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How Whale Sharks Work · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
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Speaker 1: from how stuff works dot Com. The future of our
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Speaker 1: planet depends on the forward thinkers among us. Green technology,
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Speaker 1: the power of community, and the future of our planet
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Speaker 1: are things we can change together. Visit how stuff works
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Speaker 1: dot com and search Forward Thinking to join the movement. Hi,
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Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Chuck Bryant. Chuck,
0:36
Speaker 1: are you falling sleep? Buddy? Meditating? It's the morning. This
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Speaker 1: is not our usual time to record, so I'm very
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Speaker 1: curious to see just how much worse than usual this
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Speaker 1: one through. But it is Friday morning, is it? You
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Speaker 1: know me? I'm big on the Friday recording. It's Friday
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Speaker 1: short stay again. I know Chuck looks like a straight
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Speaker 1: up summer babe, ye call them, but his legs look
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Speaker 1: like milk bottles. A good thing. Pretty white Okay, Yeah
1:03
Speaker 1: I thought you meant the curvature. Okay, the white notes.
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Speaker 1: So yeah, no, they look at it. It only slathers
1:08
Speaker 1: me with some block because I'm not allowed to beatan anymore.
1:11
Speaker 1: Do you have to wear like one of those big
1:13
Speaker 1: sun hats when you go out. I do. My dad
1:15
Speaker 1: dresses like that. He dresses like he's afraid of stars
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Speaker 1: or something. He puts on a big old hat and
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Speaker 1: a little surgical mask the lawn and oh yeah, it's awesome.
1:23
Speaker 1: He gets very androgynous when he's mowing the lawn. Okay,
1:27
Speaker 1: it's weird, Chuck. We got a package recently that I
1:31
Speaker 1: would like you to describe, Josh. This is Dare I say,
1:36
Speaker 1: one of the cooler promotional items I've ever seen from
1:39
Speaker 1: a company. Agreed, Yeah, this is from our parent company, Discovery.
1:43
Speaker 1: And what they did was they sent out to promote
1:46
Speaker 1: their Shark Week, which, as everyone knows, is huge. It is.
1:50
Speaker 1: Have you ever seen the shark gun the building at
1:53
Speaker 1: a Discovery HQ and describing, Well, it's a pretty standard
1:57
Speaker 1: looking building normally, but around Shark Week time they have
2:01
Speaker 1: a giant shark head coming on the building on one
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Speaker 1: side and a giant shark tail coming out on the
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Speaker 1: other and I suspect a giant shark fin coming out
2:10
Speaker 1: of the top and on the sides. It looks awesome.
2:13
Speaker 1: It's pretty cool. Actually, you can google that if you're
2:15
Speaker 1: interested in looking at that. I think if you like
2:17
Speaker 1: to look up Discovery headquarters Shark weeken shore, you can
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Speaker 1: find pictures and talking. I know a little bit about sharks.
2:22
Speaker 1: We've written tons of articles on him around Shark Week,
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Speaker 1: many many, And so what they sent out was it's
2:29
Speaker 1: a jar art directed to look like an old beat
2:33
Speaker 1: up jar short that may have washed up on shore.
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Speaker 1: And inside we were surprised to first find a pair
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Speaker 1: of chewed up beat shorts, bloody, blood stained beat shorts.
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Speaker 1: And we've been warned that they were gonna smell. They
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Speaker 1: didn't in fact smell right, They did not smell like
2:50
Speaker 1: death or gore. We got this cool giant shark tooth
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Speaker 1: with a on a little key chain. We got another
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Speaker 1: little another little floaty keychain with is an O bit
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Speaker 1: in there the obituaries, an obituary type as if it
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Speaker 1: was from an old newspaper of Chief Martin Brody from
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Speaker 1: Jaws Fame. And one of our marketing people, sam A Dorno,
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Speaker 1: found that her O bit turned up in one of
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Speaker 1: the marketing packages to scanning her own death notice on
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Speaker 1: the date of her funeral. Interesting, yeah, he's lovely in fetching,
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Speaker 1: sam A Dorna, and uh so, yeah, they sent out
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Speaker 1: all this stuff and basically it's they sent him to
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Speaker 1: just different companies and media outlets around the country. They
3:32
Speaker 1: did it anonymously, right it was. That's yeah, that's the
3:34
Speaker 1: trick is you don't really know what it is. You
3:36
Speaker 1: just get this suspicious package that I never would have
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Speaker 1: opened had I not known where it was from, to
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Speaker 1: be honest, it would have frightened me. It is pretty cool,
3:43
Speaker 1: but yeah, it is really cool, good idea, but it
3:45
Speaker 1: directs you to go to frenzied waters dot com, right, yeah,
3:48
Speaker 1: and the cool stuff on that thanks in part to
3:51
Speaker 1: our own Mr Chuck Bryant, who helped come up with
3:55
Speaker 1: some aspects of this marketing campaign. Didn't you. I mean,
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Speaker 1: what don't you do, Chuck? I do it all due,
4:00
Speaker 1: Yeah you do. You wear many hats and each one
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Speaker 1: is more fetching than the last. Yeah. I did the
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Speaker 1: the fake diary thing from the shark attacks of nineteen sixteen,
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Speaker 1: and I'm really excited. It's it's an awesome, cool thing
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Speaker 1: to work on. And our our sisters in arms over
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Speaker 1: at us Stuffy missed in history class. I think they
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Speaker 1: just recorded one, right, um, the shark attacks of nineteen sixteen,
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Speaker 1: which really happened. Yeah, it was a great story. I
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Speaker 1: was a little jealous I got to do that one.
