A whale’s-eye-view of the ocean | Eric Stackpole

0:03You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. A DIY camera jury-rigged with suction cups captured something no one had ever seen. Two sperm whales communicating and swimming together in the deep ocean. And then we started hearing a different sound. It was a rapid series of clicks. That's called codas. This is the way sperm whales used to communicate with each other. So we were hearing her talking to another whale. We could not believe our ears. And then we couldn't believe our eyes. That's engineer Eric Stackpole. In his talk, he shares the story of how a scrappy, hand-built tool gave an intimate glimpse at the lives of these giants.

0:48He also makes an important case that in an age of rapidly advancing technology, the only limit to what we can discover is what we're curious enough to look for. Stick around afterwards. I sat down with Eric to go beyond his talk. We dig into why it's good that everyone has a different approach to learning, the emotional side of science, and why wonder is a vital part of discovery. It's almost like you can relate to your human aspects of those types of feelings and not just get the data, but actually picture what it might feel like to be the whale. And I think we're all explorers. We're all trying to find those things to relate to, even in the natural world.

1:24That's all coming up right after a short break.

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4:05And now, our TED Talk of the day. During COVID, everyone was sequestered in their own corners of the world. I had the strange fortune of being sequestered here aboard the Ocean Explorer, one of the most advanced research vessels on the planet, filming a show for National Geographic. The ship was designed not just for research, but also for storytelling. My job was to travel the world and show people what exploration is like from the perspective of an engineer. When I tell people this, they usually have three questions. What was it like? What did you learn? And how did you get the job? I'll go backward.

4:38I wasn't always a great engineer. I wasn't even a good student. I spent more time tinkering than doing homework, but I love engineering, and that has led me on an incredible journey. With friends, I built low-cost underwater robots designed to democratize exploration, and that democratization drew the attention of the show's producers. You can watch the show to see what we discovered, but for me, the most powerful moments were seeing things that no one had ever seen before, using the tools that we had built. In the Azores, we teamed up with Rui Pareto, renowned whale biologist who spent decades studying sperm whales.

5:14These giants can dive to over a mile deep to hunt, and we know very little about what they do when they're down there. So to find out, Rui had put together a very DIY tag. It used a taken-apart action camera. It had a light. There was a radio beacon, and it had suction cups designed to stick to the whale for a few hours and then pop up and float to the surface. It was very DIY, but even on an advanced research ship, building your own tools is often the way to get the information you need. It barely worked. We had to spend nights soldering and improvising to try to get it going. And at like two in the morning, we finally got it going.

5:47And while I overslept, Drew was already out on the boat. He placed the tag on a whale, and I remember him radioing back, the tag was on. Okay, a huge amount of suspense. Would it ever come back to the surface? Or would it flood with water? Would the battery die? Would the camera work? We had no idea. But it did come up. We found it. We took it back to the ship and fingers were crossed. Finally, we opened it up. There was no water inside. Oh my God. We pulled out the SD card and like with bated breath, we put it in the computer and waited for the files to load. And oh my God, we had footage from the back of a sperm whale.

6:21Oh my God. Rui and I were losing it. The first thing we saw was the whale's head and back as she descended into the bottom. You could hear the water rushing by as she swam faster and faster into the deep particles rushed by the camera. And the water pressure was so immense from the speed that eventually the suction cup started to come loose. I thought that was going to bit. We were going to lose it. But one suction cup miraculously held on. And it caused the tag to rotate backward. And now we can see the sails massive fluke. These can be 16 feet across on some whales, driving her into the depths.

6:53And as it got deeper, we started hearing on the camera's microphone clicking. You guys hear that? That is echolocation. That is the sound of the sperm whale hunting by listening for echoes bouncing off of prey. I couldn't believe it. And it didn't seem like she caught anything that time, but as she came shallower and the light grew brighter, we were just like amazed at what we were seeing. It didn't seem like this was possible. And then we started hearing a different sound. It was a rapid series of clicks. That's called codas. This is the way sperm whales used to communicate with each other. So we were hearing her talking to another whale.

