Latest / NaturallyScott / E82 Sy Montgomery – Giant Manta Rays: Saving the Angels of the Sea 🌊

Transcript

E82 Sy Montgomery – Giant Manta Rays: Saving the Angels of the Sea 🌊 · NaturallyScott

0:00
SPEAKER_02: Hello and welcome to this edition of Naturally Scott.
0:02
SPEAKER_02: I'm your host, Scott Harris, and sitting next to me, well, across the country, but next to me visually, is one of my absolute favorite guests.
0:11
SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna go ahead and start with a confession before I introduce her, which is I have a crush on this woman.
0:18
SPEAKER_02: Um, we got to meet about a year, year and a half ago.
0:22
SPEAKER_02: We worked on, I don't know, three or four different projects together, a number of podcasts.
0:27
SPEAKER_02: I'm just infatuated.
0:28
SPEAKER_02: I love her mind, I love the way she thinks, I love the way she feels, and um, I am thrilled to have Cy Montgomery back as a guest today on this show.
0:38
SPEAKER_02: Cy, welcome.
0:40
SPEAKER_02: Well, a thrill is mutual scot.
0:43
SPEAKER_02: Well, Cy is a multiple New York Times best-selling authors.
0:48
SPEAKER_02: She writes fascinating books.
0:50
SPEAKER_02: Um, I was just writing a chapter about her for another book that I'm doing called Why We Love Mammals.
0:57
SPEAKER_02: And one of the things I talked about was Psy, more than anybody else I've met on this journey with naturalists and biologists, and authors, and writers, and musicians, is psi is focused on individuals and not species.
1:13
SPEAKER_02: Um, it is not that other people don't care about individuals, but that is the way psi's mind works.
1:18
SPEAKER_02: I used the phrase psi thinks small, and I quickly had to identify that as not a negative.
1:24
SPEAKER_02: It is a huge positive.
1:26
SPEAKER_02: When I ask other people, let's say, what their favorite mammal is killer whale or lynx or squirrels or whatever it is, Psy drops her camera down and shows me your dog Thurber.
1:36
SPEAKER_02: And so many of her books are the same way.
1:40
SPEAKER_02: They're based on a single animal, a parrot, for example.
1:45
SPEAKER_02: Um and I'm excited to introduce you to this book, uh, which is, and I want to make sure I get the title right Oceanic Manta Adventure: Saving the Angels of the Sea.
1:58
SPEAKER_02: So this is her new book.
1:59
SPEAKER_02: It just came out last week, and I am thrilled about this.
2:04
SPEAKER_02: Um, photography is by Patrick Joyce.
2:06
SPEAKER_02: We're going to talk about the Joyces, Patrick Ad before this is over.
2:10
SPEAKER_02: And we're obviously going to cover this book.
2:11
SPEAKER_02: That's what the focus of the podcast is.
2:13
SPEAKER_02: But Cy, I have to ask you, how do you pick your subjects?
2:19
SPEAKER_02: Where do you wake up and say, you know what?
2:21
SPEAKER_02: I want to write a book about Mantas in Ecuador.
2:25
SPEAKER_02: Um, how does that happen?
2:27
SPEAKER_02: What is the process?
2:31
SPEAKER_00: Well, it's different for it's different for each book.
2:34
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I have um a book in mind for many years and I'm just waiting for the right moment.
2:40
SPEAKER_00: That was the case with Soul of an Octopus.
2:44
SPEAKER_00: Um with this book, it actually began also at New England Aquarium.
2:50
SPEAKER_00: Um I I learned, I didn't even know these things existed.
2:55
SPEAKER_00: Giant oceanic manta rays.
2:57
SPEAKER_00: I knew about manta rays, and many of us know about rays as a group of fish.
3:02
SPEAKER_00: There's hundreds of these cartilaginous relatives of sharks who have these angel-like wings.
3:11
SPEAKER_00: They fly through the water like birds through the trees.
3:16
SPEAKER_00: In fact, they make birds look look almost clumsy because birds are constrained by bones, but they are not.
3:23
SPEAKER_00: Um, but the largest of them all, and the most mysterious of them all, are these oceanic manta rays.
3:31
SPEAKER_00: So little is known about them, that always intrigues me.
3:35
SPEAKER_00: And in the course of our interest in these animals, we discovered this man, Michelle Guerrero, an Ecuadorian, who found the largest aggregation of these animals on the face of the earth, fairly recently, too.
3:56
SPEAKER_00: And it's off this little island off the coast of Ecuador, Isla de la Plata.
4:02
SPEAKER_00: And of course, this gave me a chance to use my scuba skills, which I I don't use for, I mean, we don't, my husband and I don't go on vacation, he doesn't dive.
4:14
SPEAKER_00: Um, the only time I ever get to scuba dive is for work.
4:19
SPEAKER_00: And you got certified about 10 years ago?