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Speaker 1: But is that why you haven't been talking to either
4:27
Speaker 1: of them? I know I've boycotted them. Yeah. Well we
4:30
Speaker 1: happen to do something pretty cool recently, So back to us. Yeah,
4:35
Speaker 1: it's always about us, um and uh, that is that
4:38
Speaker 1: we swam with whale sharks, among many other types of
4:43
Speaker 1: fish and sharks and skates and rays. Yeah, that manor
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Speaker 1: ray was huge. We we swam with the manaray that
4:48
Speaker 1: was at least the size of me yr Chuck. Yeah,
4:50
Speaker 1: I mean it looked the wingspan had to be, uh
4:53
Speaker 1: six or eight feet across. It was a big, big boy.
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Speaker 1: Very cool. The big attraction this is at the Georgia Aquium,
4:59
Speaker 1: the bigger track and those definitely the whale sharks, which
5:02
Speaker 1: were I think sixteen two I think was the female was. Yeah,
5:08
Speaker 1: and you know what that was. It was a noticeable
5:09
Speaker 1: difference when that female came by. That's the coolest thing
5:12
Speaker 1: I've ever had the opportunity to do. Yeah, so let's
5:15
Speaker 1: let's talk about whale sharks. We'll talk about swimming with
5:17
Speaker 1: them a little more in a little more detail. But
5:21
Speaker 1: Chuck tell me about whales sharks. And this is based
5:23
Speaker 1: on an article on how stuff works dot com that
5:26
Speaker 1: you wrote. Indeed, you are the whale shark expert. You
5:29
Speaker 1: spank me whenever we get into whale shark trivia and
5:32
Speaker 1: I stalk off crime, which is all the time. Yeah.
5:35
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, let's talk about the whale shark. Everyone knows
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Speaker 1: that it is the largest fish in the sea. I
5:40
Speaker 1: didn't know that, which also makes it the largest shark
5:43
Speaker 1: h in the sea. And some of these can reportedly
5:47
Speaker 1: grow to over sixty feet dude, which is like twenty
5:50
Speaker 1: ft longer than a full size school bus. Can you
5:53
Speaker 1: imagine seeing one the largest one we saw the other day?
5:55
Speaker 1: Can you imagine one three times that size? Yeah? I
5:58
Speaker 1: can't either. No, I mean it's just mammoth. One of
6:00
Speaker 1: the other things that I noticed when we were swimming
6:02
Speaker 1: with them that I just found amazing. You remember the
6:04
Speaker 1: one right before we got out of the tank. Yes,
6:08
Speaker 1: I think it was the female. She was swimming right
6:10
Speaker 1: towards me and then dipped right below me and came
6:13
Speaker 1: within centimeters touching me, But at no point did she
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Speaker 1: touch me, So they apparently have some really great sense
6:20
Speaker 1: of kinetics. Yeah, knowing exactly where every part of their
6:23
Speaker 1: body is in relation to other things, because I don't
6:27
Speaker 1: understand how it didn't brush against me. Yeah, we have
6:29
Speaker 1: a couple of times we had him swim kind of
6:32
Speaker 1: right under us. We were we didn't do a scuba dive,
6:35
Speaker 1: which just so people know we're up up top, but
6:37
Speaker 1: with a scuba tank and mask, and they would they
6:40
Speaker 1: swam right under us, and I turned around to look
6:42
Speaker 1: and I would see that big tail coming at me,
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Speaker 1: the big dorsal fin, and I just knew it was
6:45
Speaker 1: gonna smack me on the way by, but it just
6:47
Speaker 1: it never did went right on. So they're huge, and
6:50
Speaker 1: they do appear kind of lumbering, but really they're super graceful. Yeah,
6:54
Speaker 1: they're very cool. And they're cool looking too. And there
6:57
Speaker 1: were hammer heads in there too, There were I was
6:59
Speaker 1: a little nervous hammer heads were kind of eyeing us. Yeah,
7:01
Speaker 1: they kind of stayed download that, which is good. But
7:03
Speaker 1: it turned out to be the grouper who is the
7:05
Speaker 1: big threat, right. Yeah, the grouper was cool looking because
7:07
Speaker 1: it was I mean, a grouper just looks like fish.
