrially sourced. These animals are long ranging as they
migrate along the coast, and they are exposed to agricultural
runoff and urban discharge which may introduce a variety of
microbes into the water. So ultimately, in this case, we
don't know for sure, Like we can't take a sample
of what, you know, whalers might have been getting blown
(40:25):
in their faces from sperm whales or whales in general
in the nineteenth century. But here at least there are
cases today of whales that are ejecting breath from their
lungs that contains droplets of mucus with bacteria that we
know do cause disease in humans. Whether that is sort
of a recent loading onto these whales or whether that
(40:47):
would have been present a long time ago, we can't
say for sure. But if you combine this with the
other observations that people, you know, people who work directly
with marine mammals report a lot of sort of skin
infections conjunctividis and things like that, it does not seem
implausible to me that this story about the whale blow
being poisonous could emerge from different types of infections people
(41:12):
get after getting whale mucus or other types of whale
body fluids on their skin or in their eyes.
Speaker 1 (41:20):
Yeah, there are a number of additional considerations to make
based on this information, because, on one hand, just by
the nature of tall tales and sailor lore, how many
times would it need to happen really for the stories
to generate, You know, just one incident of somebody really
swelling up after being exposed to whale blow might be enough.
(41:41):
At On top of that, if there are myths and
legends pre existing that to tie into some of this,
those could add to the energy of these tails and
could even in their origin be partially inspired by such experiences.
And then I think the other thing to keep in
mind is that the whalers you're just talking about, all
the different things that one might have reactions to have
(42:04):
exposed to, including like blood and organs, Like the whaler
was not just out there to to see the whale,
not just out there to experience the whale. They were
out there to kill and butcher the whales. So it
seems entirely likely that yeah, if you're gonna have an
allergic reaction to one aspect of the whales anatomy. There
(42:25):
are going to be multiple additional opportunities to be infected
by blood, viscera, et cetera.
Speaker 2 (42:31):
I absolutely agree with all that. So yeah, I can't
say for sure, but my best guess is if this
is not just a made up story, if there are
if there were actually folk tales among whalers that the
spout was poisonous, it probably came from people getting some
kind of infection after being around whales.
Speaker 1 (42:58):
Now I have I have a few other things for
us to take into this first one kind of ties
into several different things we've discussed because it definitely concerns whaling,
It concerns the idea of a liquid spout, and it
also concerns exposure of the whaler to various parts of
the whales anatomy. So this concerns the red spout. In
(43:23):
the book Red Leviat and the Secret History of Soviet Whaling,
author and previous guest on the show, Ryan Tucker Jones
discusses the destruction wrought by the Soviet industrial whaling industry,
and in this one particular case, the Soviet industrial whaling harpoons.
So these were not like the harpoons of the classical
age of whaling as depicted in Moby Dick. We're talking
(43:45):
about things that are fired, and in this case grenade
tipped so that they explode upon hitting the whale and
impacting the whale. He points out that the ideal first hit,
ideal for the whalers, of course, not the whale, would
be for one of these to go off near the
whale's vital organs. Wherever it hit, blood would pour into
(44:07):
the cavity and the brain would eventually succumb. But if
the lungs were punctured, quote, blood would soon fountain out
the blowhole. This was termed by the Soviet whalers a
red spout, and the whale would drown in its own fluids.
And he goes into a great deal more detail about
all of this, but suffice to say like two to
six harpoons were often required to kill the whale. So
(44:33):
worth keeping this in mind. I think and thinking about
all of this, and also it brings to mind an
account that I was reading regarding a mythic monstrous whale.
So we have the word cetacean, you know, referring to
our whales. This I've read is connected to the name
(44:54):
of the of the sea monster in Greek mythology Ketos
or ctoss, and this leave by some, at least in
some tellings, to be based on or interpreted as a whale.
In Menilius's Monster by K. M. Coleman from nineteen eighty three,
the author points to whale like qualities of spouting in
the writings of first century Roman poet Manilius. Ovid, however,
(45:19):
doesn't write of spouting with these with this creature, but
of vomiting bloody water. So the author of this paper, Coleman,
contends that Manilius was possibly incorporating observational or even for
the time natural insight into his treatment of the myth.
But I also think this depiction that Ovid gives of
(45:39):
the spouting of bloody water this also brings to mind.
I mean this, I can't help but compare it to
this idea of the red spout, and wonder if it
might be connected to some you know, ancient world older
accounts of harpooning a whale, piercing the lung and observing
this reaction.
Speaker 2 (45:57):
Wow, but now I'm picturing this. So the key toss
or the sea monster that is here being interpreted as
a whale, I think was the monster in the Perseus
and Andromeda story. So like when when Cassiopeia offers up
Andromeda as a sacrifice to the sea monster, we should
maybe picture at not like a big scaly man thing
(46:20):
coming out of the water track see and Clash of
the Titans, but instead a whale vomiting bloody water.
Speaker 1 (46:26):
Yeah, yeah, and you know this idea of the vomiting whale.
