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Speaker 2: It's actually quite unlike anything we've ever seen before.
Speaker 3: A giant, hairy creature in part ape part mat in Luckness,
Speaker 3: a twenty four mile long bottomless lake in the Highlands
Speaker 3: of Scotland.
Speaker 1: It's a creature known as the Luckness Monster. Monstertal.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Monster Talk, the science show about monsters. I'm
Speaker 2: Blake Smith. Darren's away this week, but we'll be back soon. Recently,
Speaker 2: my social media feed blew up with links to a
Speaker 2: story about a biology research project looking to Lockness and
Speaker 2: the legend of NeSSI with the technology of environmental DNA.
Speaker 2: I was somewhat concerned as I saw numerous responses from
Speaker 2: my friends online saying NeSSI isn't real, why bother and
Speaker 2: other things along those lines, clearly missing the point of
Speaker 2: the actual study. If these well intentioned folks had bothered
Speaker 2: to repass the headlines that have seen that the actual
Speaker 2: study was actually quite interesting. Yes, the news story headlines
Speaker 2: were about NeSSI, but the underlying science was about using
Speaker 2: DNA research to assess the various species living in multiple
Speaker 2: Scottish lakes. Imagine that using monsters to promote science research. Well,
Speaker 2: you can see why it's right at my alley. So
Speaker 2: I reached out to the lead researcher, Professor Neil Gimmel,
Speaker 2: and he was kind enough to conduct a muster Talk
Speaker 2: interview on very short notice. Not only that, but this
Speaker 2: interview took place while he was on the shores of
Speaker 2: Loch Ness. He turned his camera to the window at
Speaker 2: one point and showed me the still waters outside as
Speaker 2: we talked. Alas, our connection was so poor that I
Speaker 2: didn't keep our video going, and honestly, the quality of
Speaker 2: his side of the call got pretty bad at some points.
Speaker 2: But I believe after editing all but one of our
Speaker 2: exchanges turned out to be understandable. For that one, you'll
Speaker 2: hear me interrupt the conversation in post production to explain
Speaker 2: what he said. Other than that one spot, though, I
Speaker 2: think we got a good enough recording.
Speaker 4: That should all make sense.
Speaker 2: My apologies for the quality where it drops, but keep
Speaker 2: in mind that we're using a free technology that allows
Speaker 2: us to conduct real time video conferences across the ocean,
Speaker 2: such that I could be lurking in my basement in
Speaker 2: Georgia here in Munster Talk Central, while he's in his
Speaker 2: cabin on the shores of loch Ness. I wish we
Speaker 2: didn't have quality issues with the audio, but Professor Gimmel
Speaker 2: is certainly worth listening to, and I hope you find
Speaker 2: our DISCUSSI as interesting as I did. Oh and here's
Speaker 2: another little bit of monster Talk trivia. Doctor Gimmele got
Speaker 2: the idea for doing his e DNA research of the
Speaker 2: Locke while reading Darren n Aish's book Hunting Monster. A
Speaker 2: link to Darren's book, which is now available in paperback.
Speaker 2: We'll be in the show notes at monster talk dot org.
Speaker 2: Monster So Professor Neil Gimmel is the ag Research Chair
Speaker 2: and Reproduction in genomics at the University of Otago. He's
Speaker 2: been in the forefront of media coverage surrounding a collaborative
Speaker 2: project to use environmental DNA to look at species president
Speaker 2: in Lockness, home of the famous legendary Locke monster NeSSI.
Speaker 2: So welcome to Monster Talk, Neil.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I like you, I'm good.
Speaker 2: Thank you for making time for us. I know you've
Speaker 2: got a busy schedule right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's been a bit crazy, and We've been at
Speaker 1: Lockneis two days ago, so I'll actually know yesterday, so
Speaker 1: I'm even losing track of talk.
Speaker 2: I imagine. So it's interesting. So I saw several stories,
Speaker 2: you know, rolling around on my social media. Because we
Speaker 2: cover monsters and cryptozoology and science, everybody was sending me this.