7:10
Speaker 1: If you look up fish, it just looks like a fish.
7:12
Speaker 1: Like you had seen a little small tank, but it
7:15
Speaker 1: was three hundred pounds. It looked like some land of
7:17
Speaker 1: the Lost giant fish, and it was undergoing a sexual
7:21
Speaker 1: transformation like Headwig and the angry inch right. Um. Apparently
7:26
Speaker 1: when they turned about twenty five or so, they go
7:29
Speaker 1: all hermaphrodite and um change sex, and apparently it's not
7:33
Speaker 1: a pleasant process. So we had a grumpy grouper in
7:36
Speaker 1: there who was in a tank with different kinds of
7:39
Speaker 1: sharks rays. It was actually the biggest threat to us
7:42
Speaker 1: in that tank. Hard to believe. They said, it's the
7:44
Speaker 1: jaw could break your arm down. Pounds of anything can
7:48
Speaker 1: break your arm. So back to the whale shark. Um.
7:52
Speaker 1: The whale shark lives in warm ocean waters pretty much
7:55
Speaker 1: everywhere where it's warm, except the Mediterranean exactly, which I
7:58
Speaker 1: thought was a little It is a little odd. I'd
8:00
Speaker 1: want to hang out in the Mediterranean if I was
8:02
Speaker 1: a whale shark. And they're starting to migrate in in
8:04
Speaker 1: new and surprising places, like they anytime they pop up.
8:08
Speaker 1: I was reading an article they popped up um off
8:11
Speaker 1: the coast of Mississippi, Louisiana. Actually I'm sorry, UM. And
8:15
Speaker 1: some guy who spotted him was a commercial fisherman and
8:18
Speaker 1: they were hanging around. Uh and within like several hours
8:22
Speaker 1: or a day, his commercial fishing vessel was suddenly a
8:25
Speaker 1: research vessel. All these scientists flew down and chartered his
8:28
Speaker 1: boat and went out there. He took him out there
8:30
Speaker 1: to to study them because we know so little about him, right, Yeah,
8:34
Speaker 1: for the most part, they're starting to learn though, since
8:36
Speaker 1: we may able to keep them in captivity, they're learning
8:39
Speaker 1: a lot more. As Chris Coco are are host and
8:43
Speaker 1: shark expert at the aquarium. Yeah, and Chuck and I
8:45
Speaker 1: aren't um immune to the arguments about zoology and keeping
8:52
Speaker 1: animals in captivity or the whole concept of a zoo. Um.
8:56
Speaker 1: You know, I definitely see both sides of the argument.
9:00
Speaker 1: But Chris Coco was able to produce um some evidence
9:04
Speaker 1: that this exhibit at the Georgia Aquarium. And I think
9:07
Speaker 1: they're the only whale sharks in the Western Hemisphere in captivity, right, Yeah,
9:11
Speaker 1: you can find them in Japan and then fifteen minutes
9:15
Speaker 1: down the road from where we are. Yeah, it's pretty cool. Right.
9:18
Speaker 1: So Chris said that they had gotten their whale sharks
9:21
Speaker 1: from Taiwan, which is like the whale shark fishing capital
9:25
Speaker 1: of the world. I think they consume the most whale
9:27
Speaker 1: shark meat of any country in the world as well. UM.
9:31
Speaker 1: But since that exhibit opened UH and they formed a
9:34
Speaker 1: relationship with Taiwan, Taiwan's kill quota went from I think
9:38
Speaker 1: a couple hundred a year for each individual to zero.
