when people experience some kind of accident they see it happening in slow motion like you know you have seconds to live so you're going to live it to the fullest that sort of thing so time seems to stretch out expand and contract within the mind that leads to the question of is it something the mind constructs to make sense of the world is it an illusion the mind constructs to make sense of the world so that again ties into the question of what is consciousness right so this is a fascinating topic but it is still not firmly in the realm of science because we can't define cognition we can't define consciousness is consciousness an emergent phenomenon or is it something that permeates the universe is there a quantum consciousness field out there that permeates the entire universe and we are simply local manifestations of that or is it something else so these are questions that need to be asked maybe as of today these are philosophical questions not firmly in the realm of science but science is


not firmly in the realm of science but science is struggling and it is it is doing its best to study consciousness because it is very important in the realm of quantum physics because it may have possibly some kind of bearing on the actual state of the universe maybe if you don't look at the moon it doesn't exist you know that sort of thing the observer effect we don't know for sure but these the these the field of quantum physics has brought out incredibly strange questions to the four and questions that we are still not able to answer would you like to hear a raw version of what spiritualism has to say about consciousness i would love because of life yes which maybe ties in a little bit to this conversation again this is not the exact accurate version of it because i am still learning about the true nature of what i've read this is a raw form of it so the core purpose of human life is that imagine that there was one being okay one form of consciousness which is pure consciousness which


one form of consciousness which is pure consciousness which we refer to as god right that one superior being and there might be more gods running other universes but in our universe there's one god which wanted to understand itself but it couldn't understand itself we couldn't understand what it is in the same way that you and me can't understand what we are when we look at our hands we're like what is these hands what is this what are these mics what is this podcast we're doing we couldn't understand any of it in the same way that being couldn't understand itself but that being was powerful it was evolved maybe we'll reach that state of evolution one day but for now in order to understand itself it took one cell from its brain and put it on its palm okay that one cell is one soul which occupies our human body in the same way there are billions of souls billions of cells which find their way to our plane which is called the plane of the earth


our plane which is called the plane of the earth our loc where throughout our lives as those little cells we are supposed to find out our true nature and we are part of god we have that peace of god or that higher being in us and throughout your life you're supposed to reconnect with that you me and when i say throughout our life i mean throughout the journey of a soul which could be across multiple lives how do you get to that being you get there through karma and you get through self-realization which could happen through meditation which could happen through study which could happen through what people call enlightenment what is enlightenment that cell is rediscovering what it's actually a part of and that's the whole process of advanced meditation of these meditation schools which say that just be a kind person and search for your true nature self-awareness understand yourself your life isn't just about money even if it is about money it's about what you do with that money how do you react to


you do with that money how do you react to situations how do you react to places that you're placed within when life throws difficulties at you what do you do so in order to understand itself that pure consciousness created a world first which is the earth that we know which is all these experiences and put us here in order to go through good and bad experiences to understand corners of its own thought process corners of its own mind corners of its own consciousness and our purpose is to get back to it now from that journey from that pure consciousness to here we pass through many planes which are probably governed by different forms of physics we know all the physics that we know here the newton's three laws etc etc but you speak about the quantum world you speak about 11 dimensions they are probably mathematical representations of all those planes we pass through maybe keeping that in mind um that's what i'd like to ask you so what are those 11 dimensions because you spoke about time and maybe


those 11 dimensions because you spoke about time and maybe this could be the last section of this particular podcast it's called the mind of a scientist or mind [ __ ] science but so what are those 11 dimensions like could you hand hold us to it so uh when scientists were trying to figure out what gravity is they realized that quantum mechanics is not able to describe gravity because general relativity doesn't work in curved space time so i'm sorry quantum physics doesn't work in the curved space time of general relativity so they they thought of how about the most fundamental entity or particle in the universe is just a one-dimensional vibrating string and maybe the entire universe the atoms protons quarks all the fundamental particles everything all the interactions emerge out of these one-dimensional vibrating spring strings so they try to construct a universe out of that idea now they found that in order to make this idea work the mathematics it did not work in a three-dimensional or fourth dimensional mathematics they needed to have


or fourth dimensional mathematics they needed to have 10 or 11 dimensions to make this theory mathematically consistent otherwise it would fail so it is all in order to fit this idea of vibrating strings as the foundation of the universe that they had to construct the theory in 10 or 11 dimensions maybe a string is the connection between the soul and the god anything is possible we don't know at this stage we don't know at this stage but what you have described to me all these different dimensions and the the single consciousness that we are part of this essentially is vedanta what you're talking about the the philosophy of vedanta talks about the fact that if there is light in space it doesn't shine unless there is an object it can shine off off so the object is so that light is consciousness and the object it shines off of is your soul so that is the kind of philosophy you have in vedanta i'm not saying it's science it's philosophy there is a distinction because philosophy


philosophy there is a distinction because philosophy talks about non-physical concepts and phenomena and objects which science cannot address but and this is the reason why theoretical physicists especially people like boring boher schodinger heisenberg all these pioneers of quantum physics they invariably found themselves drawn towards indian philosophy and vedanta because these concepts if you think deep about them deeply about them they seem to be striking parallels so that these ancient indians from thousands of years ago have contemplated the things which contaminate quantum mechanics is now making us think about they have already thought about these things and they have created a philosophy out of it by exploring the inner universe by our meditation physics and science is about exploring the external universe why whereas spirituality and philosophy and meditation is about exploring the inner universe and it seems it it appears that we can find answers to the external universe by looking within as well so there seems to be some sort of connection


well so there seems to be some sort of connection between the two and that is the thing about why theoretical physicists are invariably drawn towards once they reach a certain level of maturity and intelligence they are drawn towards vedanta you know i have a trippy thought that i have thought a lot about lately which is that the concept of thoughts is that they're not our own for example don't tell me your name sir but close your mouth and don't say anything just think of your name you heard a voice in your head say abhijit now where did that voice come from so there is some source of something that's even giving us our thoughts which means that anything you can think of i think of a red tornado maybe on the surface of venus that red tornado is actually happening so anything that you think of is actually there somewhere i have heard this before somewhere that anything you can imagine does exist somewhere on this universe there is a place somewhere in this environment in the


there is a place somewhere in this environment in the enormity of the universe that any thought anything you can think of in your mind no matter how abstract or ridiculous it is it may actually exist somewhere because imagine you're thinking of a very crazily drawn robot there's a kid in south korea who's currently drawing that robot but because you and that kid are connected to the same consciousness you're thinking of that thought you're thinking of that thought through his eyes or her eyes and that's the nature of thoughts which is why um you know all these crazy thoughts we have or the crazy thoughts that scientists have are probably just gifts given to them by that consciousness that okay you worked hard enough here why don't you take this thought in your dream and then once you wake up show the world the truth using formulae and science it does feel like a gift once you see that clarity that that moment of clarity when you know the answer it does feel like a gift from the heavens


it does feel like a gift from the heavens it does it's like a flash of light just opened up to you and you and you saw the answer yeah so you saw the truths yeah you saw the truth it's the truth maybe i'd like to end this podcast with kind of highlighting your phd you spoke about dark matter um quickly we could explain what dark matter is again we've done it in the first astrophysics podcast we had done with you but if you could quickly explain dark matter but also explain what you went through over the 10 years of just studying one subject what happened in your mind what did you learn about the universe what do you learn about the nature of existence so dark matter is one of the missing components of the universe if we observe the universe out there i'll make a long story short and say that what we observe all the stars galaxies all the light all the nebulae all the dust clouds it's about four percent of the actual universe 96


it's about four percent of the actual universe 96 approximately is dark we don't know what it is out of this 96 percent about 20 23 is what we call dark matter it is some form of matter that interacts only gravitationally you can't it is not visible but you can you can sense its gravitational uh impact right and there is something even more mysterious about 75 percent roughly which is dark energy and it is something that is causing the expansion of the universe not just the expansion but the accelerating expansion of the universe and we can see the effect of that and this seems to be the major component of the missing mass energy of the universe so we have not the foggiest clue of what that is dark matter we still can guess that it's some kind of particle that interacts only gravitationally but dark energy is it seems to be some form of repulsive gravity that causes space time to expand and create itself so that is what these concepts are they do exist we know that because


these concepts are they do exist we know that because we have now experimental evidence of the existence of these of these things but what did you learn about life like through that phd what did you learn about your own mind i learned i mean i'm not sure if my mind is the same as everybody else's mind but i learned that the mind is almost infinite you can construct any kind of physical theory if you know mathematics you can play around with all kinds of concepts you can create various forms of dark matter in in in the lab of your mind and then you can test it out whether it's it works with the laws of physics as you know them or not of course it's a labor of love it takes a lot of time to develop these theories but it's fun for me it's a game like you said you have to find something to keep yourself entertained for me this this is a game for me you know it's fun also i feel the universe is a great representation of the