4:22
SPEAKER_00: I I learned uh 20 maybe 12.
4:27
SPEAKER_00: Um, I learned so that I could meet octopuses in the wild ocean when I was working on soul of an octopus, which so I learned in my 50s.
4:37
SPEAKER_00: And I I'm not a great scoot.
4:39
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I I'm not very experienced, and I'm also, you know, not any kind of an athlete or anything.
4:47
SPEAKER_00: But I was going to join a team of very experienced divers, and it it's almost like a technical dive.
4:55
SPEAKER_00: This dive, Scott, was the series of dives with the toughest dives I'd ever done.
5:02
SPEAKER_00: It it was quite deep.
5:04
SPEAKER_00: We went to as as the furthest I've ever gone as 110 feet.
5:08
SPEAKER_00: Um it's pretty deep.
5:12
SPEAKER_00: Um, but that that's not what made it so hard.
5:15
SPEAKER_00: What made it hard was the very thing that attracts the mantis to this site.
5:21
SPEAKER_00: They they're following the humbled current, this cold, swift, plankton-filled current that comes up from Antarctica.
5:31
SPEAKER_00: And this is what makes it a hard dive.
5:34
SPEAKER_00: A swift current is difficult to navigate.
5:38
SPEAKER_00: Cold means you have to wear more neoprene, which makes you more floaty, which means you have to wear more weight.
5:44
SPEAKER_00: And I had over 30 pounds of just weight on me, and that doesn't count the the weight that you have in your in your um air tank, for example.
5:53
SPEAKER_00: And I only weigh like a 115 pounds.
5:56
SPEAKER_00: So this was a lot of a lot of weight for me.
5:59
SPEAKER_00: Um, but the current itself, you're like in a fire hose, and we had to cling on to rocks with our fingertips to avoid being swept away.
6:10
SPEAKER_00: And so you're in this like cold, swift current that's also very, it's very hard to see because it's full of plankton, which is the manta's food.
6:20
SPEAKER_00: So it has everything a manta could possibly want, but it's a nightmare for trying to get photographs.
6:26
SPEAKER_00: And for a scuba diver who's not very experienced, it's very difficult to do.
6:33
SPEAKER_02: You didn't feel as as fluid and elegant as the rays that you described.
6:39
SPEAKER_02: Far from it.
6:40
SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh.
6:41
SPEAKER_00: It's so funny.
6:42
SPEAKER_00: You know, when you put on all this scuba gear, there's a ton of stuff you you have to put on.
6:47
SPEAKER_00: You have to put it on right too.
6:48
SPEAKER_00: You have to attach all the hoses and everything, or else, you know, you could die.
6:52
SPEAKER_00: So it's really important.
6:54
SPEAKER_00: But a lot of it's super heavy, and you feel and you've got these giant fins like clown, clown shoes, and you feel like this shambling monster, and you're just staggering under the weight to the edge of the boat, and then you do this backflip into the ocean, and you just you just feel like everything is a pratfall.
7:14
SPEAKER_00: But the minute you're embraced by the ocean, you are blessed with a kind of liquid grace.
7:23
SPEAKER_00: And to be in the element of these gorgeous fish who live a long time, they can live 70 years, they know stuff, and their wingspan is enormous.
7:36
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we met animals whose wingspan was like 18 feet, they can even get bigger than that, they can weigh tons.
7:43
SPEAKER_00: These are huge animals.
7:45
SPEAKER_00: So you're clinging onto the rocks underwater, and often the visibility is so bad that you can only see your dive buddy right next to you.
7:56
SPEAKER_00: You can't really see very far away.
7:59
SPEAKER_00: And you're looking, looking, looking, and then from the edges of your vision, this enormous dark thing that seems to gather itself from the ocean and it comes swooping towards you almost like an alien spacecraft about to land.
8:17
SPEAKER_00: And you look up and the spaceship has eyes and they look into your face.
8:26
SPEAKER_00: And this changes your life forever to be looked at by one of these mysterious, elegant, thoughtful, cognizant, beautiful creatures.
8:40
SPEAKER_00: Just to have them bless you with their glance, and then to watch them circle above you over and over.
8:49
SPEAKER_00: They're just as curious about you as you are about them.
8:54
SPEAKER_00: And this is something that I found was true with octopuses, and one of the things that made me fall in love with them was that curiosity was just so evident and yet familiar and alien at the same time.
9:11
SPEAKER_02: In a very small way, we have we have shared that.
9:15
SPEAKER_02: Um I got certified back in 72.
9:19
SPEAKER_02: So I dove for a little bit.
9:20
SPEAKER_00: Wow, you're real experienced, Scott.
9:23
SPEAKER_02: Well, yeah, we as a matter of fact, I got certified.
9:26
SPEAKER_02: The gentleman who produces this show, Frank Sierra, um, we got certified together in 1972 and dove together for decades.