9:44
Speaker 1: And one of the reasons why is um they were
9:46
Speaker 1: able to show that if you if you allow a
9:48
Speaker 1: whale shark to live, if you kill a whale shark
9:51
Speaker 1: in Taiwan, I read that fishermen would get about ten
9:54
Speaker 1: kilograms a pound or ten cents of kilogram. That was
9:58
Speaker 1: the non conversion ten cents of kilogram for a whale
10:01
Speaker 1: shark me, which is kind of substantial, but really not
10:04
Speaker 1: so much. In India they get something like four thousand
10:07
Speaker 1: dollars a whale shark. UM A lot of money, it is,
10:11
Speaker 1: but that's it. That's all you made off of that
10:13
Speaker 1: whale shark, regardless of the size, right, Okay, but at
10:17
Speaker 1: the same time you've killed it, you can only make
10:19
Speaker 1: money off of it. It's sale once. Thanks to the
10:23
Speaker 1: burgeoning UM I guess sector of eco tourism, people are
10:28
Speaker 1: starting to figure out that you can make money over
10:31
Speaker 1: and over and over again off of a single whale
10:34
Speaker 1: shark through eco tourism, right because you know we what
10:38
Speaker 1: we did when we swam at the Georgia Aquarium. Anybody
10:41
Speaker 1: can do for like I think two bucks or whatever
10:45
Speaker 1: and for full scuba diving um and Georgia Aquarium is
10:50
Speaker 1: not the only place to do it. I mean you
10:52
Speaker 1: can do it out in the wild and people are
10:55
Speaker 1: realizing that you can make a ton of money off
10:57
Speaker 1: of it. I think the Australia Conservation Union as demated
11:00
Speaker 1: that the value, the annual value of each whale shark
11:04
Speaker 1: is somewhere in the neighborhood of hundred and eighty two
11:06
Speaker 1: or two two thousand dollars, and we're talking. You know,
11:10
Speaker 1: some of the economies where whale sharks hang out are
11:13
Speaker 1: not the richest in the world, so you know, they
11:15
Speaker 1: can generate serious income if these these local economies can
11:19
Speaker 1: figure out how to really most efficiently shift from whale
11:23
Speaker 1: shark fishing to eco tourism and finning, which is gross. Yeah,
11:28
Speaker 1: shark finning for those who don't know, shark fin soup
11:30
Speaker 1: is a delicacy in certain parts of the world, and
11:33
Speaker 1: shark finning literally means you pull the shark up on
11:35
Speaker 1: your boat. Sometimes not even sometimes they do it from
11:38
Speaker 1: the water, dude, and cut the fins off and throw
11:41
Speaker 1: it back in the water, or just keep it in
11:43
Speaker 1: the water where the shark dies and that's it. That's
11:45
Speaker 1: the only part they use is to fin well. They
11:47
Speaker 1: bleed to death, yes, awful. And they also without their
11:51
Speaker 1: their fin they lose any um way of navigation, so
11:55
Speaker 1: they're just kind of drifting about bleeding to death. It's
11:59
Speaker 1: not a not a nice death. And we should also
12:02
Speaker 1: say to that um. The whale shark doesn't reach reproductive
12:06
Speaker 1: age until they think about twenty five or thirty years,
12:09
Speaker 1: So the problem is, like a lot of animals who
12:11
Speaker 1: have a late reproductive cycle, you kill them before that time,
12:15
Speaker 1: and what's gonna happen. They're not gonna have shark pups.
12:18
Speaker 1: It has a huge, huge impact done on the species
12:22
Speaker 1: big time, because they have up to like two and
12:24
Speaker 1: three hundred pups at a time. So you're every shark
12:28
Speaker 1: you kill before that age, you're shorting two or three
12:30
Speaker 1: hundred potential sharks. And its biggest predator obviously is the human. Yeah, absolutely,
12:37
Speaker 1: it's the biggest fishing to see, there's not a lot
12:38
Speaker 1: of comers to take on, you know, a whale shark,
12:41
Speaker 1: which is funny because they're so peaceful and gentle. They
12:44
Speaker 1: really are um and their diet is actually really really light. Yeah,
12:48
Speaker 1: let's talk about that. That's cool. Okay. So they are
12:51
Speaker 1: filter feeders, right. Uh. They generally just eat plankton, which
12:54
Speaker 1: is really tiny, nearly microscopic um plant an animal life
13:00
Speaker 1: just kind of is suspended in the ocean. They're also
13:03
Speaker 1: surface dwellers, which is where the plankton is, and krill too,
13:06
Speaker 1: which are like teeny little shrimps and actual little shrimp
13:09
Speaker 1: as well. Uh. And in captivity, they also love dog food.
13:13
Speaker 1: It looked like remember those little brown cubes of nastiness
13:16
Speaker 1: they're feeding it. Yeah, that was a gelatine mixture that
13:19
Speaker 1: they made their dequarian. But for their size, you know,
13:23
Speaker 1: they actually don't eat a lot right at once, but
13:27
Speaker 1: they eat constantly out in the wild, right, It's all
13:30
Speaker 1: they do. So they're they're drifting along with their mouth
13:32
Speaker 1: open pretty much, and the plankton goes in right like
13:36
Speaker 1: a little vacuum. Huh. And then whatever can't get out
13:39
Speaker 1: of the gills get stuck there. And what do they
13:42
Speaker 1: do chuck. Well, they the gills actually as like a
13:45
Speaker 1: like a strainer, so the water goes out and then
13:48
Speaker 1: they're the algae and the krill and everything or in
13:51
Speaker 1: the mouth. And don't they cough? And they cough it
13:54
Speaker 1: like they howk up a bunch of planktons. Oh yeah,
13:56
Speaker 1: if they if it's too big, if I think two centimeters,
13:59
Speaker 1: anything over two centimeters, they'll hack back up and spit out.