i feel the universe is a great representation of the mind echoes the thought of what's happening on the outside is happening on the inside and this is something i've kind of confirmed after getting to know you you've taken your mind very deep in the realms of science which has sort of expanded your abilities to think and to retain that's something i've noticed strongly about you and i've done 150 broadcast 150 plus podcast you know 150 plus intelligent successful people but there's something very different about you primarily because you're a scientist and you've expanded your mind mind and you've expanded your mind to that degree you've also then once with that expanded mind you've gone into your realms of interest which are geopolitics and history and kind of gone very deep in those as well so i feel like the fundamental thing i learned from you is that your mind has the ability to become stronger more retentive is that the word yeah it is more retentive like you can retain more information if you just challenge your own


can retain more information if you just challenge your own mind uh and if your mind is you know expandable which meditation proves as well scientifically there are studies that show your corpus callosum becomes stronger your processing power of your brain gets stronger through meditation i'm sure the same happens through study maybe at a different pace or whatever but it's the same uh concept that's what people should gain even from these podcasts because even to listen to this podcast till the end you would have to turn on your nervous system and kind of keep up with the conversation which is brain exercise so brain exercise primarily is what i've gained from you and even on a personal level i've seen what two years of podcasting did to my own mind perceptions realities of the world realities of the universe one day i'm talking to gauranga swami next day i'm talking to you and then tying those two things together podcasting has expanded my head um and i see the difference in my own self but also


i see the difference in my own self but also i remember being 22 and pretty much being very naive being stupid knowing just about fitness over time reading challenging myself and i've understood the expansive nature of the mind which is just like the universe so that's the big reason i even wanted to do this particular podcast which was called mind effing science or life of a scientist life in mind of a scientist um but yeah so maybe we can end this particular conversation with you saying whatever you want to what's the end message you want to give the audience at this point i would say that the mind is almost infinite i think there are areas of our mind that we haven't even accessed i think there is no limit to what we can learn if we challenge ourselves and if we pursue our curiosity everybody is curious about certain things everybody enjoys certain activities so if you go in that direction and try to learn about things that you don't know about i think there is


things that you don't know about i think there is no limit to learning maybe you will forget certain things while learning new things but maybe you're forgetting things that you don't really need so i think learning is a lifelong process it's what makes life enjoyable at least for me i'm very curious i don't think i'll ever stop learning i have a book list that extends to the beyond my lifespan i have so many books that i still want to read i don't think i'll ever be able to read all of them but keep reading keep learning you know you know the everyday form of existence if you really get observant about what's happening around you especially conversation most of it is gossip most of it is conversation about other human beings emotional dynamics between families between friends um the bhagavad gita actually says you switch off from those conversations a little bit because that's the the nature of human beings we are biologically built for gossip discussing other human beings because that's what taught


discussing other human beings because that's what taught us to collaborate when we were stone age people and kind of grow societies and we're hardwired to gossip and to enjoy gossip to enjoy things like big boss but when you move away from that and find enjoyment and curiosity rather than having curiosity just about other human beings that's where you'll really see your mind expanding and this is something i've practiced in my own life as well ever since the podcast started i've consciously moved away from rooms where gossip takes place so people who constantly gossip and gone into rooms like this one gone towards people like yourself who discuss concepts who discuss the world who discuss the universe rather than discussing what someone's going through because what is gossip at the end of the day negative gossip especially is just a mode of making yourself feel better by saying oh yeah those people yeah they broke up i'm okay i'm at a happier state than them my happiness levels are more


happier state than them my happiness levels are more than them therefore i am more than them but these kind of concepts where you're not comparing yourself to another human but you're comparing yourself to the entire external world this is the kind of comparison you should actually breed within your own mind and as anger varaku taught me curiosity breeds happiness so chase curiosity and you'll always be happy i agree so thank you sir again this was fantastic my pleasure thank you for having me it's lovely being here likewise so it's like it's always lovely having you one thing i'm humbled by and i'm extremely grateful for is there's never been a single day where you said no i can't come for this particular word because you're always ready to come i don't know what these podcasts hold for you because i'm guessing you get to express yourself on your channel as well but for me i read concepts and they say that to solidify a concept you have to talk about it to


solidify a concept you have to talk about it to another person so a lot of concepts are solidified when i'm spending time with you and i'm guessing it's sort of the same for you it is it is yes it's really enjoyable talking to you you're an intelligent person curious person mind open which is a very rare quality so it's great fun talking to you even i think i learned how to express myself better while these conversations i'm glad so on to more podcasts this one was a science special next up history special usually in these outros i end up talking about what i learned from that podcast what i gained from that particular guest but always extreme levels of stimulation there's never a paragraph exchanged between us where we don't learn something from each other at least i learn immense amounts for every sentence that leaves this man's mouth he's someone who's become sort of a knowledge mentor to me as i'm sure he's become to you as well more than a mentor


become to you as well more than a mentor he's kind of a big brother figure in my life now we just have cool conversation like this and you know after abhijit has entered my life and the realms of the randi show i've realized that podcasting in india is here to stay there are gems like this man out there in india and i'd love to know from you guys in the comments section on our social media handles which are the gems like this who are undiscovered who can become trs all-stars who else would you like to see on the runway show so capable of being repeat guess because i'm always on the lookout for big brothers and big sisters to learn from so let me know and of course follow the red vision spotify every episode is available in spotify 48 hours before it's available anywhere else in the world this was another gorgeous episode with abhijit the ranvi show will be back soon [Music]


some of our podcasts are much more popular than the others and this special two-part conversation is gonna be just like that the podcast where we featured adventurers people who've seen parts of the planet or parts of life or experiences that other people can only dream to see or experience those are the podcasts that are the most fun to create for me and i'm sure those are the podcasts that are the most fun to consume for you this is a special two-part conversation with captain sid chakravarthi they say that two-thirds of our planet consists of water bodies and there's very few people who've explored that vast two-third of the earth's surface and sid chakravarthy is one of those people both these parts have a lot of stories about the ocean about his perspectives this part in particular will highlight his time in antarctica his journey why he began this life and of course a lot of stuff about fish about the animals out there in the oceans the issues that the oceans are facing right now


the issues that the oceans are facing right now and a lot of other adventurous conversation trust me you guys are going to enjoy this one for more conversations like this make sure you follow the runway show on spotify where is spotify exclusive now which means that every episode is available on spotify 48 hours before it's available anywhere else in the world this is part one of a special conversation with captain sid chakravarthy [Music] captain sid chakravarti welcome to the runway show thanks for inviting me happy to be here uh we've been told that don't do no bollywood podcasts we want real adventures real life stories well reality can be stranger than fiction so yeah uh you know as a content house uh what we enjoy the most is when we get a comment saying yo this kind of content is not available on netflix or movies but it's available on podcast you're someone who spent 20 years dealing with the ocean all its dangers you've gone diving you've seen things that very few


you've gone diving you've seen things that very few human beings have seen you've had an adventurous two decades man i have yeah i mean the first 10 years of my life were working at sea which had its own adventures because obviously you're out at sea for many many months and then over the next last 10 years it's taken a very interesting turns you know four trips to antarctica parts of the oceans where very few people have gone to having helicopters on the ships fast boats boat cases chasing criminals there's been a lot of it pirates um pirates has in pirate fishing vessels yeah there's a lot of that out there as well they are the modern day pirates honestly they are i mean these are actually pirates at least were not institutional we have institutionalized piracy now which happens you mean governments control these institutions not government really but these are proper transnational companies so you know they'd be flagged in spain they'd probably have an office in hong kong they'd


probably have an office in hong kong they'd have crew from peru or indonesia and they run very sophisticated operations so it's not fly by night piracy that we think about but it's modern day piracy so it's got its own modern manifestations like you know you read about those manual labor camps in the gulf where uh people from the interiors of indian villages are told okay go on the gulf you'll earn higher money they do earn like higher amounts of money but at the same time they're undergoing uh basically manual labor uh and uh what's the word human rights violations are like rampant in the gulf but what people don't know is that human rights violations are rampant in the oceans as well and it's just something that people don't think of a lot people think of the gulf who thinks of the ocean who thinks of the seafood that you're eating your bengali right so that's the other angle with seafood yeah has your opinion on seafood changed after