Speaker 2: But what surprised me was a lot of my friends
Speaker 2: on social media are very much pro science people, but
Speaker 2: they seemed, honestly to be a little concerned about the
Speaker 2: use of NeSSI in a science project. I don't think
Speaker 2: they were actually reading the article, because the article sounded
Speaker 2: wonderful to me. I always think using monsters to promote
Speaker 2: science and advance those kind of ideas is a really
Speaker 2: great project. But can you tell us a little bit
Speaker 2: about the study and what the purpose of it is
Speaker 2: beyond what the headlines are telling us.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, sure, Blake, it's pretty straightforward, really. I mean,
Speaker 1: we want to understand what's living in lock needs. We
Speaker 1: don't believe there's a monster there, but we think that
Speaker 1: there's a great opportunity to use this environmental DNA technology
Speaker 1: to understand what is living near the fish, the plants,
Speaker 1: the microorganisms, the invertebrates, the whole shebbe. It can be studied.
Speaker 1: You've seen this environmental DNA and who knows, maybe there
Speaker 1: is something unknown to science in the murky depths of Lockneest.
Speaker 1: Scotland's got a monster problem. So there are about thirteen
Speaker 1: different locks here in Scotland that have recordings or reports
Speaker 1: of some kind of monster, mythical preacher. So NeSSI is
Speaker 1: the most famous of the bunch. But Lockmoor, which is
Speaker 1: another big lock here in Scotland, has a monster by
Speaker 1: the name of Moragg. There's another lock that's just south
Speaker 1: of Nest called oik And that's got a monster called Weoiki.
Speaker 1: And then the whole bunch of others that have been
Speaker 1: reported and have names that are predominantly in Gallic and
Speaker 1: I can't pronounce. But the point is that the point
Speaker 1: is that there's lots of legends of monsters here, particularly
Speaker 1: related to the locks, and I guess it's underpinned by
Speaker 1: the Celtic myth of the water horse or the kelpie.
Speaker 1: So or we will be so from some of these
Speaker 1: other sites where monsters may be present, and we'll be
Speaker 1: looking to see if there's anything different about those between
Speaker 1: locked nests and those other sites, or indeed what's similar.
Speaker 1: So we would expect to see a lot of the
Speaker 1: same fish species, would expect to see a lot of
Speaker 1: other things. I guess what's different amongst those is also
Speaker 1: interesting to us. But yes, the idea is that we've
Speaker 1: tried to use these control sites to figure out what's
Speaker 1: special about locked nest, But it turns out maybe there
Speaker 1: are sites that have monsters. Who knows.
Speaker 2: So the from a species perspective, where do these locks
Speaker 2: get their fish from? I mean, do all of them?
Speaker 2: Are they connected in some way?
Speaker 1: So Locked Nest it sits at the north of Scotland
Speaker 1: and it connects to the ocean through the more Firth
Speaker 1: and there's a short piece of river called the Ness River.
Speaker 1: It's only about six miles long, so Ness effectively connects
Speaker 1: to the More Firth and then the North Sea on
Speaker 1: the eastside of the north side of Scotland by about
Speaker 1: six miles of river. And so it's open and salmon
Speaker 1: and other species can swim through the nest river into Lockness.
Speaker 1: So there's migratory eels, there's migratory salmon, lamp preys. They're
Speaker 1: all known to move from the sea into Lockness. Occasionally
Speaker 1: seals are seen in the lock and other species that
Speaker 1: have obviously come from the oceans. And then from Lockness
Speaker 1: you go down through the southern end into what's called
Speaker 1: the Caledonian Canal, which is basically modified natural rivers which
Speaker 1: connect a large number of other locks, including Lockwek which
Speaker 1: I mentioned before, which has the monster called Wiouiki. So
Speaker 1: clearly the locks are all connected, and if there were monsters,
Speaker 1: perhaps they can have a party from time to time
Speaker 1: because they could move between these sites. So there is
Speaker 1: a degree of connection. So Lockness is not separate slate
Speaker 1: in any way.
Speaker 2: Neat when you're looking at the DNA, what would distinguish
Speaker 2: a lake monster from the more mundane species.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it would be something we can't easily identify on
Speaker 1: the tree of life, I'd say for a starting point.
Speaker 1: So we're working on the premise of hypothesis testing, so
Speaker 1: we expect that when we go looking at our simples
Speaker 1: that we'll see DNA from a variety of fish species,
Speaker 1: including things like trout and salmon, and perhaps lamprey and
Speaker 1: eels and pike, and a whole variety of fish that
Speaker 1: have been previously documented in the lock. And then we
Speaker 1: would expect also to find a large number of bacteria
Speaker 1: and algae and various other things. What we are less
Speaker 1: sure we will find is any evidence of some of
Speaker 1: the hypotheses have been put forward to explain lockness. So
Speaker 1: of course our major is the so called Jurassic hypothesis.