14:03
Speaker 1: And I did ask, actually Gus ask Chris at the aquarium, like,
14:06
Speaker 1: when you're feeding these guys, do they did one of
14:08
Speaker 1: these other fish because the other fish kind of hang
14:11
Speaker 1: out to try and get little leftovers. Yeah. Remember, And
14:13
Speaker 1: I was like, do you ever see one of the
14:15
Speaker 1: bigger fish accidentally get sucked in this huge mouth? He said, yeah,
14:18
Speaker 1: that's happened a couple of times, and they pretty much
14:20
Speaker 1: cough it peck out really quickly. And he said that
14:23
Speaker 1: swims out of the fish is expelled it about twice
14:25
Speaker 1: the speed it was originally going in. I really wanted
14:28
Speaker 1: to see that. I didn't, Yeah, because you know, fish
14:31
Speaker 1: make funny faces when they're scared. So we have figured
14:34
Speaker 1: out some stuff about whale sharks um just from the
14:38
Speaker 1: few studies that have been able to be conducted. I
14:41
Speaker 1: read an estimate Chuck that there was like five hundred
14:44
Speaker 1: thousand and estimated five hundred thousand in the wild, which
14:47
Speaker 1: is really really low. Yeah, especially considering that millions of
14:52
Speaker 1: sharks are killed each year recreationally. Millions, dude, millions. The
14:57
Speaker 1: highest estimate I saw was a hundred million. The in
15:00
Speaker 1: the media and I think was about thirty million. Sad,
15:03
Speaker 1: but yeah, if there's five hundred thousand of you and
15:06
Speaker 1: people are indiscriminately killing sharks and you're in trouble, yeah,
15:09
Speaker 1: well their listed is vulnerable by the World Conservation Union,
15:13
Speaker 1: so that's no good. But what we have figured out
15:16
Speaker 1: for a long time, they thought that whale sharks actually
15:19
Speaker 1: laid eggs, right, yeah, which is not the case. Now
15:22
Speaker 1: they have pups they do um. I think in female
15:26
Speaker 1: whale shark was killed and they cut her open and
15:29
Speaker 1: found three hundred well shark pups sixteen. I bet that
15:34
Speaker 1: is one of the cutest things you've ever seen, dead
15:37
Speaker 1: whale shark pups. No, well, it's it's funny. Yeah, I
15:43
Speaker 1: forgot the fact that the fact that they were dead,
15:45
Speaker 1: that's under pretty insensitive. I would just say, like a
15:47
Speaker 1: two ft whale shark pup would be really cute alive,
15:50
Speaker 1: I'm sure, because they're pretty cute. Twenty ft they are. Yeah,
15:54
Speaker 1: they they have their mouths are at the front of
15:57
Speaker 1: their face, not under the unusual flash shark yeah usually,
16:01
Speaker 1: and it's just this big, wide, narrow, gaping mall. Yeah,
16:05
Speaker 1: a big square head really, and their eyes are real
16:08
Speaker 1: tiny and kind of on the side, and they're just
16:10
Speaker 1: they're cute, they're big. You just want to cuddle with them.
16:12
Speaker 1: I know, I really wanted to touch one and kind
16:14
Speaker 1: of give it a hug, but they said, uh, and
16:16
Speaker 1: we'll actually talk about this when you're swimming with the
16:19
Speaker 1: fish in the wild. It's called a soft encounter. Yeah,
16:22
Speaker 1: So basically, you want to be a you want to watch,
16:25
Speaker 1: you don't want to be a participant. Well, anytime they
16:28
Speaker 1: got nearest, we had to like lay flat and still
16:30
Speaker 1: and just let them pass by and let him check
16:32
Speaker 1: us out. Pretty cool, yeah, but they're they're whale sharks.
16:36
Speaker 1: Aren't the only things that you can have a soft
16:38
Speaker 1: encounter with, right, We can have a soft encounter with you,
16:41
Speaker 1: big boy. It would be super soft encounter. Even our
16:45
Speaker 1: producer Jerry got in on that, Yes, you can also
16:49
Speaker 1: swim with humpback whales. It's pretty popular. Um in the
16:54
Speaker 1: Dominican Republic and the South Pacific island of Ponga, you
16:58
Speaker 1: can swim with humpback whales, another docile creature and chuck. Actually,
17:02
Speaker 1: there's a there's a place in the Philippines that has
17:05
Speaker 1: become kind of a hot spot for um soft encounters,
17:09
Speaker 1: soft in water encounters. Right, soft encounter cracks me up
17:14
Speaker 1: so much, it is kind of funny. Um. And that's
17:17
Speaker 1: a doncile Philippines right right. They were really the kind
17:20
Speaker 1: of the first to get on board with the soft
17:23
Speaker 1: encounter eco tourism thing. Um, and they've kind of provided
17:28
Speaker 1: a model for everybody else. Absolutely. You know another creature
17:34
Speaker 1: that people like swimming with, but it doesn't usually work out. Dolphins.