seafood yeah has your opinion on seafood changed after knowing like you know all the human rights violations that go on in the oceans it has i mean so i when i went out to see i was at 18 and i was just somebody who was excited by the sea you know you go out there you work you put in many hours i used to work on merchant ships and it was a whole different life and then i started working for sea shepherd which is a conservation organization and started seeing things that usually one doesn't get to see even if you're working at sea and that's the workers who are on these fishing boats and it's not just my personal observation there's a lot of reporting that has now happened it's one of the least regulated in terms of labor rights etc enforcement and it's also a very dangerous job if you're out at sea for 365 days of the year and in fact some workers are out at sea for three four years and they work 20 hour days low paid work


years and they work 20 hour days low paid work it's dangerous through storms chasing fish is no easy job and so that brought me to a phase in my life where i was vegan for six years and then i shifted back to india and i started working with fishing communities here and i saw how fish is primary food for them and so when i work with them i've gone to not being vegan again because i've kind of advanced my thinking about what is the ocean what is food but yeah there's a huge social component whether that's workers whether it's communities all of that at sea but that doesn't come back to land as much what is it that the average person doesn't know at all about the ocean but you know and you're like your people should like know about this i mean i think since we were talking about workers who works for four years continuously every single day of the week for 20 hours a week on a fishing boat that let's say runs out 100 kilometers of line and


let's say runs out 100 kilometers of line and 100 kilometers like i have driven 100 kilometers to be on your show right so that's the kind of fishing gear that a fishing boat is laying out every day there's 10 people on those boats and it doesn't come back so it leaves a port let's say in taiwan and it's in the middle of the pacific catching tuna and it doesn't come back four years from the day it's left and that's immensely industrial and out of people's realities right like we think about people migrating from bihar or up and coming to work in the hospitality industry or construction industry we think about people going to the gulp but they're still on land not to say conditions should be compared but you know just being out at sea on a boat floating in the middle of the ocean for four years i think that's pretty intense not a lot of people know that that's the kind of work that is taken to catch fish that we find on our supermarket


taken to catch fish that we find on our supermarket shelves is it true that the ocean is running out of fish that you can eat it is i mean so let's say a very short history in the way the oceans exist today is the last hundred years so japanese american expansion after world war one world war ii was the first kind of global expansion into the oceans before that most countries didn't think about the oceans beyond like six kilometers or five kilometers for sure technology didn't exist staple diets which go back a few thousand years at least didn't really require fish that were further apart from there but that's where we went and then you've had world war ii you've had spain coming out and since 90s at least when you know we india entered liberalization it's been china which has been happening this global expansion and what has meant in that is that the oceans have always been a space for profitability so you the further you go from land you meet a newer


further you go from land you meet a newer species you fish that out you go a little bit further out you meet a newer species so the amount of fossil fuel and the amount of distance that fishing boats are spending has almost doubled in the last 50 years alone so that's an indication that we are expending a lot more energy to catch the same fish and then you have species change so you know i think urban consumers might think about palm threads surma as being a mainstay species but you speak to anybody who lives on the coast and has a staple fish diet fish that were available 20 30 years ago no longer exist and that's the second indication this is people's lived everyday experience those fish don't exist so in that sense we're landing the same amount of fish but fish that was edible that was healthy that was megafauna you know big fish we're not finding those what we find are more what they say trash fish that fish gets that gets ground up and fed


fish that fish gets that gets ground up and fed to fish that have been grown on land so it's like fish is feeding fish to feed humans as opposed to fish feeding humans directly so in that sense there's a lot that has changed in the ocean composition and it's not a rosy picture for sure um like when you say it's not a rosy picture where are we heading like say in 2030 what are beaches what is the ocean going to look like according to you if we keep going this way so the oceans of course are like not just fish right like the oceans have marine life you've also now got an infiltration of plastic so there's a there's a friend filmmaker called chris jordan who's done this beautiful film called albatross and he just went on this atoll which is like a coral reef in the middle of the pacific and he filmed albatrosses over one cycle and there are albatrosses where not being able to take off from the beach when they're


able to take off from the beach when they're born they get born on the beach and they go over to the windward side they spread their wings and then they take off with the wing and then they fly for the rest of their lives coming back to the island that they were born on and they're not being able to take off they've got so much plastic in their belly because as the adults are flying over the ocean they are picking up blue things pink things white things that resemble reef fish but it's actually plastic and this in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the pacific so that's a big concern in fact on one of my campaigns in antarctica uh there's this world's deepest fishery like it they catch fish at about a kilometer under the surface so we did a plastic dissection on some of the fish there on one of our campaigns and we found plastic there as well so it's a massive concern uh pollution of course i mean we're


concern uh pollution of course i mean we're speaking from bombay and pretty much the 10 12 kilometers off the coast of bombay is just industrial and everyday waste that goes out whether it's from the pumping stations whether it's from you know the tane bellapoor industrial belt chemicals etc going out so there's obviously it's like a sink for dumping waste it's like a cheap disposal site essentially and that's not really going well then you've got the fishing sector obviously that's got this global reach that's wiping out very important species and then you've got the very real threat of climate change now where there's acidification which means coral reefs are dying you've got ocean warming which means ocean currents are changing that either weakening or strengthening depending on where they are which means big uh you know keystone species as they say like whales for example these migrate massive distances they are massive regenerators of ocean health there's a drastic impact on their lives as well numbers


a drastic impact on their lives as well numbers reproductive rates are dropping migratory patterns are changing so the entire chemistry of what happens in the ocean is also shifting underway and i think it's important to kind of register that for a moment rather than just it being a factual thing because that essentially is like the largest ecosystem on this planet right like we call it a blue planet for a reason yeah also is it is it true that only five percent of the oceans are explored that's what you read a lot on the internet i say that a lot is that actually true because considering that you've gone all over the ocean you've had so many adventures uh do you think that's true that 95 of water bodies actually we don't even know what's down there we don't know how many sea monsters for lack of better word might be down there so it's interesting in this idea of the oceans as being an unexplored space because when i went out to sea as well i


because when i went out to sea as well i used to think on this on a cargo ship right a cargo ship let's say from brazil to singapore you cross the atlantic ocean you round south africa you cross the indian ocean and you reach the singapore straits you will barely see five six ships through a 40-day journey and so for you it exists as a wild space but then when i started doing fishing work and you know looking at data satellite patterns looking at you know what researchers have been talking actually there's very little of the surface of the earth that is untouched it's all out there being fished there's expansion that's happening even places like antarctica it's sold to us as you know this continent without humanity but there's a lot going on there there's a geopolitical race to mine antarctica there's a treaty in place which is up for renewal but still you know there's a lot that's happening the arctic used to be a place but now you've got all


used to be a place but now you've got all the big oil corporations up there trying to drill you've got russia you know trying to capture the shipping routes over to china as the ice is melting so i feel like the moment the opportunity presents itself the oceans become a place let's go explore let's see what profitability can come from there but depth wise yes we know very little of what's happening because an ocean on average is about three four kilometers deep that's a lot of water right a normal swimming pool is like 10 feet this is a lot more than that it's it's thousands of times of that and we don't really know what lives much in the lower layers have you seen anything crazy when you're diving which probably discovery channel or nat jio hasn't documented no i mean i'm a i'm an i'm an amateur diver in the sense that i dive but only on regular air mix which means you're restricted to 40 meters of depth so i see


restricted to 40 meters of depth so i see a lot of what a lot of other people who perhaps are privileged enough to dive can see but a good way to look to to kind of experience what is at the ocean of the bottom came with me with one of my campaigns in antarctica which is i was on a ship that that i was captaining and that ship now holds the world record for the world's longest illegal fishing gear hall so we were on a campaign a boat a pirate fishing boat dumped its fishing gear and we picked up 75 kilometers of that fishing gear and pretty much it was set on the ocean bottom about 8 900 meters deep and so we pulled that net up and it came with everything that exists on the ocean bottom so on the deck of the ship we had these corals that people hadn't seen we saw like stones that have probably existed for millennia on the bottom um we saw like different kinds of fish that haven't existed and so in


kinds of fish that haven't existed and so in that sense it was exploration but not of the exploration kind but you know that's what it gives an insight into just how industrial the oceans as a space can be as well on any of your dives or you know when you're in like far away from land uh have you been in any kind of danger because of sea animals like because of like fish or sharks or whales there's these campaigns that we used to run and the campaigns used to [Music] pick up illegal fishing gear so what usually happens is that the oceans are very unregulated spaces and so if you show up as a as an activist organization the boats usually dump their gear and run and as activists we wanted to collect that as evidence but also it's wrong to show up and have this gear and not pick it up so we've had to pick up fishing gear very often and i've had a crew member who while picking up the fishing gear had her finger