7:29We could not believe our ears, and then we couldn't believe our eyes. Rui and I were losing it. The other whale came into the shot, and they were talking back and forth. They were swimming and bumping alongside each other. For minutes, we watched in disbelief as we watched this exchange of these two whales. Friends, family, lovers, we can never know for sure. But what we were witnessing was something no one had ever seen before. I remember seeing the bond that they had with my eyes and also feeling it with my heart. The footage we had seen was not just data. This was an experience of life. It was reminding me why exploration really matters.

8:10It's not just about understanding the world with our logical minds. I believe exploration has huge potential to allow us to experience things with emotion and feel the context of why we're here on Earth. We saw that they even dived together, and that is really something that moved me. That one last dive, seeing that maybe it's not even such a lonely place down there after all. We are all here together, and that is something extremely powerful. So we are living in an era now where our tools can give us amazing ability to understand the world in ways never before possible. The same advances that have put computers in our pockets and access to almost unlimited information on our screens can also allow us to explore in brand new ways.

8:55Our tools no longer limit what we can understand. It's more that our understanding is limited by curiosity. So the question isn't, what can we explore? So much is already within our reach. The real question is, what will we wonder about next? Thank you very much.

9:15That was Eric Stackpole at TED Next. Stay tuned for our interview, which is coming up, where we're going to dive into his journey into science, the power of exploration, and more behind-the-scenes stories about his time on board with Rui and the crew. That's up next after this break. This episode is sponsored by Defender. Are you a trailblazer? A risk taker? Someone with countless tales of epic adventure? Well, even the boldest among us started small, daring themselves to reach greater goals each day. If you're looking to take on a challenge like that, the Defender is too. It's a vehicle built for drivers capable of great things, whether they're headed towards uncharted territory or just a weekend getaway.

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11:44Eric, congrats on your talk. Thank you very much. It was a lot of fun. As you said, you are a professional tinkerer. So how did you turn your love of tinkering and your own inherent curiosity into a career in exploration? Yeah, well, I mean, I think you're right. It definitely starts with the tinkering. I kind of mentioned this in the talk. You know, I actually really struggled in school. I was not a great student. I had a lot of challenges with kind of the normal classroom-based learning style. And, you know, my mom used to take me to science museums, discovery museums, and I found myself so engaged in those sorts of things.

12:22And so there was this disconnect where I was really interested and I was learning so much kind of on my own. But then in classroom with problem sets and homework, I wasn't doing that well. So that kind of going back and forth taught me that really the best way for me to learn is to try things out myself. So I think tinkering kind of started as a way of indulging my curiosity where the classroom setting wasn't really doing that as much. And then if you do anything enough, you get good at it enough that you start being able to find ways to make it your career. Given the way you found inspiration through going to museums and then your parents introduced you to things outside of the traditional academic environment.

13:01What advice would you give to people who are listening who might, like you, struggle in academic environments but have yet to kind of find their thing? Yeah, right. Like a lot of people, I remember when I was starting OpenROV, and I would sometimes be giving talks about that. And they'd be, oh, you're so lucky. You found your thing. You found what your calling is, you know. And it seems sort of like, you know, I picture like a hound dog with its nose to the ground, looking for that scent. And once it finds it, it will know where to go. But until then, it has to kind of just sniff around. And I think that really has a lot to do with it.

13:34It's a sort of like finding a way to stay interested and curious about new things, as opposed to, I think some people and myself included have sometimes been like, well, this is my thing. This has to be my thing because I built such an identity around it. But it's not actually bringing them joy. When I think back, even to early childhood, I can picture there was a theme to my interest, even if I didn't know exactly what that would manifest itself into. But I remember as being a very little kid, you know, I had a room on the second floor overlooking another house. And, you know, I must have been like six or something.

14:09And I remember for whatever reason, fantasizing that what if a light switch in my house could make a light in the house very far away turn on and off, you know, this sort of idea of affecting things far away. So when I think back about my life, I think a lot about, you know, what are the themes? What are the things that when I think of my happiest moments or the moments where I've been sort of most interested, what are commonalities of all of those things? And then I look for other things that can bring me that same feeling. Yeah, that's good advice. It also strikes me that failure is an important learning experience, and it certainly was for you.