17:40
Speaker 1: People love dolphins. Well, yeah, you said in another article
17:44
Speaker 1: that you wrote, um, what was the name of it?
17:46
Speaker 1: What sea creatures can you swim with? Yeah? That that
17:49
Speaker 1: you would think that, you know, you just hang onto
17:51
Speaker 1: the dolphins fin and go for a ride and maybe
17:53
Speaker 1: it would let you, But all of a sudden you'd
17:55
Speaker 1: find that you were going really fast and if the
17:57
Speaker 1: dolphin wanted to dive really deep and you would be
18:00
Speaker 1: in some serious trouble. Yeah, dolphins are fun, but there's
18:03
Speaker 1: no way you're gonna do the flipper thing and hang
18:05
Speaker 1: on and take a little ride. Plus also they're deadly
18:09
Speaker 1: deadly creatures. Are they hate humans? Dolphins? Now? I thought
18:13
Speaker 1: they like people. You're josh and they're all about the
18:16
Speaker 1: soft encounter. Um, there is another side of the coin here.
18:19
Speaker 1: You can also swim with sea lions by the way,
18:22
Speaker 1: and sting rays, ah and seals here and there, Like
18:26
Speaker 1: in the UK you can swim with seals. But there
18:29
Speaker 1: is another side to this which a lot of wildlife
18:32
Speaker 1: experts kind of decry this whole practice, and they say
18:35
Speaker 1: you shouldn't be able to do this at sea world.
18:37
Speaker 1: You shouldn't do this in the wild because when you
18:40
Speaker 1: swim with sharks like um, the small reef sharks and
18:43
Speaker 1: things will chum the water. They say that disrupts their
18:46
Speaker 1: feeding cycle and just being humans being around them basically
18:50
Speaker 1: says disrupts their whole uh underwater system they got going there?
18:54
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, definitely. I mean think about we're we're all
18:57
Speaker 1: pretty much lousy with swine flu these days. You don't
18:59
Speaker 1: need to that into their environment. It's terrible, So there
19:02
Speaker 1: are two sides to the coin. I mean, it's good
19:04
Speaker 1: for a lot of these places. It's a big part
19:06
Speaker 1: of their uh, their income as a country. You know
19:10
Speaker 1: a lot of these places are poor. You know, they're
19:12
Speaker 1: not like swimming off the coast of Abitha or anything
19:16
Speaker 1: like that. No, like Philippines not necessarily the wealthiest country
19:21
Speaker 1: in the world. Yeah, so they could use the money. Um,
19:24
Speaker 1: where do you fall What do you think of eco
19:28
Speaker 1: tourism versus the butchering of sharks? Well, no, no, no no,
19:31
Speaker 1: I mean I mean just period, like should they be
19:33
Speaker 1: completely left alone or should this stuff be allowed? I'm
19:36
Speaker 1: curious because I still don't know what to think. I
19:38
Speaker 1: think you can learn a lot, but who knows if
19:41
Speaker 1: there's any damage being done. Well. Yeah, Also in the
19:44
Speaker 1: other problems you posted about, um, the French tourism board
19:47
Speaker 1: asking Parisians to smile at the tourist swine recently, right,
19:51
Speaker 1: I mean, there are a lot of yokels out there
19:54
Speaker 1: who would love to just maybe get in a slap
19:57
Speaker 1: fight with the seal or something like that. Um, so
20:00
Speaker 1: there's always that danger. But again, I think if it's
20:02
Speaker 1: the if it's the choice between making money, you have
20:06
Speaker 1: to make money. Humans have to make money, and if
20:08
Speaker 1: you're a coastal economy, you're gonna make money off of
20:11
Speaker 1: the sea. So you're gonna make money off of the
20:13
Speaker 1: seat through conservation that eco tourism can provide, or you're
20:17
Speaker 1: gonna do it by catching and killing whale sharks for
20:20
Speaker 1: their fits. Right, That's clearly the choice is obvious, and
20:24
Speaker 1: there's but there's also more sustainable ways that you can
20:26
Speaker 1: carry out ecotourism as well. And I think that since
20:29
Speaker 1: it's such a new embudding economic sector, we don't really
20:33
Speaker 1: fully know how to do that yet, but I think
20:35
Speaker 1: it's good that that's the direction we're moving it. Yeah,
20:38
Speaker 1: that's that's my final judgment. What I want to do
20:41
Speaker 1: now is uh, and I now I kept you because
20:43
Speaker 1: you're scuba certified. Apologize again, don't worry about it. I
20:46
Speaker 1: kept you from scuba diving because I could not scuba
20:49
Speaker 1: dive and we both had to stay together. Uh, that's
20:52
Speaker 1: my next goal. I want to get down there because
20:54
Speaker 1: we got some of the we got the big the
20:56
Speaker 1: whale shark, and we got some of the smaller fish
20:58
Speaker 1: checking us out. But I wanted to get down there
21:01
Speaker 1: with the sharks. The hammer head and the reef shark
21:03
Speaker 1: What did you think about breathing underwater? Though? How cool?