while picking up the fishing gear had her finger chomped on by a shark that was alive we've run over fishing gear and the propeller of the ship got completely entangled so in these heavy seas had to send two divers down to kind of like cut fishing gear from this giant propeller um you know we've what do you mean heavy seas like where there's waves obviously and if the ship isn't moving you're just like constantly moving so it's very dangerous for the divers to be down there doing these kind of things we've had helicopters lost in like ice blizzards because the communication completely got shut off rough weather can very often be really risky as well but with animals themselves i think it's telling that we perceive animals as being risky but animals left to themselves aren't really a risk to humans i mean if you're out there in the water trying to do something silly in their habitat i mean i'm sure it's risky but on a ship generally


sure it's risky but on a ship generally you're on a ship they are in the water unless there's an encounter like i said that happens with like either a net or something it doesn't really get risky like that um what about the other animals the human beings have you had dangerous encounters in the far ocean because if you're an activist you're going away from land where there's a lack of governance there's a lack of security i'm sure some of those vessels carry guns i'm sure some of those vessels will carry some sort of weapons yeah have you had situations like that so very often when we used to plan our campaigns with sea shepherd uh there'd be people who we'd seek advice from like okay you've been a professional fisherman for 40 years can you like advise us on xyz and one of the first responses we'd get like you're going to get shot it's not a safe place to just go out and do these things and we've had a few encounters


do these things and we've had a few encounters like we've had ship collisions we've had things thrown at us we've had projectiles thrown at us when we used to do these uh anti-veiling campaigns the japanese coast guard used to be on board so we'd get like sonic booms in our ears to like try and define us what does that feel like uh i mean it momentarily stuns you that's what it is like it's a riot control gear it's not really a deterrent as such so then we learned like very heavy ear protection probably probably like reduces the stunning we've had like water poured down our propel like our engine funnel to try and stall the ship so that you can't keep up with them while they continue wailing and things like that so there's all of those encounters then we followed criminals back to courts not literally but through paperwork and through the interpol and the police and things like that and then there are those encounters which happen where you're in


there are those encounters which happen where you're in a courtroom with somebody who's been at sea with you your ships have been really close to each other and then you know you're giving testimony and they're stewing there you're under police protection so when when we had gone for you know you get like police protection and things like that so things in that sense always have had risk what we've always said is that cameras do act up as countering guns in a way because what we were doing was taking an audience with us out there so people who did campaigns before us obviously faced a lot more risk but by the time i went out at least we were carrying an audience with us and so i think the guns never really came out but violence as such existed in terms of like aggression trying to get us off our tails you know put the engines down things like that why does whaling even happen in the modern day like what is veil meat or whale bodies used for


is veil meat or whale bodies used for because i know the ancient used to be used to make soap and things like that in medieval times but the modern day why do you want to kill whales i mean with so much environmental uh knowledge out there why are whales still killed so i i used to have the same question right like why whaling and that's when i was really a part of these anti-veiling campaigns whaling has a complex history and i think it's important to kind of reckon with that because it's not just medieval times like whaling america for example or the dutch or the australians used to wail right until the middle of the 20th century um in fact some of the biggest massacres have happened by their ships um and it was largely for blubber in fact blubber fueled the civil war and actually allowed for the confederates a you know big point of advantage over the traders etc blubbers like whale fat blubber is whale fat yeah so


like whale fat blubber is whale fat yeah so essentially it used to be burnt in turbines it used to act as a lubricant for machinery uh it used to be a very priced cargo so ships used to go out and really like there are accounts from the 16th 17th 18th century where people would say that they would have to stop their ship for four four five five days for a port of wales to go by and today literally you are like two ways oh it's a part of wales that we saw like that's how much but that happened in that century today whaling happens largely in norway um in iceland and with the japanese whaling fleet there's a bit of artisanal whaling that happens solomon island some of these islanders also harpoon whales very locally but that kind of industrial whaling only happens by these three countries and at least in norway and iceland it's very primarily for meat for consumption yeah it's eaten and japan's


for consumption yeah it's eaten and japan's is a different issue it's tied up with world war ii when hiroshima and nagasaki were bombed a lot of the land was completely irradiated and so japan's foray into antarctica was largely to bring back meat for a post-world war population um that has kind of changed to a situation where it's looked upon as american imperialism to not you know consume whale meat it's also tied up with territories as i mentioned earlier antarctica is like this big grab for territory and so japan's there china is there australia's there america's there and there's a whole lot of that the truth is that in those kind of semi-diplomatic semi-masculine geopolitics it's the whales that are paying the price because there's about a thousand whales that get harpooned every year they get taken back it's a hugely subsidized program there's not much that happens with that whale meat it's not used in anything it gets put into


it's not used in anything it gets put into lunch meals for kids um and and not much more beyond that so it's pretty it's not needed really so it's just an ego battle thing it's an ego battle one's got historical kind of wailing that it hasn't acknowledged let's say america thousands of thousands of whales killed for fueling its colonial expansion and then you've got japan which comes from a very different place of wailing which was you know you've bombed the hell out of us we're trying to rebuild our country and somehow it has become these two kind of narratives with white conservation on one side and you know asian racism and anti-racism sentiments on the other side but as i said in the middle of that it's the whales that still get harpooned and taken back yeah but the conversation could be a lot broader than it actually is at the moment which is what do you mean i mean i think we don't very often talk about whaling like


think we don't very often talk about whaling like this do we we very often talk about those japanese whalers and that's the end of the conversation um i wish we could actually as activists as conservationists sit down and have more complex conversations because these are complex issues they've got historical they've got emotions entangled with it it's it's easy to lose logic when you are very emotionally charged about something and i think if we could have less charged conversations about this i'm sure that'd be something that can change have you seen any veiling in front of you have you seen it happen i haven't seen whaling but i remember in 2012 we had this helicopter that had gone out and got a call on the satellite radio because the helicopter had gone about 150 60 kilometers away from the ship and i got a call and they had just pulled up three whales onto the whaling ship so there were three dead whales that had just been harpooned how did they actually kill them like what is the process


did they actually kill them like what is the process of killing a whale which is so big so there's two methods the first method is a harpoon so it's a harpoon harpoon with a dynamite that gets shot in so it essentially pierces the whale and it explodes inside of it and then a hook opens up and that's what they bring it into closer and if it's a good shot to the head and all it it doesn't suffer for too long but if it does one of the approved techniques is to kill it with a shotgun so then they put a gun over the side and they should put bullets into it till it dies so those are two ways to do it anyway go on you were saying no so i mean i haven't seen wailing happening in front of me but have been on campaigns where we've seen whaling happening maybe one of the other ships has seen it because we used to go as a team of two three ships seeing these dead whales for


team of two three ships seeing these dead whales for sure on both the ship and stuff like that and it's a very close encounter with them what was going on in your head when you kind of had that close encounter like do you do you hear the whale make a sound or you know what what's it like being near a whale so the interesting thing is i've seen a lot of whales alive as well and that's one of the beauties of being in antarctica right like it's summer whales have migrated down and they generally migrate with their babies so they've gone up to the tropics they've mated over there there's a calf that has had mother's milk and they've made this long journey down and you see them in that you know like i said 24 hours of light in the middle of the ice and you see them like that and then in comparison you see them dead and at least for me my personal reaction is to not let it affect me and i think that was part


let it affect me and i think that was part of my role as being a campaign leader as being a captain as being in charge of people who would break down seeing that um and it's similar with other species as well because i've seen lots of fish dead this one campaign in antarctica as i said we picked up 50 000 kilos of fish from the ocean floor they were all rotting so like literally you see these giant tooth fish they might not be whales but for me they similarly i think every life counts in in the fact that it's just not there it started affecting me later i think a few years after going through photographs you realize that you know you've just become numb to it in the moment but there's something about that that i've like even now when i'm speaking to you i feel very deeply about it in the sense of there's something about that life being taken out in front of you in a manner that seems purposeless like i you know i work with


seems purposeless like i you know i work with fishing communities and i see fish being caught all the time i say to you and i feel differently saying it but i think in that setting thousands of miles from land a fishing gear or a whaling harpoon that shouldn't really be there but is there for very different reasons either it's profitability either it's geopolitics either it's history either it's ego and that purpose doesn't make sense for that killing and i think that's what really started affecting me later not so much the death of it but the fact that it had died for something that for me didn't make sense um what is it like seeing a whale that's alive like have you seen a blue whale i have okay yeah where did where was this um so i've seen a blue whale i've seen a fin whale i've seen a humpback whale i've seen a minky whale so these are the four big baleen whale species which means that they eat crustaceans