9:34
SPEAKER_02: And there was one night where I was out, and please don't send me notes about how bad this is because I know that you're not supposed to dive alone.
9:41
SPEAKER_02: Um but I went night diving off the coast of Malibu by myself, and I went out nowhere near the 110 feet you were.
9:48
SPEAKER_02: I was maybe 40 or 50 feet, and I dropped down to the bottom.
9:51
SPEAKER_02: And what I like to do was shut off all my lights, and then I would bring like peas and let them float and attract fish.
9:57
SPEAKER_02: And I would do this on the full moon night, and the light would filter down, and it was just it was unbelievable.
10:03
SPEAKER_02: It was it's still magic now, 50 years later.
10:07
SPEAKER_02: But one night, a bat ray, which is only a third the size of your oceanic mantis, uh, about a six-foot wingspan.
10:15
SPEAKER_02: But nonetheless, this bat ray came and came right up to me, actually physically touched me, and was probably with me for it, it it felt like 10 seconds or 10 hours, but it was probably 10 minutes that it was there.
10:30
SPEAKER_02: And as you said, it kind of circled and it seemed curious.
10:33
SPEAKER_02: And I get anthropomorphism.
10:35
SPEAKER_02: I don't care, I don't believe in it.
10:36
SPEAKER_02: I think they do have emotions and feelings.
10:39
SPEAKER_02: And so I've I've not done it in Ecuador, and I've not done it with these massive, massive manners you have, but at a very small level, I play little league compared to your major leagues.
10:49
SPEAKER_00: Not true.
10:49
SPEAKER_00: Goodness.
10:51
SPEAKER_00: You're such an experienced dog.
10:52
SPEAKER_00: We should dive together sometimes.
10:54
SPEAKER_00: I would love that.
10:54
SPEAKER_00: You've got to find a project.
10:56
SPEAKER_02: I would love that.
10:56
SPEAKER_02: You picked the project and I'm there.
10:59
SPEAKER_02: Um, but it is there is some, you're right, there is something about it.
11:03
SPEAKER_02: I've always been attracted to eyes.
11:04
SPEAKER_02: My photography is based on mammal and raptor eyes, and especially marine mammals.
11:10
SPEAKER_02: That's what draws me.
11:11
SPEAKER_02: And so when I'm reading your book and you're talking about the eyes and how they reach into your soul and and how these mantis have a soul, I mean, I just I felt like, okay, she's writing the book for me.
11:23
SPEAKER_02: This is a book.
11:24
SPEAKER_02: Uh Cy just wrote me a long, long email um about this.
11:28
SPEAKER_02: That's how it felt.
11:29
SPEAKER_02: And and to hear you describe it, what an amazing thing.
11:34
SPEAKER_02: And there's a large collection of them, right?
11:37
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
11:38
SPEAKER_00: Um, there were times, there were several of them around us.
11:41
SPEAKER_00: This is the largest, the largest aggregation anywhere that anyone has ever discovered.
11:46
SPEAKER_00: So Michelle Guerrera's discovery is super important because normally they're sparsely distributed throughout the world's oceans, except for the very coldest oceans.
11:56
SPEAKER_00: So this gives an opportunity to see these rare animals who that we know their pop, we don't know how many there are, but we do know their populations are crashing due to a number of things.
12:08
SPEAKER_00: But one of them is overfishing for their gill rakers, uh, which in uh traditional Chinese medicine is believed wrongly, in complete error that's supposed to give you strength that does not, it just makes you into an evil character who is killing off these gorgeous creatures.
12:27
SPEAKER_00: Um, if anything, it should sap your strength and send you straight down where it's way too hot.
12:33
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, but they they people don't know any better, and that's one reason why we need to share the word.
12:40
SPEAKER_00: But this this aggregation is super important because it gives researchers an amazing opportunity to study them, to tag them, to see where they go.
12:52
SPEAKER_00: And Michelle and his uh team, he had a uh two Costa Rican uh researchers, Carolina and Jeffrey, um, from they have their own manta uh uh charity down in Costa Rica where they study them.
13:11
SPEAKER_00: But for them to be able to come to this special area where you're gonna see more mantas than anywhere else in the world was just a fabulous, fabulous thing.
13:20
SPEAKER_00: And so for those who study the giant manta, Nichelle's discovery is a complete game changer.
13:28
SPEAKER_02: And as I imagine your book will be, because it's going to be popular.
13:33
SPEAKER_00: If I can help him, if I can help him, if I can help the mantas, and goodness, you know, I mean, writing about them was a real blessing for me.
13:43
SPEAKER_00: It really felt like it really felt like a a holy encounter to be with them.
13:52
SPEAKER_02: You used a phrase in your book, and I want to make sure I get this right.
13:56
SPEAKER_02: You said that when you look into their eyes, you get a sense of soul.