Speaker 2: This is the one section where Neil's audio cut out
Speaker 2: the point that I need to insert what he was saying.
Speaker 2: What he says is the most outrageous hypothesis is the
Speaker 2: so called Jurassic hypothesis that somewhere out there as a
Speaker 2: prehistoric species like a pleasiosaur that's somehow escaped extinction if
Speaker 2: such DNA was found. While we don't know exactly what
Speaker 2: plesiosaur DNA looks like, we could make an educated guess
Speaker 2: about what it would look like, even though we don't
Speaker 2: have any intact DNA to compare it to.
Speaker 1: But we can actually use a process called ancestral state
Speaker 1: reconstruction to figure out what I please you sauce sequence
Speaker 1: should look like within reasonable bounds. So we would expect,
Speaker 1: to please your sauce sequence to sit somewhere in the
Speaker 1: moditory of life around about where the crocodiles and birds are.
Speaker 2: That's fascinating and.
Speaker 1: That's sort of ballpark. So we look in for recentiance,
Speaker 1: not a crocodile and not a snake or lizard, something
Speaker 1: reptilian clearly, but new to science. And if we found
Speaker 1: something like that, well, I would be highly surprised, but
Speaker 1: I also then be setting out to further experiments to
Speaker 1: prove that we could replicate that finding. And in fact,
Speaker 1: actually it's a very important part of our processes that
Speaker 1: we need to have some level of replication, and we
Speaker 1: also need to have some level of observer wise so
Speaker 1: that people don't look at the lock samples more they
Speaker 1: look at any other samples, because the temptation would be
Speaker 1: to spend more time and energy looking at lockness because
Speaker 1: there's me to be something special for them. So anyway,
Speaker 1: so the pleasia saur is that it's the most grand
Speaker 1: of thee. There are some of the are other more
Speaker 1: mundane ideas a giant catfish, like the Wells catfish, which
Speaker 1: is the European catfish. These are monstrous animals, so they
Speaker 1: grow to fourteen or sixteen feet in length. They can
Speaker 1: be hundreds of pounds in weight. And in fact, you know,
Speaker 1: thinking about a standard family car, you're probably talking about
Speaker 1: something that's the length about half the size of a
Speaker 1: standard family car. And I would have to say, if
Speaker 1: something that had the head the width or half the
Speaker 1: width of my car's bonnet, then and now I saw
Speaker 1: that thing come up underneath my boat, I'd think I'd
Speaker 1: seen a monster too. So these the Wells capfish is
Speaker 1: supposedly and produced by the Victorians and variety of waterways
Speaker 1: again in Britain in the late eighteen hundreds. They can
Speaker 1: we think lived one hundred years of age or more.
Speaker 1: So it is possible, even if they weren't breeding, that
Speaker 1: one of those fish has survived over time and is
Speaker 1: in locked ness, although again improbable, but you just don't know.
Speaker 1: And then the other idea that Adrian Shine that we
Speaker 1: work with, has put forward is the idea that migratory
Speaker 1: sturgeons might be an explanation for some of the monster sightings.
Speaker 1: And again we know what a sturgeon's DNA looks like,
Speaker 1: and we could look for evidence of whether we see
Speaker 1: any sequences approximate what we think a sturgeon would look
Speaker 1: like in terms of st a sequence.
Speaker 2: I would love it if there was a really good
Speaker 2: photograph of that, so we could have the sturgeon photo.
Speaker 2: That'd be.
Speaker 1: You know, clearly there's a lot of sturge up in
Speaker 1: North America, pignosed sturge and things like that. Again, big
Speaker 1: animals sixteen foot and lengths hundreds of pounds in weight,
Speaker 1: live for years, and they're not even the biggest ones.
Speaker 1: I think the biggest ones are the ones from Siberia.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of plausible explanations that we can test,
Speaker 1: and we will will do.
Speaker 2: Other biological concerns about the species in the lock that
Speaker 2: this might be helpful for, Like people who are does
Speaker 2: this tell us anything about the population? Are merely the existence?