whale species which means that they eat crustaceans they don't have teeth and then i've seen sperm whales and beaked whales and lots of dolphins which are on the toothed whale raise their teeth is it scary to see something that big i would say it's similar to seeing an elephant i think it's more their size and their grace in their supposedly ungraceful dimensions right like you don't look at an elephant and say this animal is graceful but yet you see it move and there's not a sound that comes or you go to up to a rescued elephant and it'll take that watermelon or whatever in the lightest of touch i think whales are like that as well you think about them as being these big ten thousand kilo animals and you think like they splash and all know they just glide through water they can be silent you know on mornings when it's really calm and some days we just be drifting so you shut off the engine and you're just killing


you shut off the engine and you're just killing time and you can hear their breaths you know coming out and if you catch them like on a good sunny day you can even see the vapor coming out of so you know you see that and you actually see the magic of let's say evolution or life like in that setting just to be there as a witness to it do you feel the intelligence like you say if you're diving with them and they're near you because the first time i went diving and i've spoken about this on the show as well i saw a whale on my first dive and i remember the grace i couldn't articulate it till this point but that's exactly what i felt yeah super great based on the movement but i also felt intelligence yeah have you felt something like that i mean i have a very different take on intelligence i read this book about octopus and recently there's been a netflix film about octopus as well this guy who goes out in south africa


well this guy who goes out in south africa and swims with them my octopus yes my octopus friend but you know octopi have evolved completely different to how humanity has um so i think when we look let's say we changing gears we think about a dog we say a dog is an intelligent animal because it interacts with us i think a whale is an interactive animal and that's why we have a relationship with a whale especially like what you're experienced i've done it as well in tonga you know when they're in the summers and tonga which is a country in the south pacific is a huge whale breeding ground so whales after they finish their eating in antarctica make this 5000 nautical mile journey it's about eight thousand kilometers to tonga and then they're just there in the reefs for three four months and they interact with you right like you could be on a kayak you could be on a free dive you could be snorkeling on the surface and they'll come


could be snorkeling on the surface and they'll come up to you that thing about the whale eye it's a real thing they do look at you and so i think they are superbly interactive it has yeah and the way it's looked what do you feel i mean it's a magical moment right like i'm just taking a moment to recollect that because i pretty much remember like being under the water having three humpback whales coming up and one of them like i saw its eye move as well as it went by and i know thousands of people have seen whale's eyes but i think that moment with you or like your moment with the whale i think yeah it's it's it's so big and it's so close and it's just gliding past you curiously looking at you or like trying to see who you are and it's a yeah it's it's fascinating that that experience exists on the world right like you've got a species that has evolved in the water has got nothing to do with you and


the water has got nothing to do with you and yet probably it's a one-year-old whale you don't know it's an old whale that's interacted with humans before but somehow it's just like seen you and gone by and maybe it's a memory for it and it's a memory for you as well yeah um so this is a question i've always wanted to ask the government probably but now that yo i'll ask you uh what's out there in the lakshadweep why is it not developed for tourists is it true that it's more prone to shark attacks or something because that's what some urban legends say some urban legends say that it's a naval base somehow in legends say that uh there's there's too much marine biology there and it should be left like that and that's for environmental reasons they've not developed it but if they do develop it it'll become as good if not better than the maldives and will become sort of a revenue generating thing for the indian government and some


revenue generating thing for the indian government and some urban legends say that they're actually developing it for tourism in the near future so what's actually happening in lakshadweep that's an interesting subject i mean i spoke to a journalist who was doing a story on this and i gave her all that i knew i mean i don't know too much but i'll say the same to you as well so lakshwadi has not been developed i think for a number of reasons i think one its own history with a muslim population largely its remoteness from the mainland its links to kerala as a trade route and kerala's own communist history and there's a lot that has gone very differently let's say to lakshmi than it has to be andaman and nicobar and the reason for this i think i mean i'm sure there are anthropologists and historians who look at this i think trade routes from india into malacca have been a historical trend we've had trade routes we have


a historical trend we've had trade routes we have spice trade we've had human migration and therefore andaman and nicobar islands were always on the path of migrating east we never migrated west as such the muslim traders the the the trading that happened in the 16th 17th centuries well always from the cape of uh good hope so from south africa coming up which misses the the the luxury violence as a space to stop over or from somalia you know coming around uh or from the persian gulf which also misses um so the lakshwadeep i think only came into its existence in the last 30 years ever since china became this powerhouse of the world and most shipping containers now pass through the lakshmi deep towards europe etc on this side and so i think the lakshadip has just not been on the development landscape so as to say the chinese ships stop at luxury they don't pass through but it's because it's a chain of islands you've got the six degree


a chain of islands you've got the six degree channel seven degree channel they're just major shipping routes so the ships come out they round sri lanka and when they're heading for let's say the suez canal they go through the luxury violence and out there okay so that's where the interest for ports now is coming for the indian government it can be a transshipment port you can have containers over there it's also an a coral island ecosystem so which means natural depths close to land are very good unlike let's say the entire east coast where depths are not very much uh and you find it very difficult to build ports for bigger vessels so i think that's where the interest is now coming from tourism i think in terms of tourism globally we are at a place where tourism is being looked upon as one of these benign sectors so to say in terms of development so rather than let's say have mining or build in palm oil plantation let's build tourism where it's


palm oil plantation let's build tourism where it's positive it's positive so that's where the tourism interest is coming from um but i mean to quantify all of these are saying because of my work with fishing communities at least in india in the last five six years now neither ports nor tourism actually being development to those in the model that they exist today because maldives like tourism is very very energy pulling you know these islands don't have electricity so you need to have diesel generators you need to pull electric lines on coral reefs tourists who pay upwards of a lakh lakh and a half for a trip will not just eat local food you need to get them good food they need an air conditioner they need to live in nicer houses so it becomes very energy intensive to have these tourism projects you don't have roads and boats because people want to travel in and out of holidays so you have to have planes which means you have to build runways on coral reefs so it


have to build runways on coral reefs so it doesn't it's not in sync with what exists over there so i think we need to quantify that tourism is happening but what kind of tourism at the moment it's not looking like it's good tourism in the model but also the way it's happened we know what's happened with the posting of the new governor etc in in the way it's happened um both similarly we've got a port coming up in little nicobar we've got a report coming up in andaman uh in port blair and sooner sooner or later i'm sure there'll be ports also coming up in luxury violin so i think the interest is always generated in a particular area depending on where it is in terms of global connectivity and i think lakshmi was just off the map but it's come into its mainstream now and that's where it's happening and on fishing which is my area laksa deep is also a base for a very particular kind of pole


also a base for a very particular kind of pole and line fishing method where there's this lovely boat a local indigenous boat people sit around the boat with a hook and a line essentially and they there's somebody who throws feed out as the boat is going to the water and people catch two now with it and that's very sustainable a lot of maldives does that as well but india's expansion that we were speaking about earlier is not pole and line so much it's about a long line which is mechanized capital intensive very destructive because it takes sharks it takes sea birds it takes all kinds of fish because it's essentially a hook with a piece of bait on it and anything that bites it is just stuck on the hook so it's a very non-selective at least for a particular kind of species so that's the kind of expansion that's happening there as well so what happens to island economies existing practices cultures when these kind of mainland developments go there is


when these kind of mainland developments go there is something that we've seen in different places and i fear that it's going to happen the same in lakshmi deep as well do you think it's going to have a bad impact on the ecology i do think it's going to have a bad impact on the ecology because i feel and that's not just specific to lakshmi i think we fundamentally have not registered as people but also as policy makers that the ecology is in decline i mean i think we've you spoke about this tree that fell outside like you're in a coastal city but not on the coast and you've lost a tree right in front of your house this is the reality of most people who live on the shoreline every year with more intensity with more frequency uh they can see it in the fish disappearing they can see in the monsoon cycle changing they can see it in the amount of jellyfish that come in your jellyfish makes fishing absolutely impossible because you get


jellyfish makes fishing absolutely impossible because you get stung your fishing nets get clogged you're seeing it in wind speeds you're seeing it in cyclones when are we going to register that the ecology is a very fundamental part of the economy and plans that don't start from that point of view i think are not setting up anything for the long term it's probably going to run its short course then there's going to be a big cyclone that comes over luxury flattens the results i don't know you probably have a lot of non-performing assets that come out of it but it's not something that leaves the people with anything to look forward for the next 100 years right like what they need is there's rising sea level they need stilted houses there's the very real frequency of ocean acidification reef destruction where are we looking at that as a central pillar of our development i think that's where it's going to fail for a lot of our development policies wow do you think that the cyclone involved


policies wow do you think that the cyclone involved may happen for a particular reason now because in 28 years of my existence i've never come across anything so intense you're just staring at it like you know what is happening here never seen wind speeds like that my mom went to see what's happening in the balcony she almost flew out yeah it was intense and we had to like hold her back and i've never seen anything like it but what why is this happening according to you so i'm not a meteorologist but at least from my conversation with fishers and fishers come with a lot of traditional knowledge they'd probably look at the wind and they'll tell you that this month should not be an eastward blowing wind but it's eastward and there's going to be jellyfish in the water and sure enough next day there'll be jellyfish in the water so there's a lot of confusion that's happening within them as well and that for me is more alarming than let's say