14:00
SPEAKER_02: Tell me.
14:01
SPEAKER_00: That was actually, I think, Patrick Joyce's quote, the photographer.
14:05
SPEAKER_02: Okay, I may have I may have missed that.
14:08
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, no, no, but that's what I mean.
14:10
SPEAKER_02: Help me understand what that means.
14:12
SPEAKER_02: What what or what do you think Patrick meant?
14:15
SPEAKER_00: Well, I know Patrick is a very experienced diver and underwater photographer.
14:20
SPEAKER_00: He and his wife, Deb, have gone all over the world, and they've actually seen giant manta rays in other seas, but not at this special spot before we went together two years ago.
14:32
SPEAKER_00: Um, so I think what he meant is I think every creature has a soul, but maybe not one so like our own that we recognize a kindred spirit.
14:48
SPEAKER_00: He has seen so many fish and he's he's seen whales.
14:52
SPEAKER_00: He sees the same thing in the eyes of whales, he says.
14:56
SPEAKER_00: But it's kind of a a meeting of the minds that you don't necessarily feel with every creature, which doesn't mean that other creatures are not soulful or that they don't share many of the feelings or ability to have memory that we do.
15:18
SPEAKER_00: But this is so like our own that you recognize it.
15:22
SPEAKER_00: So I think that's what he was saying.
15:24
SPEAKER_00: And it names what I felt too when I was just feeling the glance of this animal.
15:33
SPEAKER_00: There there was, I describe in the book several different encounters that we had.
15:38
SPEAKER_02: A lot of you're welcome to read something if you want.
15:42
SPEAKER_02: Oh, really?
15:43
SPEAKER_02: Oh, great.
15:44
SPEAKER_02: Of course.
15:45
SPEAKER_00: I'd be happy to.
15:46
SPEAKER_00: I'll I'll read from the beginning.
15:48
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
15:49
SPEAKER_00: Um, which is the first contact.
15:50
SPEAKER_00: Would that be okay with you?
15:52
SPEAKER_00: Of course, please.
15:53
SPEAKER_00: All right, great.
15:55
SPEAKER_00: And we'll be sharing some photographs with you.
15:59
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
16:01
SPEAKER_00: Forty-five feet below the ocean surface, we clutch at underwater rocks to avoid being swept away.
16:08
SPEAKER_00: The force of the Humboldt current, the swift, cold, nutrient rich underwater stream that flows north from Antarctica along the west coast of South America, is blasting us like a fire hose.
16:21
SPEAKER_00: Inches from our scuba masts, purple and orange striped starfish cling to the rock with thousands of suction cup toothbeet.
16:30
SPEAKER_00: The faces of blennies, small fish with big eyes, pop from holes, gape at us, then dive back down.
16:39
SPEAKER_00: Bright fishes flash by, streaks of yellow, blue, orange, red, and black, and then disappear into a cloudy haze.
16:49
SPEAKER_00: We can see only a few yards around us, our vision obscured by a blizzard of miniature algae and tiny animals, shrimp like krills shorter than pencil erasers, see-through baby jellyfish jello like salps, and creatures smaller than motes of dust.
17:08
SPEAKER_00: These are the floating plankton that nourish everyone from half-inch anchovies to forty ton humpback whales.
17:16
SPEAKER_00: We are literally immersed in a sea of life.
17:19
SPEAKER_00: The conditions that make scuba diving here so challenging, that the cold, the murk, the current are what draw to these waters some of the most extraordinary creatures on earth.
17:31
SPEAKER_00: Even in our neoprene hoods, gloves, and seven millimeter thick wetsuits, we are starting to get cold.
17:39
SPEAKER_00: Yet we wait.
17:42
SPEAKER_00: I look for a signal from one of the scientists.
17:46
SPEAKER_00: But even though they're only a few dozen yards away, I can't see them through the plankton suit.
17:51
SPEAKER_00: And then above me, to my left, but somehow I feel it before I see it.
17:58
SPEAKER_00: From the edge of my vision, in the liquid fog, a dark shadow gathers itself from the flattened shape of a giant flying carpet.
18:06
SPEAKER_00: It's bigger than our boat is wide.
18:09
SPEAKER_00: It weighs thousands of pounds, and it looks like an alien spacecraft about to make a landing.
18:18
SPEAKER_00: A creature returns and disappears back into the watery mist.
18:24
SPEAKER_00: But a moment later it circles back.
18:26
SPEAKER_00: It flies closer to me this time.
18:30
SPEAKER_00: Close enough for me to observe the strange paddle-like fins in the front of the head.
18:35
SPEAKER_00: They're furled like a towel that you wring dry, but close enough to see the two dark rumoras, hitchhiker fish, attached by their suckers to the creature's bright belly.
18:49
SPEAKER_00: Close enough to see the two tubular structures near the tail called claspers marking him as a male.