14:43Oh, yeah. I mean, and, you know, I guess it's so obvious to me at this point because I've experienced so much that it goes almost without saying, but like failure is part of the process. Failure may be one of the most important parts of the process. It's about having an attitude toward failure that that's okay, that that's how you learn how to do it better. That really brings things forward. What led you out into the ocean in the first place? Well, you know, I actually started my career being very interested in space exploration. I got my ham radio license when I was a kid. I remember during a Boy Scout camping trip, watching this dot go across the sky as we were laying on our sleeping bags beneath the night sky And our scoutmaster describes it, that's a satellite.

15:23And I'd learned later that its orbit is a 90-minute orbit. In 45 minutes, that human-made dot would be on the other side of the globe. So that got me into space exploration. I loved satellites and ham radio. And then in college, started a satellite building team. And I got a job at NASA working on small spacecraft. Then that got me into grad school. And I was realizing that people would spend their whole lives sometimes, You know, their entire career working on a space mission that would just get canceled or the rocket would blow up, you know, and that would be it. Meanwhile, other people in my grad lab were working on these ROVs and they were doing multiple missions a year.

16:02That kind of just sparked this interest. And I had this vision of, you know, this vehicle with its lights shining forward, descending from blue into dark blue and into black. And that feeling of kind of almost trepidation going into the unknown. And yeah, it just started kind of going up from there. Wow. Turning to the ocean explorer, the ship that you were on, you said that her purpose was not just for research, but also for storytelling. And when you were talking about the story of seeing the whale footage in your TED Talk, you said that the footage was not just data, it was an experience of life.

16:39How do you think storytelling helps people connect with science? Yeah, I think for me, it makes me kind of zoom out when we do science to the big picture. Why are we even doing it in the first place? You know, there's certainly things like, you know, if you're trying to research, you know, medicine or something to come up with a new drug to help a disease that has a very utilitarian purpose. But I think exploration in the broadest sense is a tool that allows us to contextualize why we are on planet Earth and who we are here. What is the context of being alive on planet Earth? and, you know, getting to see what it's like to be a sperm whale diving into the deep sea, you know, is something that our technology has enabled us to do.

17:20We could build this tag and do all that. And we can learn all these things about their eating habits and where they hunt and what they hunt, which is maybe useful for preservation. But I think that the biggest thing is like, wow, we are experiencing planet Earth in a way that's profound in the same way that we can go outside and see trees growing from the ground or look at the night sky and with the help of the telescope now understand what that means. I feel like that moment, at least for me, really helps me understand in a broader sense what being alive on the planet means. And why do you think moments like that resonate so strongly with people who watch them?

17:57That's a great question. Because yeah, you don't have to, you know, you don't have to be the one in the ship. Yeah, no, you don't. And in fact, you also don't need to know anything about science. You know, you can be very, you can have just learned that there's a thing called a sperm whale that day and still found this fascinating. Find it very moving, right. Yeah. I remember aboard the ship with a lot of people who have dedicated their lives to researching these types of animals. They'd always warn us not to personify them too much. They are different than we are, you know. But I think you don't have to personify an animal to relate to it.

18:31When you see it diving into the abyss, you know, that kind of energetic desire to go into the place where you can get your sustenance. I think we've all had that feeling, you know, and then as it's starting to concentrate, now it's gotten into the deep, dark abyss and it needs to listen for that echo coming from its echolocation. I felt an emotion of kind of like, okay, now there's this stillness. We got to the place, mission on, like, let's see if we can find this food. And then you bring back in the human factor that it's almost sort of scary down there. It's dark. You don't know what's lurking.

19:04To me, I think that that's an emotional roller coaster that is sort of relatable. It's almost like you can relate to your human aspects of those types of feelings and not just get the data, but actually picture what it might feel like to be the whale. And I think we're all explorers. We're all trying to find those things to relate to, even in the natural world. You mentioned we're all explorers. Talk to me a little bit about democratizing exploration, because even on this very advanced research vessel, y 'all relied on a DIY whale tag. So what do you think that these more homemade tools, why do you think they're still so important in scientific discovery?