that for me is more alarming than let's say a meteorological report but the truth is that ocean temperatures ocean currents and therefore existing wind patterns high pressure low pressure systems are changing and that's making weather systems really unpredictable we've just had the latest ipcc report it's filled with a lot of big terms but very simply put that's what's happening you know ocean currents are shifting oceans are warmer than they were a few decades or centuries ago that means that the air that is in contact with the water is of a different pattern that means that when it comes close to land just like a southwest monsoons are a high pressure low pressure system wind flows from high pressure to low pressure those pressure differentials are different they're either too extreme or they're too closely packed together and so you have patterns that have not been seen before and that's what's causing cyclones in april in may which are not cyclone months they're not even monsoon months right um and what's happening


even monsoon months right um and what's happening with that is because coastal resilience has been reduced bombay's coastal road uh the sea the the flyover the sea whatever it's called the ceiling ceiling um the shivaji statue the reclamation that has happened over the last hundred years whether it's the mayam or kolaba or all of that the coastline is no longer able to absorb what it used to with surges that happen in these storms what used to be on the coastline like coral reefs or something like that too so there's again this idea that every coastline used to have mangroves i mean a lot of our coastline have mangroves but a lot of our coastlines don't and they were rocky they were muddy they were clay they had estuarine river ecosystems so they used to absorb shocks in different ways so a rocky outcrop didn't have mangroves because it could withstand and would always be a cliff for at a height impervious


always be a cliff for at a height impervious rock that can withstand the sea but we've had a loss of all of that so when you build let's say you put tripods on versova beach the beach just like sand in rivers has an immense capacity to absorb water to absorb that shock and the narrower and the thinner and the lesser those barriers become the more the city gets impacted and and and mangroves absorb that kind of water sand absorbs that kind of water canals and rivers that are healthy wide enough absorb that canal because the mitti let's say it didn't have a pillar in the middle of it it didn't have bkc's waste going into it a storm surge would have taken it all the way to sanjay gandhi national park it would have swelled the sand would have absorbed the current but that doesn't happen it just overflows into the banks and causes flooding into whatever reduced space it has so coastal resilience is reduced


space it has so coastal resilience is reduced as well and then we've got urbanization i mean big buildings coming up on the coastline big infrastructure coming up on the coastline these im these are not meant to be there but somehow we believe that the wonder of technology can keep up with and there's that man's greed for money because every time you're building a big building you're also selling flats you're also possibly going through some money laundering in that process so at the end of the day it's the chase for money that's destroying ecology but yeah chase for money and interestingly of course money is one big part of it but what are we doing we're taking funds that are meant to be for the public and channeling it into very private lives for example what could have been a a transit corridor for trains has become a ceiling a majority of the people don't use cars right let one driver and one person is going to nariman point to work every day


person is going to nariman point to work every day so we've also taken funds that could have helped the public at large with good infrastructure and fueled it into very narrow interest where the number of people who benefit from it is less but the people who get impacted by it is more the fissures at verley let's say being a perfect example you know they've got their you know the ali whirly bay that's entirely now taken over so the fishes there it's a very rich ecosystem in fact a few years ago with our friends we'd started something called marine life of mumbai which was just to take people out on spring tide days into the intertidal zones get off the road and walk into the ocean because the tide really recedes and on those days you see how alive this city's coast in spite of everything is you know we run a whole instagram page it's fascinating and all of that is gone which means people who live there are gone so i think there's also that


live there are gone so i think there's also that which we really need to be concerned about because yeah no go on no it's just that that shift of bad infrastructure that takes from public funds and gives to to a few private hands it's a very inequal unequal kind of policy making that's happening right and we need to be more concerned about it i have a burning quest in my head that's been burning for a bit now you mentioned antarctica yeah so you've gone you've lived there you've traveled around uh what's that land like like what is crazy about it what do you see uh you know what are the experiences like how cold does it get all these questions like just talk about it yeah um so i've been very fortunate i've been down to antarctica four years in a row between 2011 and 2015 because it's in the southern hemisphere december is our winters but it's their summers so i've gone down in the summers the reason for those four visits was


the summers the reason for those four visits was on conservation campaigns two were wailing related campaigns two were fishing related campaigns and so that was the primary motive to go down on these old 50 year old ships with a volunteer crew and go hunting for pirate ships and operations and fly helicopters and chase them and pick up their gear so it was not just like a visit to antarctica it was also a very unique visit to antarctica because a lot of people get the chance to let's say go on holidays to antarctica so you leave you get onto a ship or you get onto a flight you fly you go to one of the bases you go see the penguins but this was literally experiencing antarctica in all its elements um pushing through ice standing right next to towering icebergs sending people to dive under icebergs and you know catching underwater lives how do people go diving down there i mean is the gear like warmer or something yeah so usually if you dive in


or something yeah so usually if you dive in warmer waters you wear something known as a wetsuit which is just an insulation but doesn't keep the water out when you dive in cold water it's something known as a dry suit which means it's completely sealed you wear a lot of warm clothes inside and then you go your diving time is much lesser as well i mean it still causes a lot of numbness and things like that yeah and and and saw the beauty on one side like fascinating landscapes the most in december it's usually 24 hours of light in antarctica so you literally see the sun like just go around it never rises and sink and so you have like orange you have like beautiful sunrises and sunsets in the sense that it's just long twilights so the orange is like five hours and it's sunny then it's again orange for five hours going down then in january february it starts getting dark for two hours three hours so you start seeing the southern lights


three hours so you start seeing the southern lights which is essentially the earth's magnetism pulls light and it dances you know people know the northern lights so you have the southern lights it's known as the aurora australis which is the southern lights so there's a lot of that that you see you're with a bunch of people who are from all across the world all genders all sexual orientations just living on a ship trying to make it through if we had to extend our campaign we'd be like we have to switch off the heaters so you're literally sitting in your room like your breath like coming out of your mouth completely vaporizing in the room because the generator is just taking too much fuel so you switch it off so we've done things like that helicopters on board like flying the helicopter 100 nautical miles from the ship it was a tiny ship i remember once this naval pilot came and he said how do you land and take off a helicopter from this thing


you land and take off a helicopter from this thing it was completely designed by one of the crew members there's a and and yeah so you know it was like pushing the limits of design endurance skill as well like we very often think about people as being skilled because they've got a degree but i think intention also builds a lot of skill in people and the intention was something's wrong we got to solve it we got to intervene jugaad and yeah total jugaad in fact jugaad reminds me i built a fishing gear here of wadala and shipped it to new zealand and that went to antarctica on a ship as well just to pick up fishing gear so jugaad was definitely something that we did what's the apex predator in antarctica like in those ecosystems i'm guessing orcas are they there orcas are there so antarctica is so unique because it doesn't have it's known as a mixed ecosystem so unlike a triangle that we think about where there's one species


a triangle that we think about where there's one species and it controls the whole ecosystem it's very mixed and the reason it's mixed is because of the ice that recedes and freezes so when it freezes the continent becomes bigger and in the summers when the ice melts the continent kind of shrinks because you've got water the eyes becoming water so what happens is in that warming a lot of lower species move up and a lot of tropical species move down okay so in the southern summers you would say that the orca eats seals and tooth fish and it's an apex predator but when it's not there that same tooth fish is the apex predator of the deep sea is because it's toothpaste it's like a shark it's actually a big fatty fish that is like no other fish but it's got teeth and it's a predator of the deep seas is it can it harm human beings not really it it can't harm human beings because it's very slow-moving slow


harm human beings because it's very slow-moving slow maturity but the interesting thing is it's the world's most expensive fish to eat to eat soil i haven't eaten it okay but i i i think two five star hotels in bombay serve it i think hakkasan serves it and then some other place but yeah it's like two and a half thousand rupees a a small fillet of fish to eat it retails for like quite a bit of money just because it's fished from antarctica what do you think it tastes like it's meant to be really fatty and almost like salmony in the sense that it's that white flesh that separates easily so perhaps looks good with like beans and what people eat that with but probably really fancy i don't know dude like i've always kind of been a little bit afraid of the ocean like it's always scared me you know i've gone diving uh in seychelles i've like i've i've had some experiences with it i love the beach but