18:57
SPEAKER_00: As he passes overhead, I see at the base of his head his big dark eyes.
19:04
SPEAKER_00: And the eye closest to me swivels in its socket.
19:08
SPEAKER_00: Contact with an oceanic manta ray, one of the largest, most mysterious, and most endangered creatures in the ocean.
19:18
SPEAKER_00: Once you meet one, the scientists who know them say, Your life will never be the same.
19:25
SPEAKER_00: And that's how the book opens.
19:27
SPEAKER_02: Brilliantly.
19:29
SPEAKER_02: So for those who are not going to be able to get down to Ecuador anytime soon and be able to swim with these giants, you're going to want to pick up this book, which is Oceanic Manta Adventure, Saving the Angels of the Sea.
19:43
SPEAKER_02: Sai, I just, I so love your love your writing.
19:46
SPEAKER_02: I love reading what you do.
19:48
SPEAKER_02: And it's always inspiring.
20:00
SPEAKER_02: And so it's it's just kind of amazing uh to have this.
20:05
SPEAKER_02: You know, I uh you talked a lot about Michelle in your book, the gentleman who facilitated all of this happening.
20:12
SPEAKER_02: And it was interesting because you mentioned his early interest in the undersea world of Jacques Cousteau.
20:18
SPEAKER_02: And Jacques Cousteau, when I was a young man, was my hero.
20:22
SPEAKER_02: Um I absolutely and he motivated me to uh my original major in college was brain biology.
20:29
SPEAKER_02: He's the reason that I took up scuba diving and all of those things.
20:33
SPEAKER_02: And so I wondered when I was reading your book and I was reading about Michelle and Jacques Cousteau, and I realized the impact he had on my life and the impact on Michelle's life.
20:44
SPEAKER_02: And then I bridge that and I wonder how many lives are you changing with your books?
20:51
SPEAKER_00: Well, right back at you.
20:52
SPEAKER_00: Right back at you.
20:54
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you never know.
20:56
SPEAKER_00: Um with you really don't.
20:59
SPEAKER_00: You have no idea.
21:00
SPEAKER_00: And it could be someone you never hear from, it could be somebody who um becomes a marine biologist themselves, it could be someone who becomes a writer themselves, it could be somebody who does something else, but they make some wonderful donation or they volunteer somewhere.
21:15
SPEAKER_00: You just never know, but you have to keep uttering that prayer.
21:19
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes for many of us who care so much about animals, we wonder if in this era of extinction, if we're doing something that's going to move the needle.
21:31
SPEAKER_00: And I think that you are to see it.
21:34
SPEAKER_02: I think that you are.
21:36
SPEAKER_02: And and you're moving another needle, which is you're doing this as a woman, which wasn't available to a number of women a generation or two behind or ahead of you.
21:47
SPEAKER_00: Um so many women saying, Yeah, I watched Jacques Cousteau, but he was a man.
21:53
SPEAKER_00: Well, I it never occurred to me that uh uh I figure.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: You know, if a if a human can do it, it could be done by me.
22:05
SPEAKER_00: I feel so barely human to start with.
22:09
SPEAKER_00: I can't even conceive of myself as a this sounds really weird, but I I I I think of myself more like one of the animals I'm watching, whatever animal I'm watching, and as a human.
22:26
SPEAKER_00: And only later does it occur to me like, well, I'm a female human.
22:33
SPEAKER_00: Do you know what I mean?
22:34
SPEAKER_00: That sounds so odd.
22:36
SPEAKER_02: I I think it is a I think it's odd in the way that it's different from the way many people view things.
22:44
SPEAKER_02: And I think that it comes across in your writing.
22:48
SPEAKER_02: Your passion and empathy for all things wild comes across.
22:53
SPEAKER_02: And so for those of us that share that, when we read your book, there's a kindred spirit in the same way that you're looking into the soul of some of these animals that you're that you're looking at.
23:05
SPEAKER_02: And by the way, when you talk about, you know, you don't always consider you're you're not sure about being human.
23:10
SPEAKER_02: For those who don't know the story, when Cy was two years old, she escaped her parents at a zoo and snuck into the hippopotamus pen, which is where she was discovered as a two-year-old by herself inside a hippopotamus pen.
23:26
SPEAKER_02: And I believe that what you said was you felt you had found your tribe.
23:31
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, those were my people.
23:33
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
23:33
SPEAKER_02: So that's that's probably an indicator that you might not be the same as a lot of us.
23:39
SPEAKER_02: Um and I and I think that's a good thing, Sai.
23:42
SPEAKER_02: Well, I promise you, I would give you I promised you I would give you a minute because you had said that this couldn't have been done not only without my with Michelle, but also with Patrick and Deb Joyce.
23:54
SPEAKER_02: So why don't you go ahead and give them their props because they've earned them.
23:58
SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh.