19:45Oh, I love that question. I mean, I think I've really built a lot of my career around trying to pursue that. Yeah, there's some old saying that like, you know, the masters build their own tools. And a lot of times when you're on the cutting edge, you know, there's no whale tags are us, especially if you have a very specific question that you're trying to answer. You know, Rui, you know, is a master. He's one of the leading people in his field. He came up with how to get this off the shelf camera that had a particular, you know, lens that's very sensitive to low light conditions. And he knew that these other tags that maybe were built for other types of whales or other situations were too large and were likely to fall off with the speed that the whale goes down and some other things like that.

20:27If you want to do something new, you probably have to do it in a new way. And I think that that maker spirit is not only important for scientists who are right on the cutting edge, but if you want to do something that's new for yourself, you might need to figure out how to do it in a new way. When we started OpenROV, the lowest cost robotic submarine that could go to that kind of depth was still on the order of tens of thousands of dollars. And so we just talked about the emotion of exploration, that everyone, I think, has this feeling of wanting to have the thrill of discovery, of seeing a new thing.

21:02And that wasn't going to be possible unless we kind of had this sort of makery attitude and we were willing to do things in new ways that maybe aren't as professional or even as reliable. But, you know, if you want to make something happen, it is possible. And, you know, having that kind of innovative attitude, trying things out on your own, I think is often the only path there. Let's jump back to the day of discovery that you speak of in your talk. And we could all hear how exciting it was. What was going through your mind the moment that you first saw the footage of the sperm whales communicating and swimming together?

21:40Oh, man. Well, first of all, just the fact that we got footage blew my mind. You know, at two in the morning, I guess technically that morning, this tag was in pieces on the lab bench. You know, the camera was taken apart. The microphone wasn't wired in. You know, it was this very last minute effort to kind of get it together on one of our last days of being able to deploy. So the fact that we got any footage just blew my mind. but I think the fact that not only was it successful that we saw so many new things it kind of actually made me think almost more of the technology the fact that like even when something seems so unlikely it's possible that the profound can come from that I was next to Rui who spent his entire life researching these animals and to see him physically like he even cried a little bit both of us did as we were seeing this was like I guess I was in awe of what we were witnessing about nature, but I was in awe of the moment that we were at in time where technology exists that makes it possible to participate in this way.

22:41It's a huge release to be spending so much time preparing for something and then to get what you were hoping and more. So yeah, I think I was sort of flooded with emotions of feeling like I could relate and understand these whales in that way that we were talking about before. And that also I was alive as a human and a technologist in this moment where we could do something like this for the first time. I'm so lucky to be able to witness something in a way that no humans ever have before. Those both were really creating a lot of emotion, I think, for both of us. And you ended your talk with a powerful message about technology.

23:17So I wanted to ask you, when it comes to these fast-advancing new technologies, and I know this is a broad question because it encompasses a lot. What scares you the most about the advancements right now in our tech tools? And what excites you? Well, you know, I'm an engineer, not just by training, but like at heart. Yeah, yeah. I love technology and I'm optimistic about it. But I certainly see how many of these extremely powerful technologies are double-edged swords. From the moment we harnessed fire, we were dealing with these sort of double-edged sword scenarios. Something powerful can create great destruction, or it can allow you to go very hard in a wrong direction.

23:58You know, the thing you can't not talk about these days is AI. And while there's a lot of people talking about the concerns they have for it, which are very legitimate, I think that we are in this moment where we can profoundly change that contextualization I was talking about before. We have the ability to understand who we are in the frame of all of it in a way that no one has had the privilege to have before. And I think it would be an awful tragedy if we miss the full potential of what that has. So just like discovering that you can manipulate fire for the first time, we should treat it with a sort of respect, with a cautiousness, but also with an excitedness and eagerness to see what is possible.

24:45And that's what inspires me every day. You end by saying that curiosity is now our biggest limit to exploration. What do you mean by that? Yeah, I'm pretty proud of that. I really think it's true. Because we have this incredible capability at our fingertips in all these different forms, using the whale experience as an example, it used to be that we could only wonder what's down there and we could work really hard to try to get some little sensor or something to learn just a little bit to push the envelope a little bit further. But I think we are in this almost like singularity moment where access to information is so available that basically, it's like if you're a student, you can choose what you want to major in.