Speaker 2: Because I was curious about whether you know, the DNA
Speaker 2: samples tell you anything about how many of an animal
Speaker 2: might be present.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's very hard to quantify off these data
Speaker 1: at the moment. That's something that many people around the
Speaker 1: world are trying to figure out. So it's pretty much
Speaker 1: you can get an idea of abundance from the total
Speaker 1: quantity of DNA sequence, But it's hard to scale that
Speaker 1: because you know, big creatures will release more DNAs, creatures
Speaker 1: will have less because they've got fewer cells. So we
Speaker 1: need a better way to quantify that. So at the moment,
Speaker 1: predominantly descriptive this was present, but we don't necessarily know
Speaker 1: how many of them there are.
Speaker 2: Does the depth of the lock when you're doing these samples,
Speaker 2: are you expecting to see, like, do you think the
Speaker 2: temperature and other factors will like affect the distribution of
Speaker 2: the DNA across the samples.
Speaker 1: Well, it certainly affects the distribution of species, So we're
Speaker 1: going to be looking at temperature profiles and salinity profiles.
Speaker 1: We know there's a thermocline in lockness. In fact, actually
Speaker 1: the thermocline has been responsible for a lot of the
Speaker 1: potential sightings that have been made over the years. We
Speaker 1: think so logs submerge and then re emerge from time
Speaker 1: to time, partly driven by the fact that there is
Speaker 1: this temperature differential which creates currents, and sometimes these currents
Speaker 1: run counter to the wind direction. So what happened as
Speaker 1: you might have a northerly wind and yet people see
Speaker 1: objects moving against the wind. So the natural instinct is
Speaker 1: to say, Okay, it's moving, therefore I quit it's swimming,
Speaker 1: and therefore it's a monster because it's going against the
Speaker 1: direction of the prevailing wind. But in fact, Adrian China
Speaker 1: that there's dynamic water movements and locked nests driven by
Speaker 1: thermal differences. So I feel underwater mate is one of
Speaker 1: the things that they're discovered, and that the water and
Speaker 1: the currents can be moving in the opposite direction to
Speaker 1: the wind. Blowing currents interesting, so you get objects like
Speaker 1: logs that rise and fall in the water, so they
Speaker 1: submerging and they re emerge, and occasionally they can be
Speaker 1: moving opposite to the general prevailing wind flow. And the
Speaker 1: explanation that many people have said is okay, it's moving
Speaker 1: against the wind, therefore it must be swimming. But it
Speaker 1: doesn't have to be. It could easily be the currents
Speaker 1: that occur with lock nest of are driving.
Speaker 2: That you're looking at water on this particular study. This
Speaker 2: is me just hypothesizing, But would it be true or
Speaker 2: would it be reasonable to suspect that the sediments that
Speaker 2: fall on the bottom of the lock form something like
Speaker 2: a historical record in the same way ice cores do
Speaker 2: would you be able to do like a mud sample
Speaker 2: at the bottom and tell about the species variations over time.
Speaker 2: Would that kind of a sample.
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe they can preserve and sediments longer than a
Speaker 1: can and water, but we just don't know how long.
Speaker 1: What would depend on basically how protected it was from
Speaker 1: microorganism damage. So funnily enough, tonight we were just talking
Speaker 1: to Adria and Shine about cause that he took of
Speaker 1: sediments twenty five years ago for a project called the
Speaker 1: Rosetta Project, and it was quite revolutionary really. So Adrian
Speaker 1: managed to get a device two hundred and thirty meters
Speaker 1: down to the bottom of lock Nest and then he
Speaker 1: managed to sample deep into the lock six meters plus
Speaker 1: and that goes back nine and a half thousand years,
Speaker 1: so basically to the time of the last glaciation. Here. Wow,
Speaker 1: he's got a couple of cause like that. He's got
Speaker 1: some others that are shorter, and he still has them
Speaker 1: on a shelf up in the top of his loft,
Speaker 1: so they've been stored dry, which is not ideal. People
Speaker 1: that do this cooring would routinely freeze them. But we
Speaker 1: are going to give it a go and see if
Speaker 1: we can get some DNA out of his cause and
Speaker 1: see if we might be able to find evidence of
Speaker 1: what species were present in the sediment cause well, I
Speaker 1: don't know three four or five, nine thousand years ago.