23:59
SPEAKER_00: Well, Deb, I met her at New England Aquarium while um I I had actually already finished writing Soul of an Octopus, but I continued to visit my octopus friends there.
24:10
SPEAKER_00: And she was a volunteer with Project Piabba, um our our friend Scott Dowd's project to save the beautiful little aquarium fishes who live in the Amazon.
24:25
SPEAKER_00: And Project Piabba is this I actually did a book about them too.
24:30
SPEAKER_00: And and Deb was one of the key people working for Project Piabba.
24:35
SPEAKER_00: Um, what it does, as you probably know, the Amazon, it it floods every year and then the water drains away.
24:41
SPEAKER_00: And what happens is all these little fishes, many of them just end up dying on the riverbank when the water drains away.
24:50
SPEAKER_00: And so what Project Piaba does is it allows the local people to essentially rescue these fish before they end up dead, and they become treasured pets in the aquarium trade, and the local people make far more money selling these fish as aquarium pets than they would gold mining or cattle ranching, which is horribly destructive to the Amazon.
25:15
SPEAKER_00: So I knew Deb through her good works there, and I just adore her.
25:21
SPEAKER_00: She's just the sunniest, most can-do, extremely competent person.
25:25
SPEAKER_00: She had been a wildly successful businesswoman.
25:29
SPEAKER_00: And then I I met her husband, Patrick, who is when I when I say a banker, he's not one of those guys handing out the the dollar bills at your bank.
25:42
SPEAKER_00: He's he's handling billions of uh corporate dollars for lots and lots of people, very high-range stuff.
25:50
SPEAKER_00: Just like you and me.
25:52
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, right.
25:53
SPEAKER_00: But his heart work, I think, where his heart really lies, is underwater taking portraits of sea animals.
26:02
SPEAKER_00: And whenever he has a spare moment, he's suited up and he's scuba diving and he's taking this immense camera that I can't even lift, um, and which becomes, by the way, a giant sail when you're underwater in a swift current.
26:17
SPEAKER_00: You you're holding it up, and it's like making you, you know, sail through the water.
26:22
SPEAKER_00: I the guy he used to be a football player, and he's strong as a football player today.
26:27
SPEAKER_00: But this was even hard for Patrick.
26:29
SPEAKER_00: And the fact that he got these shots during our very short, we were there for two weeks.
26:35
SPEAKER_00: And when you only have two weeks to try to capture everything, it's very, very hard.
26:40
SPEAKER_00: We also have some beautiful pictures that Michelle gave us from his years of photographing these animals.
26:46
SPEAKER_00: So some of the photos are from him as well.
26:49
SPEAKER_00: Um, but of course, he can't take pictures of himself, and so there's lots of pictures of Michelle and the other team members, uh, Carolina and Jeff and Duber.
26:59
SPEAKER_00: Um they are all thanks to Patrick's really, really hard work.
27:05
SPEAKER_00: But God, it was hard, hard, hard.
27:08
SPEAKER_00: Just the trip out there to get to the dive site was 90 minutes of the most punishing boat ride you can imagine.
27:17
SPEAKER_00: You're it's this bucking bronco.
27:19
SPEAKER_00: The ship turns into this bucking bronco on these tall waves, and you're just like bam, bam, bam, and clang, clang, clang.
27:27
SPEAKER_00: All of the all the air tanks, you know, your scuba tanks are clanging together, and people are like throwing up.
27:34
SPEAKER_00: And meanwhile, you're looking out the window, and these hop back whales are leaping out of the water like giant pickles.
27:41
SPEAKER_00: It was totally surreal.
27:43
SPEAKER_00: So 90 minutes of that, you're exhausted when you get to the site, and then you plunge into this wild current.
27:53
SPEAKER_00: And we had so many like weird things happen to us.
27:58
SPEAKER_00: On one of our early dives, we discovered um when the team went down to to pick up these receivers that had been recording a year's worth of information when a tagged manta would swim by.
28:13
SPEAKER_00: These receivers, the acoustic receivers, were recording like who swam by.
28:18
SPEAKER_00: And these are really important bits of data.
28:22
SPEAKER_00: So they went down to pick up the first receiver and they they were gone a long time.
28:29
SPEAKER_00: And they finally came up.
28:32
SPEAKER_00: The receiver wasn't there.
28:35
SPEAKER_00: What happened to it?
28:37
SPEAKER_00: We were super bummed about it.
28:38
SPEAKER_00: There was another one though.
28:40
SPEAKER_00: But geez, you know, there's a lot of data gone and we can't find it.
28:43
SPEAKER_00: What happened?
28:44
SPEAKER_00: Did it just wash away?
28:46
SPEAKER_00: So then we go to get the second receiver in a different area.
28:50
SPEAKER_00: And this time the team came up after about five minutes.
28:54
SPEAKER_00: And Michelle looking at our quizzical faces on board that he goes, someone had cut the cable that anchored the receiver to the rock.