some experiences with it i love the beach but there's just something that scares the out of me when it comes to the ocean and then when i think of antarctica just as a place on earth that scares me because it's at the edge of earth pretty much yeah yeah uh is there any scary aspects to being there like you know does the weather get scary why am i scared or kill off my fear the captain said like what why is it scary i mean i think the ocean is scary because it's been it's been told to us in history as a scary dark place right like we've got the kraken which is like this big monster that exists over there do you think it exists um i mean i i don't think so because we know we know big squids exist which are kraken like and we know that because now we study sperm whales and we know sperm whales go a kilometer or a mile under the sea they catch one of these big things and they very


they catch one of these big things and they very often come to the surface and you know a tentacle of the big squid is hanging out of its mouth or i've seen footage in fishing gear where they are picking up this tooth fish fishing gear and there's a giant squid just attached to the net coming up how big is it like how big is the when you say giant uh i mean it it it's about 10 to 11 feet um so the head would be like the size of my torso just the head of a usual squid the heads that much so and then the tentacles are about 10 feet so across the length of an average room there's also something called a colossal squid right yeah colossal which is even bigger which is bigger and you know we've got now these remains of what these megafauna used to be so we have this trend of animals becoming smaller you know there are accounts of tunas weighing 600 kilos which and and you know being 11 feet


kilos which and and you know being 11 feet high you don't find fish like that anymore the species exists but it's no longer growing to that size so there's there's a whole change that is happening of that sort as well but antarctica can be scary because of its weather and its remoteness you know so we used to go down on ships that were really old that were not meant to be in the ice so we've got stuck in ice there's a time when i was a novice like the first summer and i misread the ice charts and we got stuck in ice for three days and the ship was not meant to be in ice so we literally like what i mean when you say stuck in ice you mean like ice formed around the ship like what so uh so i mean just to give a little bit of the so so there's these there's a ross c in antarctica which is a big whaling ground and the rossi has a current system that's clockwise and so the


has a current system that's clockwise and so the ice comes in and rossi freezes over in the winters but in the summer it starts melting but it starts melting with the current so slowly the ice goes out of it it doesn't suddenly empty out and you the way you read ice charts is that the satellite captures an image like an infrared image and then it shows you white and black black is open water why it is the ice but it shifts very quickly or it it's not very accurate if there's heavy cloud cover and all which is very common so i decided to cut into the ross sea thinking it was an open patch and slowly the eyes got thicker and thicker and thicker and then we were just in ice and because the ice is shifting you feel like oh i should just take a turn and go back out but it doesn't happen like that so we got stuck in this ice and it's not like it freezes over but it's just like the eyes become so


over but it's just like the eyes become so thick and so big and so like hard to get out of that you're pretty much like just stuck there until something starts moving and then we started pushing through the eyes and we had this helicopter that was on the front and it was flying with its light on and it was like every time it would say go right there's a little bit of open water it would like tilt so we'd be like okay we have to go right then it would because he could see from the height what he was seeing and we had people in the hull of the ship which was underwater literally standing and telling us all the the like the metal is like bending with like hitting into the ice and stuff like that so those are like scary moments for sure we had hans dalal on the show uh we speak a lot about animals to hans dalal and he told me that when a tiger looks you in the eye it feels like it's scanning your


in the eye it feels like it's scanning your soul and i've had that experience uh unfortunately in a sort of zoo not a zoo yeah but they have this thing called bhopal which they've turned like sort of this small sanctuary into like an artificial zoo but the carnivores are inside cages but you get to see a tiger super up close like right or tiger was probably born and raised in the wild but now they've kept it in captivity and you feel like it's looking into your soul and i just feel like some higher animals for the lack of a better word have that ability to know what's going on inside you in the same way that dogs smell your hormones yeah and they know what you're feeling yeah i feel like some of these elephants or whales for that matter when they look at you it's like they're scanning you yeah for sure it does seem like you feel like there's something behind that look there's something going on within them yeah for sure which


there's something going on within them yeah for sure which is which is what uh troubles me about the concept of whaling right like these animals probably go up to those fishing vessels out of their own curiosity they're thinking that hey what's what's up there what's up there and they go straight like into they swim into their own death unfortunately that unfortunately i mean just to allay that fear because actually whales have picked up that these kind of propellers and speeds and frequency mean a harpoon is coming because whales communicate a lot with each other for example uh dr roger payne who i've had the absolute joy of meeting he's the first one who discovered the songs of the humpback whales in fact he even released a lp that's called songs of the humpback whales and there's literally communication that happens about migratory routes about dangers about you know storms and there's patterns that they repeat each pod has its unique language and song that they communicate so whales they've actually realized communicate


they communicate so whales they've actually realized communicate that harpoon ships are coming so they perhaps won't run away from my ship because the propeller sounds different but they would run away from a whaling ship that's coming up so that is something but we've just and and that the purposelessness that i was talking about i mean i used to work on ships right and i have a deep love for ship engineering like nautical engineering but when i saw whaling harpoon ships and their engineering it owed me and then it disgusted me because it has come out of a space where it turns on a dime it accelerates at no time its center of buoyancy is designed in a way that it can chase ships in a particular weather and so every engineer sat down and said how do we design a ship that can kill a whale i think that's the kind of purposelessness of killing that really blows my mind that it exists today and the whales unfortunately are completely outdone because what happens is


unfortunately are completely outdone because what happens is when they first get it they dive the whalers wait it starts tiding it can't it in it's running and it's diving so ultimately it's just on the surface as a slower whale and that's when it gets harpooned so it's literally chasing down and killing this happens all over the world it's not just the japanese whalers even though we have the most prolific footage of them but the norwegians do the same thing the icelandic do the same thing so yeah it's it's it's engineered a ship to kill a whale they go after one whale at a time so usually the fleet goes out and they can only harpoon one wheel okay but they usually happen one wheel and tie it to the side it's dead bodies floating and then they'll kill another one and tie it to the other side so two or three at one time they can bring back but not more than that because it's also a huge weight on the


than that because it's also a huge weight on the side of the ship once it's killed you can't really have them for that long and these are all those whales that you spoke about it could be a blue whale it could be a sperm whale it could be anything or the specific species so between let's say 1850s when whaling started in antarctica and about 1954 that 100 year period 13 lakh whales were killed in antarctica alone that's 1.3 million whales so the blue whale species which is the biggest whale i mean they're bigger than dinosaurs as well that's the biggest animal that has ever lived and still lives was nearly entirely wiped out just to give an example uh i don't know how people understand sizes but i understand sizes it's the size of a average best bus on average full size bus 29 000 of them were killed in the year 1928 in one summer alone that's the amount of whaling that used to happen so they are not allowed to


that used to happen so they are not allowed to be hunted there's an international agreement that blue whales can't be hunted finn wales also can't be hunted in antarctica humpback whales can't be as well so the japanese welling program is only now minky whales they used to have a small fin whale quota but they no longer do the norwegian and the icelandic in fact they do fin most of they they mostly harpoon fin whales and they do it within their waters there's like jurisdictions at sea as well so no international agreement actually applies in their waters so it's different but yeah blue whales are off and humpback whales are too much of a tourism draw because you know they have big pectoral fins and they usually drive the whaling industry i mean the tourism industry but fin whales and minky whales which are the top two are the ones that get targeted mostly what about orcas killer whales like uh where do they uh kind of land in the spectrum are


do they uh kind of land in the spectrum are they also targeted no killer whales have an entirely different fate which is aquariums and parks i mean sea world is born out of orcas being able to do trade right and that's a horrible horrible fate to meet as well have you heard about those orcas that killed their trainers because they go crazy yeah yeah do you want to enlighten the listeners on that from the you know mouth of a marine biologist i'd rather have you explain it than myself i mean i'm not a marine biologist but i i do know that you know orcas like i said blue whales are on the baleen side or orcas are the top of the chain on the two third side so you know they are off the whale species but they are a cousin of the whale species and uh they are highly mobile highly evolved highly packed animals that move multiple like they cross continents in packs they people have seen videos but if they haven't you


they people have seen videos but if they haven't you know they they've found ways to swim in stealth cat seals off the beach toss them into the air like they play with their food when they want to teach their young they'll they'll catch a seal but they'll go and put it back on the stone and the seal is confused so the mother will then tell the cub how to like catch it so they train their children in hunting and they have generational hunting techniques which one generation passes down to the next generation yeah that's the intelligence of that yeah so there's oral tradition as we say you know you let's say fishing communities have oral tradition these are animals that have oral traditions as well it's not written anywhere what happens with the sea world trade is essentially that for aquariums and performance shows one or two individuals of these packs get taken into uh used to be now you can only breed them in captivity wild orcas can't be caught and the public sentiment