Speaker 1: You know, I think the prospects of getting something good
Speaker 1: are probably pretty low. But you know, within my team
Speaker 1: that we've assembled here, we've got people from the University
Speaker 1: of Copenhagen, from Tom Gilbert's lab, and you know Tom's
Speaker 1: an expert on paleoge If anyone can do this, he
Speaker 1: probably can. So we'll give it a go.
Speaker 2: That's fantastic. Seems like a low cost, low risk way
Speaker 2: to approach the problem without having to do new core samples.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, course sampling is really hard.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So Adrian described as a bit of a moonshot, and
Speaker 1: probably he's probably right. It would have been a lot
Speaker 1: of work. And if we were to do that sort
Speaker 1: of project again, and it would take quite a lot
Speaker 1: of kit and time. So I think he had a
Speaker 1: rig deployed on the bottom of lock Nest for a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks, and you know that's a lot of
Speaker 1: boat time. Yeah, yeah, And and and a higher level
Speaker 1: of risk that you might actually achieve nothing so the
Speaker 1: weather he is actually phenomenal at the moment. So if
Speaker 1: we'd had all the equipment, maybe we could give it
Speaker 1: a go again, but not the strimp.
Speaker 2: You so you've got this team together. How expensive is
Speaker 2: a project like this is? Is this something that will
Speaker 2: be affordable to come back and do again and get
Speaker 2: some sort of sample over time?
Speaker 1: So it's hard to guess exactly how well. I mean,
Speaker 1: I should know how much it's cost. I can tell
Speaker 1: you that most I can tell you that the boat
Speaker 1: and the skipper, the Lockness Projects has donated to us,
Speaker 1: so we haven't had to pay for any of that.
Speaker 1: Pretty much everybody that's working on the project is donating
Speaker 1: their time for free. I'm paying for some accommodation, I'm
Speaker 1: paying for food. I haven't paid people to fly here
Speaker 1: except for my student and myself. So at that regard,
Speaker 1: it's a reasonably low cost project. Where it gets expensive
Speaker 1: is when we start buying the gear to take the samples.
Speaker 1: So that was a few thousand dollars. When we process
Speaker 1: the samples, it's going to be a few thousand dollars more.
Speaker 1: So what are we looking at now, Probably ten thousand
Speaker 1: dollars in reagents, costs probably with the accommodation bills and
Speaker 1: if as probably another ten thousand dollars, So not cheap
Speaker 1: by any stretch of the imagination. And then it gets
Speaker 1: even more expensive when we start getting to the lab
Speaker 1: and doing the sophisticated genetics. So there you're probably talking
Speaker 1: about thirty thousand dollars and then probably another thirty thousand
Speaker 1: dollars to sequencing, so that that adds up a much
Speaker 1: close to one hundred thousand bucks and money coming from
Speaker 1: I'm mostly paying for it out of bits of money
Speaker 1: that I've managed to accumulate from projects over time, and
Speaker 1: I'm also hopeful that some suppliers will donate their services. So,
Speaker 1: for example, the twenty thousand dollars worth of lab costs
Speaker 1: that I mentioned, I got an email last week and
Speaker 1: it looks like a company might come to the party
Speaker 1: on that. The sequencing. It looks very lightly that a
Speaker 1: company called a Luna, who one of the leaders in
Speaker 1: sequencing technologies, will probably help us with the and they
Speaker 1: look to have some support from a local company here
Speaker 1: in the UK. So hundreds of thousands of dollars is
Speaker 1: the answer, but not paying.
Speaker 2: That that's fantastic though, I mean I mean it's it's expensive,
Speaker 2: yet it's you know, it's it's it sounds like some
Speaker 2: really good return on the dollar for this kind of
Speaker 2: data that you're going to get out of this.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So this science that we do genetics is not
Speaker 1: a cheap science by any stretch of the imagination. The
Speaker 1: equipment and the chemicals are expensive, but you know, the
Speaker 1: insights that we're gaining from the work are quite extraordinary
Speaker 1: from time to time. So it's easy to say, oh,
Speaker 1: this genetics project is very expensive. Some more cynical out
Speaker 1: there would say, oh, that's a lot of meter to spend,
Speaker 1: looking to some does not. And it's not about the monster.
Speaker 1: The monster is an opportunity to get people interested in science. Okay,
Speaker 1: So for us, it's all about what's in lockes and
Speaker 1: it's measuring it by diversity's understanding what the life of
Speaker 1: that lock is like in June twenty eighteen, it's establishing
Speaker 1: a baseline from which we can do further experiments down
Speaker 1: the track, or how people who have instant questions of
Speaker 1: their own. So, for example, we're working with UK collaborators
Speaker 1: who are working on the patterns of movement of migratory fish.