29:08
SPEAKER_00: Someone had stolen the receiver.
29:12
SPEAKER_00: Didn't they try to ransom it back to Michelle?
29:15
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, word came through the grapevine.
29:19
SPEAKER_00: But you can't end up rewarding people like this.
29:22
SPEAKER_00: Right.
29:24
SPEAKER_00: So that was a not just one year of data, the year of data that had recorded, that was gone.
29:31
SPEAKER_00: But so was the year we would have gotten because we had more acoustic tags we wanted to put on those those animals, and now they weren't gonna work because our receivers weren't gonna record them.
29:46
SPEAKER_00: Now, other receivers elsewhere, there's a whole bunch of receivers all over the place.
29:50
SPEAKER_00: There's some down in Peru, there's some in um Costa Rica, you know, still that there would be some data, but we lost a whole two years of data that we would have gotten from that site.
30:06
SPEAKER_00: But then we also had like these magical things happen to us.
30:11
SPEAKER_00: It was such a roller coaster ride, Scott.
30:14
SPEAKER_00: This this trip in two weeks, it had more action, more emotion, more difficulty, more joy than we ever could have predicted.
30:29
SPEAKER_00: And this is what science is.
30:32
SPEAKER_00: You just can't tell what's gonna happen.
30:36
SPEAKER_00: But what we did know was that if we were going to be around these angels of the sea, we knew there were going to be blessings and that they would be abundant, and that we were just so privileged to bring them back and share with with these readers.
30:57
SPEAKER_00: And there's so much that readers can do to help mantis.
31:02
SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of citizen science going on, so that if you visit any of the areas that have acoustic receivers, any of the areas that have mantas, um, any sighting that you get of a giant oceanic manta, these are technically called oceanic mantas, um, you can add to that database.
31:23
SPEAKER_00: You can support Manta projects, and in the back of the book, I mention the Manta Trust, I mentioned Manta's um the Ecuadorian project and the uh Costa Rican project.
31:38
SPEAKER_00: You can support them and just kind of spread the word about these beautiful creatures.
31:45
SPEAKER_00: Also realizing that the uh Chinese, the traditional Chinese medicine that claims that they're gill rakers are cures for things, that they make you stronger, realizing that that is a lie, a dangerous, deadly lie.
32:05
SPEAKER_00: That's important news to spread around the world.
32:09
SPEAKER_00: So I was blessed again and again and again just to see these animals, to be part of this work and to be able to carry this information out into the world.
32:21
SPEAKER_00: I've written it so that even kids in upper middle school can read and enjoy this book.
32:28
SPEAKER_00: There's no bad words in the in the book.
32:30
SPEAKER_00: There's not a lot of really long words in the book.
32:33
SPEAKER_00: Even if you're a young person, you can understand every sentence in this book.
32:39
SPEAKER_00: And we need young people to come in to help us save the ocean.
32:46
SPEAKER_00: The ocean is most of our planet.
32:48
SPEAKER_00: Not only does it cover 70% of the surface of our globe, but as you know, it contains 90% of the habitable space on our planet.
33:00
SPEAKER_00: And as I always say about young people, they aren't just uh the leaders of tomorrow.
33:05
SPEAKER_00: In many ways, they are the leaders of today, and they affect deeply how their community uh votes, even though they can't vote themselves, how their parents and community what they purchase.
33:21
SPEAKER_00: For example, you have an opportunity to say no to plastic almost every day, with almost every purchase you make, you can say no to the plastic that is clogging and ruining the seas.
33:33
SPEAKER_00: By 2050, there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish.
33:37
SPEAKER_00: And we have an opportunity to say no to that.
33:40
SPEAKER_00: You also have to say no with your vote when you vote for your leaders.
33:44
SPEAKER_00: And kids are also fabulous at raising money to donate to organizations that save animals.
33:53
SPEAKER_00: I've seen this happen again and again and again with you know, tree kangaroos and snow leopards and um tigers and lions and rainforests, but kids too can join in the fight to save these giant oceanic mantis.
34:10
SPEAKER_00: So this is why I really, really wanted this book to be readable for almost everybody who's at a upper middle school and above reading level.
34:22
SPEAKER_02: Well, I think you've accomplished that.
34:24
SPEAKER_02: I absolutely know you're gonna be motivating some people.
34:28
SPEAKER_02: Um, the book just came out last week, Oceanic Manta Adventure.
34:32
SPEAKER_02: And as we've heard over the last 40 minutes, it is quite an adventure.
34:36
SPEAKER_02: Um, Saving the Angels of the Sea is the subtitle, which I absolutely love.
34:41
SPEAKER_02: Um, I'm gonna throw my email up here, which is Scott at naturally scott.com.
34:47
SPEAKER_02: And Cy, I would be remiss if I didn't ask you, what are you thinking about now?