25:32There's so many things to learn, but you have to decide what your interest is and what to focus on. I think that we're like that as a society, we can learn in any direction possible. And as the bulk of humans on the planet, I'm sure we'll go in many directions. But, you know, I think we should really prioritize what are the things we want to, you know, almost philosophically are the most important for us to learn about. And as each individual, we should decide what path do we want to go down? We're flooded with information, information is pushed at us, and it's information we don't even necessarily need.

26:04We're actually going to maybe need to improve the signal to noise ratio by reducing the noise and improving the signal by focusing on the things that matter, both individually and as a society. Where do you want to explore next? Or what's a question that you're still trying to answer? So right now I'm working on, this is a very silly thing, but it's a portable houseboat. It's this little boat that you can sleep on. You can spend the night in, but it collapses like IKEA furniture and you could put it in the back of your car. You can FedEx it to anywhere in the world. Oh my gosh. And so the newest thing I've been thinking about is how do I make it so regular people can go spend the night on a boat out in, you know, this is an inland water boat for still waters, but, you know, go down a canal or on a lake and just spend the night in nature.

26:47It maybe seems a little bit strange, but more recently I've been thinking a lot more about that context question and trying to get a grasp of how the big picture works. And a lot of that is an internal exploration. It's about what are the ways I can really focus on the feeling of wonder. I'd say the theme of my interest in exploration has always been the sort of right at the edge between fear and curiosity, going into that dark cave as a little boy and not knowing what I'd find or the darkness of space that seems so vast and intimidating or the depth of the sea. And there's that thing where you're kind of afraid to go, but curiosity makes you want to go even further.

27:29I'm starting to realize like maybe it doesn't have to be going right to the edge of the known it might just have to be right to the edge of the experienced you know how do you make people experience that magnificent sky of stars or bioluminescence for themselves so who knows where where it'll go next but right now that's been the interest is really trying to make the experience of wonder become more available even if it's not scientific exploration it's it's exploration within oneself. Before we wrap, what are things that you want the audience to learn, feel, and do after your talk? Okay. I think people should learn that there is always a lot more to the story than meets the eye.

28:09I gave that example of if you hear about there's animal that's called a dog and it has four legs and it does a thing called barking, then you feel like you know a dog. But when you spend time with it, you really know a dog. Knowing the names of all the birds is not knowing the birds. You have to understand their character. And for any young explorers or people who are just getting into it, just realize that once you've seen something, you don't know it yet. You can always go deeper. Okay, feel. I think I'd like people to really connect with the thing that we had when we were young, that childlike wonder.

28:43I know it sounds sort of hippie-ish or something, but I really believe that even scientists should always be in touch with what a place feels like to not lose touch of that. Because I think after all, a lot of the reason we explore ultimately is for that greater understanding of how we are in all of it. And to be in awe, even if that means not understanding, but just being in a daze by what we experience, that's still an important part of scientific exploration. And what should people do? Well, my biggest thing I'd urge is to not wait for permission. I especially give this advice to young people who are still in school, but I think it applies to everyone.

29:19I think we're in our society kind of trained to wait until you have a school assignment or your boss gives you the job, you know, the task that you want to do something you're interested in. But at least what has worked really well for me has been if there's something that is calling you, just try it. Even if the first prototype of a thing is going to be cardboard and duct tape and it's not going to work. The second you start actually trying to do the thing, as opposed to just researching it, it'll change your perspective. You'll learn very quickly how to do it better. You'll fail your way to success, you know, just don't wait.

29:53Don't wait for permission. That's what I would suggest. Try something out horribly. And if you continue to be interested in it, you'll eventually make it successful. Fail your way to success. Fail your way to success. I love it. Engineer and ocean explorer, Eric Stackpole. Eric, thank you so much. This has been a real pleasure. And thank you very much as well. Absolutely.

30:20That was Eric Stackpole at TED Next 2025 and in conversation with me, Elise Hu.

30:50Sonsika Sangmarnivon. Additional support from Daniela Ballarezzo and Banban Chang. I'm Elise Hume. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed. Thanks for listening.

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