He goes. There's some other accounts of this as well,
because I was poking around looking for just any other
interesting like whale spout myths that connected into what we're
talking about here. And there are various myths about whales
being you know, monsters or gods and so forth, but
(46:47):
not all of them are necessarily insightful concerning the spout
or the blowhole. But I happened to cross something in
Irish traditions that I can't help but wonder if this
is something that ended up helping in warm sailor's lore,
especially as discussed in Moby Dick. I found this initially
in an eighteen ninety nine publication Notes and Folklore from
(47:10):
the Renez copy of The Dencentez by TJ. Westrop, published
in the Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland,
The Dencentez. This is the tales of the Tales of
the Duns, the lore of Places. It's a class of
texts from early Irish literature, and these were apparently added
(47:31):
to by various writers up until the eleventh or twelfth centuries.
So here's a quote from this particular author. Quote. A
very dangerous monster, the rose Sualt is also described, which
spouts at muhrisk in Mayo and a pestilence ensues. This
is stated of the whale in other ancient works. When
(47:55):
the whale spouts upwards, flying creatures die. When downward it
kills the fish and win at the land, a plague ensues. WHOA,
So this is the idea of a whale shooting birds
out of the air with its poisonous spout, and occasionally,
you know, coming close to the shore and being a
(48:15):
bringer of plagues, vomiting up plague upon the shore and
letting that plague or like roll across the countryside as
a vapor, a bringer of miasthma.
Speaker 2 (48:25):
Okay I was confused about the timeline for a second.
But okay, so this is an eighteen ninety nine publication,
but it is discussing these earlier like medieval Irish texts.
Speaker 1 (48:36):
Correct. Yes, and for there's a little background. Marisk is
in fact a village in County Mayo in Ireland, and
also according to a different text in eighteen ninety two text,
I was looking at this roast salt, and I apologize
that I'm butchering. This was sometimes understood as a sea animal,
and I think sometimes translated as a walrus. Not that
(48:58):
we should necessarily think of it as a walrus, but
you know, sometimes there's a shift in what these terms
are referring to over time. So since we had a
sea monster here, especially one of European origin, I turned,
as I always do, to the books of Carol Rose.
She has these wonderful pair of encyclopedias, one dealing with
monsters and giants and other one dealing with fairies and leprechauns.
(49:19):
And there's some crossover between the books, but they're both great.
So I looked it up. And Rose has a little
more insight on the re salt, which she says is
an alternate name for the moorisk, a monster fish of
Irish tradition. She writes that it was said to inhabit
the region of crow og Patrick, and it was super poisonous.
(49:41):
If it vomited in the water, all the sea life
around it would die. The fumes from its mouth would
cause dead birds to fall out of the sky, and
it could breathe on a coastal region and bring disease.
Speaker 2 (49:52):
Okay, that sort of matches what we were reading a
minute ago, right right, yeah, yeah, at the coast, it
brings the pestilens. It kills the birds if it shoots up,
and it kills the fish if it shoots down, right.
Speaker 1 (50:03):
And I also found another source referring to this. This
is from P. W. Joyce in nineteen oh six is
a smaller social history of Ancient Ireland, and this author
added basically says the same thing, but added that it
was quote able to vomit in three different ways three
years in succession. He adds that the vomiting into the
(50:24):
water also wrecked ships, and when it vomited towards the
land in the third year, hit the whale caused quote
a pestilential vapor to creep over the country that killed
men and four footed animals.
Speaker 2 (50:38):
No not the four footed animals.
Speaker 1 (50:40):
The four footed animals are just at the forefront of
strange death. I mean, this is how many times are
we going to in this year last have we talked
about strange reasons that four legged animals are dying? And
in the British Isles.
Speaker 2 (50:55):
We never considered this as an explanation for the cattle
mutilation panic. What if it was actually a risk?
Speaker 1 (51:03):
Yeah? Yeah, what if a whale vomited? So this is
this is all interesting Again. I don't think that I
think potentially one has to, you know, take into account
these these myths and legends about poisonous vomit coming out
of these whales or whale like creatures. These also first
hand accounts of potentially getting some sort of an infection
(51:25):
after contact with a whale spout or whale blood, et cetera.
But I also can't help but wonder if there's some connection,
particularly between this story and perhaps encounters with beached and
dead whales, where there's of course decomposition going on, and
therefore there's going to be a very strong, awful odor,
the kind of odor that we would, you know, we
(51:47):
would associate with with illness. Perhaps, so I wonder I
wonder if there's any connective tissue there as well.
Speaker 2 (51:55):
Well, Rob, I think this has been a mighty fun
and interesting exploration. Even though we didn't get a definitive
answer on the poisonous whales thing, I think what we
did find out has been enlightening. And as Melville would say,
through all the thick mists and the dim doubts, you know,
the divine intuitions now and then shoot, so our fog
has been enkindled with the heavenly ray.
Speaker 1 (52:16):
Oh very nice. All right, we're gonna go ahead and
close it out then, But yeah, we'd love to hear
from everyone out there if you have additional insight, experience, etc.
Just general thoughts and what we've talked about in this
pair of episodes or our previous episodes on gray whales
in particular. Right in we'd love to hear from you.
Just a reminder that's stuffed able. Your Mind is primarily
a science podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays,
(52:39):
but on Mondays we do listener mail. On Wednesdays we
do a short form artifact or monster fact episode, and
then on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to
just talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 2 (52:50):
Huge thanks to our audio producer JJ Posway. If you
would like to get in touch with us with feedback
on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic
for the future, or just to say hello, you can
email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind
dot com.
Speaker 3 (53:11):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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