Speaker 1: Is ishes well not locked ness samples going to be
Speaker 1: really really important the answer some of their questions. There's
Speaker 1: another proach that's worked the Scottish Natural Heritage Society and
Speaker 1: they are interested in what are the biological markers of
Speaker 1: healthy lake or lock systems. And again this will fit
Speaker 1: into part of the total package of what people know
Speaker 1: about locks in Scotland and we can make some assessment
Speaker 1: about how healthy lock ness is. So I think we'll
Speaker 1: get multiple science publications out out of this work as
Speaker 1: well as being able to explain to people what we're doing. Ye,
Speaker 1: DNA is powerful and hopefully getting them excited about the
Speaker 1: prospect of using that in other contexts. And who knows,
Speaker 1: we might even find a monster.
Speaker 2: I tell you what, Neil, this project is so close
Speaker 2: to my heart. This is exactly the sort of thing
Speaker 2: that we try to do with monster talk to you know.
Speaker 2: The fascination in monsters just naturally bleeds over into a
Speaker 2: really useful way of looking at biology and trying to
Speaker 2: understand science and to understand evolution and how all the
Speaker 2: things are related. There's so much there. I'm just really
Speaker 2: stoked for you. I hope you find something really cool.
Speaker 2: And I realized that really cool is not particularly scientific,
Speaker 2: but you know, I love this, so.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so do we. And that's what we're excited about.
Speaker 1: We're excited about the opportunity to excite people about science,
Speaker 1: I mean, basic fundamental science. If I told you about
Speaker 1: d and I without a monster hook, we probably get
Speaker 1: two coliments in the local paper if we are lucky.
Speaker 1: You know, we've been in the headlines of papers all
Speaker 1: around the world. We've got media coming you know, this
Speaker 1: week from major channels in the US. We've got NBC,
Speaker 1: We've got CBS, you know, we've got Sky and various
Speaker 1: other channels here in the UK BBC. And what a
Speaker 1: great opportunity to get people excited about an adventure. Because
Speaker 1: it is an adventure. We don't know what we're going
Speaker 1: to find. It might be quite mundane at the end
Speaker 1: of it, but I think it's still an adventure. And
Speaker 1: DNA is cool. I mean, it really is cool. So
Speaker 1: there was a paper published and about about a month
Speaker 1: ago describing sharks in the Pacific and the DNA tools
Speaker 1: identified more shark species than any of the other tools
Speaker 1: that we would use routinely to measure shark diversity. So
Speaker 1: normally what you normally what you do is you put
Speaker 1: a chunk of flesh out on a hook and you
Speaker 1: put it next to a video camera and you look
Speaker 1: to see what comes round and eats the meat. Right,
Speaker 1: It's basically how we survey sharks, and that works pretty well.
Speaker 1: But some sharks are actually pretty shy, and so they
Speaker 1: don't come to the meat, they don't eat it, they
Speaker 1: don't get video recorded, and you never know they're there.
Speaker 1: But with DNA you do. So here is a while
Speaker 1: to look at our world and identify those hidden things,
Speaker 1: those hidden creatures, which are important parts of our total
Speaker 1: understanding of those systems, but that we've been missing. So
Speaker 1: I love that we are able to use this tool
Speaker 1: to explore our world in a different way. And it
Speaker 1: turns out, even though I told you the price tag
Speaker 1: for the Locknest project's pretty high, if we were to
Speaker 1: do it with submarines or drones or you know, nets
Speaker 1: towing nets up and down the lock orse sonar, that's
Speaker 1: all really expensive too. You know, you're paying for people's time,
Speaker 1: you're paying for their expertise, you're paying for the equipment.
Speaker 1: So a science project like ours, which is going to
Speaker 1: be reduce maybe three papers give will take plus get
Speaker 1: a whole heap of people interested in science. Hopefully, even
Speaker 1: if it's one hundred hundred thousand dollars, that doesn't seem
Speaker 1: unreasonable to me.
Speaker 2: No, that sounds great. I know you have another thing
Speaker 2: that we're bumping up against, so I'll end this, but
Speaker 2: I hope that when you get a little further down
Speaker 2: the road with your sample investigation, we can talk again
Speaker 2: about how things are going, because this is really interesting.