21:06
Speaker 1: Is that? Pretty cool? When you're actually completely submerged and
21:09
Speaker 1: you're pretty cool underwater. It's it's the most amazing thing ever. Yeah,
21:13
Speaker 1: but it wore me out. We talked about that. I
21:15
Speaker 1: was exhausted, were totally wiped for the rest of the
21:20
Speaker 1: And it wasn't just the bacon cheeseburger and chicken fingers
21:23
Speaker 1: we each had for lunch afterward. It was definitely the
21:26
Speaker 1: compressed air has an effect. But it's still pretty cool hobby,
21:30
Speaker 1: albeit probably the most expensive one around aside from maybe
21:34
Speaker 1: private private piloting. Yeah, I would say that's expensive to
21:37
Speaker 1: I got one more thing for the whale sharks for you.
21:39
Speaker 1: What you got? So? India is a huge um whale
21:44
Speaker 1: shark fishing capital. And uh, there was a holy man
21:49
Speaker 1: named um Murari Bapu who a couple of years back
21:53
Speaker 1: was visiting Vera Belle, India, which is a coastal town.
21:57
Speaker 1: And Um he waded out into the water and saw
22:00
Speaker 1: a whale shark caught in a net and he blessed
22:03
Speaker 1: it and said that he would like to see this
22:06
Speaker 1: whale shark freed and left alone. And this really bustling
22:10
Speaker 1: whale shark capital suddenly its whale shark fishing dropped off completely,
22:16
Speaker 1: and the local government had been trying to prevent whale
22:20
Speaker 1: shark fishing for years to no avail. This guy goes
22:23
Speaker 1: out there blesses a whale shark, and all of a sudden,
22:25
Speaker 1: they don't whale shark out there anymore. Huh. Yeah, so
22:30
Speaker 1: maybe we could get al gore in a robe or something.
22:32
Speaker 1: And yeah, I don't know how much credit he would
22:36
Speaker 1: get and say Louisiana, but he's he's working his magic
22:41
Speaker 1: in India sportsman's paradise. So go bapoo, thank you. I
22:45
Speaker 1: had a soft encounter with him. That's it for whale sharks.
22:49
Speaker 1: And uh, we would like to go ahead and tell
22:51
Speaker 1: you to head on over to Frenzied waters dot com
22:55
Speaker 1: that has Mr Chuck Bryant and some of our other
22:58
Speaker 1: staffers from how Stuff Works dot COM's work um on
23:01
Speaker 1: that site. You can also check out shark week dot
23:04
Speaker 1: com for a bunch of stuff on the internet for
23:06
Speaker 1: Shark Week, and if you're too lazy to type, you
23:10
Speaker 1: can just watch Shark Week on Discovery Channel from August
23:13
Speaker 1: second to eight yeah, and watch Blood in the Water.
23:16
Speaker 1: That's the show they did about the UH nineteen sixteen
23:19
Speaker 1: and tax in New Jersey. It's really cool. I watched it.