34:53
SPEAKER_02: What what are you working on now?
34:56
SPEAKER_00: I'm working on, well, we've got a new book coming out in the spring on caterpillars with Matt Patterson.
35:02
SPEAKER_02: These are the little Who did your turtle illustrations?
35:06
SPEAKER_00: Yes, he did.
35:07
SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh, what a talented guy.
35:09
SPEAKER_00: And I think this is a this is a picture book, so it will, but it the photos are so gorgeous and realistic that adults will like it too.
35:17
SPEAKER_00: We think of butterflies and moths and how beautiful they are.
35:21
SPEAKER_00: But I think it's important to recognize that essentially baby butterflies and moths.
35:28
SPEAKER_00: Caterpillars, they really kind of run the world.
35:32
SPEAKER_00: And as you know, there without them there would be no bird song.
35:35
SPEAKER_00: Most songbirds eat almost nothing but caterpillars, but we also have them to thank for all kinds of things, from you know, the the taste of tomatoes is because of caterpillars, because of the chemical war between caterpillars and plants.
35:48
SPEAKER_00: There's so much that they bring us, and we overlook them, even though every child can recognize caterpillars.
35:55
SPEAKER_00: So that's coming out in the spring.
35:57
SPEAKER_00: I'm working on two bird books right now.
36:00
SPEAKER_00: Uh, one is on parrots, and it will be in that series of books that include The Hawk's Way, The Hummingbird's Gift, and What the Chicken Knows.
36:10
SPEAKER_00: And then the one after that, in that same series, is going to be on Hidgens.
36:18
SPEAKER_02: Well, this is so we'll certainly have you back no later than the spring, so that we can be talking about your caterpillar book, which to my dear friend Steve Hayes is going to be great news because he thinks you should be my only guest.
36:31
SPEAKER_02: Um, so we're excited about that.
36:33
SPEAKER_02: Um, hey, by the way, if you are watching this on YouTube, do me a favor and hit subscribe.
36:39
SPEAKER_02: Every time you do, YouTube pushes this out to more people, and they learn about Sai and her books and Manta Rays and whatever other guests that we're talking about.
36:49
SPEAKER_02: Um and uh that's a great thing.
36:51
SPEAKER_02: And if you get a chance, you know, drop a comment or hit like.
36:55
SPEAKER_02: I love that.
36:56
SPEAKER_02: I I can't thank you enough for being with us today and sharing your new book.
37:03
SPEAKER_02: Um, it is a terrific thing.
37:05
SPEAKER_02: I like to close each show um by encouraging my guests to get outside.
37:12
SPEAKER_02: And whether that's a front porch or a backyard or a local park or the Pacific Ocean in Ecuador, um chasing manta rays, whatever it is, get out there and do that.
37:25
SPEAKER_02: And when you do, make sure that you stay safe and stay curious.
37:29
SPEAKER_02: Cy, thank you so much.
37:32
SPEAKER_02: The very best of luck to you and your book.
37:34
SPEAKER_02: I know it's gonna be awesome.
37:36
SPEAKER_02: I've already enjoyed it, and you're gonna hopefully be sending me a signed copy so that I can display it proudly.
37:43
SPEAKER_02: And um, I will be talking about it.
37:45
SPEAKER_00: The one's on the way to you soon.
37:48
SPEAKER_02: Well, I am looking forward to that.
37:50
SPEAKER_02: Cy, thank you so much.
37:51
SPEAKER_02: Have a great day.
37:52
SPEAKER_02: Congratulations, and thank you for sharing your insights into so many different things.
37:57
SPEAKER_02: Oh, such a joy.
37:58
SPEAKER_02: It's always so much fun to talk to you, Scott.
38:01
SPEAKER_02: It is fun for me.
38:02
SPEAKER_02: I'm Scott Harris.
38:03
SPEAKER_02: This is Naturally Scott.
38:04
SPEAKER_02: I'll be candid with you.
38:05
SPEAKER_02: If you didn't enjoy this show, don't tune in next week.
38:08
SPEAKER_02: Um, because this is what the show is supposed to be about.
38:12
SPEAKER_02: And if you did enjoy this show, get back on next week because we're gonna have somebody else who's terrific.
38:18
SPEAKER_02: Thank you and take care.
38:19
SPEAKER_01: Have a great day.
38:20
SPEAKER_01: You've been listening to Naturally Scott with Scott Harris.
38:24
SPEAKER_01: Naturally Scott is hosted by Scott Harris, produced by Justin Harris, directed and edited by Frank Sierra.
38:31
SPEAKER_01: Follow us on our YouTube channel at Naturally Scott and Instagram at naturally Scott Harris.
38:37
SPEAKER_01: If this conversation resonated with you, please follow the show, leave a review, and share it with someone who needs to hear it.
38:43
SPEAKER_01: Naturally Scott thanks you for viewing and listening to this podcast.