Speaker 1: Happy to do that, and you know, it's all part
Speaker 1: and part of what we're doing is trying to get
Speaker 1: people interested and potential because I think, say, maybe not
Speaker 1: next year, but in five or ten years time, these
Speaker 1: sequencing devices will be cheap enough, and it's not going
Speaker 1: to be quite star Trek, but these sequencing devices are
Speaker 1: going to be cheap enough that you're be able to
Speaker 1: buy one, probably at your local corner store, that you
Speaker 1: can plug into your phone or whatever personal device you're carrying,
Speaker 1: and if you wanted to, if you chose to, you
Speaker 1: could monitor your natural world in a way which is
Speaker 1: quite unprecedented. You get a lot of DNA sequence information
Speaker 1: you don't even know I have to know that much
Speaker 1: about DNA sequence because the app on your phone will
Speaker 1: probably interrogate that, and it will spit out to you
Speaker 1: these species are present here. I mean, it becomes a
Speaker 1: really interesting toolkit for understanding what's present in our environment
Speaker 1: and recreational fishing. People might be interested in that. People
Speaker 1: might be interested in this affair, you know, going out
Speaker 1: surfing or swimming to know what species are out there.
Speaker 1: They might be interested in just running it across the
Speaker 1: salad bar at their local to make sure there aren't
Speaker 1: any bacteria that like they're kill them. These are important things.
Speaker 1: So I predict this technology is going to change our
Speaker 1: world in a lot of different ways. And Lockness is
Speaker 1: just a starting point for that conversation and that education
Speaker 1: of people and help bring them on that journey.
Speaker 2: Let's finish up with every episode when we interviewed them,
Speaker 2: when you we try to ask them this question, what's
Speaker 2: your favorite monster?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that's a really interesting one. I was fascinated
Speaker 1: and also terrified by Medusa when I was a kid.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Uh and does that does that count?
Speaker 2: Absolutely?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: This is mythical.
Speaker 2: So yeah, my daughters, the gorgons and the whole idea
Speaker 2: of snakes. Did you ever see the Seven Faces of
Speaker 2: Doctor Lowell with the Tony Randall. Uh no, Yeah, they
Speaker 2: have a wonderful Medusa in there. She's she's really it's
Speaker 2: it's Tony Randall, but he's his snake. Hare is sort
Speaker 2: of stop motion and a Harry Housing kind of.
Speaker 1: I might remember that. Yeah, anyway, so i'm i'm I'm
Speaker 1: remembering some of the old stop motion stuff, you know,
Speaker 1: from the Black and White. I mean, yeah, Medusa was scary.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah she was. Yeah, they where she still is scary.
Speaker 1: Still is scary, and so so that was that was
Speaker 1: that was quite terrifying. And I also remember a show
Speaker 1: called The Tomorrow People, which was a British show, and
Speaker 1: and these these these Tomorrow People had telepathic powers. They
Speaker 1: could do a thing called jaunting. They could basically will
Speaker 1: themselves to be any part of the universe. Anyway, one
Speaker 1: of those episodes they met a sort of Amnibus like god,
Speaker 1: and that thing terrified the crap out of me too.
Speaker 2: So yeah, probably like a dog headed sort of thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, dog headed sort of humans. Yeah, but you know,
Speaker 1: eight hearts and killed people.
Speaker 2: I've heard of that show before. I love to watch
Speaker 2: old British television, so I'll have to see if I
Speaker 2: can look that up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was pretty good. Actually, that's it's the seventies
Speaker 1: we're going. We're going back aways now. But fortunately the
Speaker 1: whole bunch of people who have loaded that stuff up
Speaker 1: onto onto YouTube and other other sites, which is just wonderful.
Speaker 1: If you've got a nostalgic streak, which I do from talking.
Speaker 2: About that, I do. It's almost debilitating.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I try to get my kids to watch it,
Speaker 1: but I just don't want to watch it because it's
Speaker 1: just not exciting enough.
Speaker 2: I think, Yeah, it's give me a little slow. I
Speaker 2: just got my daughter to watch a Knight of the
Speaker 2: Demon or Curse the Demon, which is based on Mr
Speaker 2: James' story. I just love that last night, and she was.