23:21
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, good. And if you want to see the
23:24
Speaker 1: picture of Josher's and I with the whale sharks, I
23:26
Speaker 1: put one up in the blog. Yeah. What was the
23:28
Speaker 1: name of the post. I believe it was Josh and
23:30
Speaker 1: Chuck swim with Sharks appropriately enough, Yes, I should have
23:34
Speaker 1: been Josh and Chuck has soft Encounter, but that would
23:37
Speaker 1: have been a different picture altogether. You can find that
23:39
Speaker 1: and actually you can also find some really nice articles
23:43
Speaker 1: that Chuck Bryant wrote on sharks in general on how
23:46
Speaker 1: stuff Works dot com. And Molly Edmonds she wrote a
23:48
Speaker 1: lot of them. Sure so did Toothman. Yeah. Um, you
23:52
Speaker 1: can find those on how stuff Works dot com. And
23:55
Speaker 1: since I just said that word together, that means it's
23:58
Speaker 1: time for a listener man, right, Okay, Josh, I'm just
24:03
Speaker 1: gonna call this one uh toxo listener mail. And I knew,
24:09
Speaker 1: dude that when we did the taxo plasmosis, that we
24:12
Speaker 1: would have one person that says, I've got it and
24:15
Speaker 1: here's what it's like. Well, technically, of the people who
24:18
Speaker 1: write and should say that they have it. Yeah, but
24:20
Speaker 1: this guy like, all right, just let me read it
24:22
Speaker 1: to you. This is from Josh. Is this my life
24:26
Speaker 1: as a taxo fetus? Just listen to your toxoplasmosis podcast
24:31
Speaker 1: and blew my mind, Or maybe my mind was broken
24:33
Speaker 1: already since I was born with the parasite. My mother
24:37
Speaker 1: grew up on a farm that was lousy with barn
24:39
Speaker 1: cats and often had the duty of changing the household
24:42
Speaker 1: litter box. When she was pregnant and I was an
24:44
Speaker 1: early term fetus, her doctor told her that she had
24:47
Speaker 1: high levels of toxoplasmosis and the test suggested that her
24:51
Speaker 1: baby ME would likely have severe birth defects, including I
24:55
Speaker 1: am not making this up, the failure to develop a head. Awesome. Obviously,
25:00
Speaker 1: such a fetus would be still born, and the doctor
25:02
Speaker 1: recommended that my mother consider her options, including an early
25:05
Speaker 1: term abortion. My mom stuck it out until her first
25:08
Speaker 1: ultrasound and a number of subsequent tests suggested that I
25:11
Speaker 1: did indeed have a head, so ye haw h. The
25:14
Speaker 1: doctor still warned of the possible mental handicaps, including mental retardation,
25:19
Speaker 1: but my eventual birth and years of elementary school test
25:23
Speaker 1: proved him wrong once again. So I supposed to take
25:26
Speaker 1: away from your listener is if you're a pregnant woman
25:29
Speaker 1: with toxoplasmos toxoplasmosis, don't give up hope because your baby
25:33
Speaker 1: just might pull through and have a head after all.
25:35
Speaker 1: Listening to your podcast, I found that many of the
25:38
Speaker 1: associated behaviors of toxoplasmosis hosts fit our situation. My mother
25:44
Speaker 1: is indeed warm and open hearted, and I am kind
25:46
Speaker 1: of a stubborn and dogmatic jerk. I don't have any
25:50
Speaker 1: fondness for cats. However, I wouldn't diagn diagnose myself as schizophrenic.
25:54
Speaker 1: The two of my other personalities would disagree. Josh is
25:57
Speaker 1: a funny guy. Um a very us enjoyed the podcast
26:01
Speaker 1: and hope you're both enjoying the Georgian summer heat. We
26:04
Speaker 1: are not, in fact, Josh, Yeah, that was from John
26:08
Speaker 1: asked it here, who was a PhD candidate at the
26:10
Speaker 1: Department of Natural Resource Science at the University of Rhode Island.
26:13
Speaker 1: Thanks Josh, and good luck to you on your doctoral candidacy. Also,
26:19
Speaker 1: we got a bunch of emails Chuck from people who
26:21
Speaker 1: wanted to know how they could be diagnosed or not
26:24
Speaker 1: diagnosed with toxoplasmosis and um. From what I understand, it's
26:28
Speaker 1: just a simple blood test to check for anybodies that
26:30
Speaker 1: that developed a ward off the taxoplasmatic systems at your
26:35
Speaker 1: local CDs under the taxo plasmosis island right not true
26:39
Speaker 1: or Jimmy's bait shop and blood test galore right, he
26:44
Speaker 1: serves up live bait, toxoplasmosa tests and express up. Have
26:48
Speaker 1: you seen that place indicator that's that It says live
26:52
Speaker 1: bait pets taxes really yea interesting they sell live bait
26:57
Speaker 1: and do taxes? Didn't make you an expressive? Sure? If
27:01
Speaker 1: you want to talk to Chuck and I about any
27:03
Speaker 1: possible developmental diseases that you're in danger of having as
27:07
Speaker 1: a fetus, you can send us an email to stuff
27:11
Speaker 1: podcast at how stuff works dot com For more on
27:18
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff
27:20
Speaker 1: works dot com. Want more how stuff works, check out
27:24
Speaker 1: our blogs on the house stuff works dot com home page.
27:30
Speaker 1: Because you listen to this podcast, you're probably a forward
27:33
Speaker 1: thinker interested in topics like green technology, community, renewable resources,
27:39
Speaker 1: and the future of the world as we know it?
27:41
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27:44
Speaker 1: dot com and search forward thinking to find out more.
27:48
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27:51
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