Speaker 2: I think she was genuinely scared, even though I think
Speaker 2: the effects don't really hold up very well. But it's
Speaker 2: such a good story. So anyway, i'd better let you
Speaker 2: go so you have a break before your next interview.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much. I'll send you an email when
Speaker 2: this is going to go live, And I really appreciate
Speaker 2: it and hope you do well with your research, and
Speaker 2: I'd like to hear how things turn out.
Speaker 1: Monster.
Speaker 2: You've been listening to Monster Talk, the science show about
Speaker 2: monsters I'm your host, Blake Smith, and you just heard
Speaker 2: an interview Professor Neil Gimmel, who's conducting an environmental DNA
Speaker 2: survey of several Scottish locks to find out what species
Speaker 2: live there and perhaps define any undiscovered monsters. Like Professor Gimmel,
Speaker 2: I don't expect he'll find pleaseosaurs, but as you've heard,
Speaker 2: he'll be able to test several hypotheses about the locke
Speaker 2: and the life forms therein with many different watery environments
Speaker 2: being tested, I commend him for combining a love of
Speaker 2: monsters with a love of good science. Monster Talk is
Speaker 2: an official podcast of Skeptic Magazine. The opinion is expressed
Speaker 2: on the shore are those of myself, my guests, and
Speaker 2: do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Skeptic Magazine or
Speaker 2: the Skeptic Society.
Speaker 4: We hope you've enjoyed this episode of Monster Talk. Each
Speaker 4: episode we strive to bring you the best in monster
Speaker 4: related content, with a focus on bringing scientific skepticism into
Speaker 4: the conversation. If you enjoy Monster Talk, we now have
Speaker 4: a variety of ways to support the show, all with
Speaker 4: convenient links at monster talk dot org, forge Slash support.
Speaker 4: That's monster talk dot org. Forge Slash support. There, we
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Speaker 4: donation button. A great way to support the show is
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Speaker 5: Save the data for a colossal Siicon twenty eighteen. Bigger venue,
Speaker 5: biggest stars, bigger ideas, bigger fun. Las Vegas, October the
Speaker 5: eighteenth to the twenty first, twenty eighteen Sicon is already
Speaker 5: one of the planet's premiere skeptical conferences, where hundreds of
Speaker 5: critical thinkers come to Las Vegas, the City of Illusions,
Speaker 5: to hear from the leading lights of science and skepticism.
Speaker 5: For twenty eighteen, we want Psichon to be bigger than ever.
Speaker 5: We've even booked a bigger hotel. Come to Las Vegas
Speaker 5: at the Westgate Resort and Casino to see the brilliant
Speaker 5: and hilarious Stephen Frye on stage with Richard Dawkins. An
Speaker 5: opening night talk by Stephen Pinker on the ideas behind
Speaker 5: his new book, Enlightenment Now, the triumphant return of James,
Speaker 5: the Amazing Randy, plus New York Times science writer Carl Zimmer,
Speaker 5: psychologist and mimetics expert Susan Blackmore, the Cybabe Yvette Dontemnt,
Speaker 5: virologist and advocate for science based medicine, Paul Offert, and
Speaker 5: many many more, along with comic musician George Rubb serving
Speaker 5: as Master of Ceremonies, a magic show from Banachek, author
Speaker 5: book signings, and of course, a Halloween costume party. It's
Speaker 5: true conspiracy theorists, quax peddling, fake medicine, and the deniers
Speaker 5: of evolution, climate change, and vaccine science are bigger threats
Speaker 5: than ever. With paikon twenty eighteen, Let's show them that
Speaker 5: they have just met their match. We'll see you in
Speaker 5: Las Vegas. For more information and to book your tickets,
Speaker 5: visit Csiiconference dot org that PSI Conference dot.
Speaker 2: Org Master Talk theme music is by Pete Stealing Monkeys.
Speaker 2: Thanks again for listening.
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Speaker 3: London's West End Here in the winter of eighteen eighty
Speaker 3: eight a series of bizarre and violent murders occurred which
Speaker 3: remained unsolved to this very day.
Speaker 1: Jack the Ripper.
Speaker 3: Was he a prosperous London surgeon, perhaps a member of
Speaker 3: British Royalty. Well a bullshit team has unearthed spectacular new
Speaker 3: evidence which suggests.
Speaker 4: That Jack the Ripper was, in fact the Luckness Monster.