wild orcas can't be caught and the public sentiment around it is changing but essentially you've taken an animal that's a very social animal a highly migratory animal a animal that requires the open ocean for its full life and put it into a tank that is not much bigger than this room it's the equivalent of taking a human being and pouring it into a solitary confinement essentially which is like which will make your hands and your legs stick to each other that's the equivalent all its life yeah and so you have behaviors where whales then end up just banging their head all the time or they just go back and forth their teeth begin to rot completely they for many many months they keep making that sound that they make for finding their pack if they get lost out at sea it's a long distance sound that allows it to so you know they are looking for their family they're poured out there and that's been denied so i think sea world and aquariums have been a horrible experience for


world and aquariums have been a horrible experience for orcas luckily the public sentiment around it is changing i just hope countries like india china which were also floating these ideas don't end up having them because you know it's something that america europe did and it's no longer something that's in vogue i don't think we should pick that up and bring it here yeah i actually think one of the good outcomes of covet other than the environment kind of picking up again is that people started sort of disliking zoos and things like seaworld uh i don't know why that's happened but i've seen it happen it might just be gen you know what gen z is like people born after 1998 or called agency yeah they are super environmentally conscious as compared to the previous generation so maybe they're spreading the awareness but there is a certain amount of hate that's developed towards zeus which is a good thing according to me zoos of any kind yeah yeah and yet we've heard the good


any kind yeah yeah and yet we've heard the good news about the penguins giving birth i think bombay zoo has given there's been penguins in this and i don't know i mean i think that's a complex complex situation for me because i know i'm sitting here with a lot of privilege saying i went for four trips to antarctica what does the average person who didn't have a training at sea who was not uppercase male like me who didn't have how do you make those connections i think documentaries and storytelling podcasts like these i think that communication is changing that and i think zoos will also be a thing of the past yeah for for sure and especially in their current formats i think caged animals as a learning technique i don't i don't think they have much value but i think until we can get people information in more accessible publicly funded vernacular languages and connect them with what's out there in our world i think maybe zoos do play some role i'm not sure what role that is


play some role i'm not sure what role that is but there is some role that they can play you mean is that young people end up falling in love with animals because of zoos and then eventually may become conservationists i mean i don't think anybody has everybody has to become conservationists in my view but i think it i mean like the whale's eye right it built something for you and me when we saw it what if somebody had a chance to see like a brown bear and feel something about the karnataka humpy landscape where the brown bear lives maybe it builds something in them they are from karnataka migrant living in the city you know people chance on some encounter and it changes them and maybe a zoo at some point a well-kept zoo an open zoo zoo that is designed for the animal not that the animal is confined to it which is why we need virtual reality captain siddharth probably yeah like uh i mean i actually think that that's just one


uh i mean i actually think that that's just one of the problems that virtual reality was in virtual reality is on its way honestly so how would you imagine virtual reality doing first of all i think that there are virtual reality devices which are extremely expensive and it's a matter of time say around two decades i anticipate right might be shorter than that because who knew that phones will become so advanced by 2010 yeah like i remember when my dad got a touchscreen phone for the first time in 2005 i thought that was crazy i was like oh a phone you can touch and now it's like every everyone's phones are touch screen yeah it's a matter of 15 years so who knows what the next 15 years will hold but i feel like once virtual reality becomes affordable uh reality is going to move into the metals right so say instead of captain said coming down to my office in mumbai you can have a virtual reality pod in nasik why do i need you here in person


in nasik why do i need you here in person yeah i need you here to see your body movements while you're talking to me to see how you look right but that can actually happen virtually one day right now it can't so it'll actually solve a lot of the problems that human beings face it'll create new industries it will solve problems like this and life as we know it is going to get divided into the life you live in virtual reality and the life you live for the sake of your health because your body will still be yours yeah so these will be the two industries most industries will move to virtual reality but though industry of health will be here that's what i understood so yeah that's that's what i think so that was part one of this lovely conversation with captain sid trust me part 2 gets even better do not miss out on that remember to follow trs on spotify with spotify exclusive which means that every episode is available on spotify 48 hours before it's available anywhere


available on spotify 48 hours before it's available anywhere else in the world in part two we're talking about everything from the supposed sea monsters to the geopolitics of oceans to some of the most beautiful places that captain sid has visited you guys are going to enjoy that one as much as this one until next time guys from ranveer in the team namaste see you later [Music] you


sea monsters geopolitics of the ocean ghost ships all these fantastic ocean based stories that you hear about in movies in storybooks imagine a person who's actually experienced some of this stuff this is part two of a special conversation with captain sid chakravarthy if you guys haven't checked out part one i encourage you to first check out part one he spoke about his time in antarctica how he began this entire journey and part two is an extension of part one but even if you've not checked out part one it's okay you'll still gain a lot of value and entertainment from this particular episode make sure you follow the runway show on spotify we're a spotify exclusive which means that every episode is available on spotify 48 hours before it's available anywhere else in the world this is part two of this conversation about oceans with captain sid chakravarthy on the runway show [Music] i think most of the listeners by this point probably not megaphones so between the time dinosaurs ruled the earth and


so between the time dinosaurs ruled the earth and human beings ruled the earth there was this long phase where massive animals ruled the earth yeah uh which we see in the movies like ice age or 10 000 bc but you have saber-toothed tigers mammoths yeah um it's said that there are still some megafauna left uh but they're probably not discovered like they're supposed to be a stegosaurus somewhere in the jungles of the congo they say that the ocean is probably the likeliest place where you'll find megafauna because the depths aren't exploding yeah but because you've explored the oceans as much as you have do you think that's that could be true like the colossal squid is one example of it but could there be more stuff down there as as far as i know and i'm not a marine biologist right like i've worked with marine biologists i feel like i mean source of life is photosynthesis and light is needed and the deeper we go down to the oceans


and the deeper we go down to the oceans there's less of that but that's again to quantify that everybody thought that no life would exist at depths because of the darkness and now you're finding coral reefs growing in like sulphur vents somewhere in the bottom of the ocean so i think it's the question at the same time off the coast of greenland you have a shark today that's about 360 years old it's called the basking shark it's the world's oldest living animal there's nothing else that's as old with it what what kind of shark is it it's it's a very slow moving greenland shark it it so sharks i mean there's over 100 species of sharks right like we see jaws and we're like every shark is a killer but there's sharks the size of my palm to the whale shark which is just like a filter feeder that has no teeth even so it's one of those filter feeding kind of benign sharks that lives in great depths


of benign sharks that lives in great depths cold waters slow moving 360 year old shark um i guess it's encountered a lot of like mega fauna in its lifetime but i would think no i think there's a lot of bigger interesting species and that will tell us about life evolution and how life adapts at different depths i'm not so confident that there's going to be a big megafauna that comes to the depths from us no megalodon i think it's time has passed it definitely existed um but that but that's to say that we have megafauna with us right now right we might not have them in the near future we've almost lost the blue whale we've got the orcas that are i mean we we don't really know them we've got great white sharks which is a megafauna we've got tooth fish which is a megafauna we've got like animals which in their little ecosystem whether that's a reef whether that's the wide open ocean they exist out there and i


the wide open ocean they exist out there and i think recognizing that we have mecaphona right now is something that we'd really do good just recognizing that rather than saying we'll find one in the near future have you come across a great white shark on your travels never a great white shark a tiger yes i've seen a tiger during diving and in australia there's these shark attacks that happen to surfers and it's a great white shark there are very often like chomps on a surfer that's out in western australia do my legs feel something as you say that yeah like i don't know man i i actually have a fear of sharks yeah i mean it's it's understandable right like we are told we see and and it's a reality you're in it's like a tiger like it's a apex predator it's not just megafauna it's also eats everything that's out there it does cross ocean voyages it survives as a solitary animal and it looks


it survives as a solitary animal and it looks up and it sees a surfer paddling out and it's like oh there's a seal out there and it goes and takes a chomp it happens to be such a big charm that it takes half your leg away or your arm away but then in response to that the public is like we have to cull sharks so the government will send out boats and they'll start killing sharks and most of the sharks that they kill are tiger sharks so actually in australia seen a lot of dead tiger sharks because they get shot thinking they're great white sharks and come back how big are they tiger sharks they'd be about as wide as this room seven to ten feet okay yeah diagonally across that's a big man yeah yeah yeah yeah i think there's life at sea which is so much like a bus right like if you were to walk out and see a bus just standing and it was a animal on land you'd be like my


it was a animal on land you'd be like my god this animal is big i think somehow at sea because of the ecosystem being so big they relationally get scaled down but that's a big animal right like a blue whale is immense have you dived with you said you have died with tiger sharks i've seen them on our dive in the maldives what goes on in your head when you know what this animal is capable of i don't know i mean i have this naive belief and i think that naive belief is one day going to not be i'll look at being like i used to be knife but at the moment i'm still naive i feel like that sense that you spoke about the whales i think there's a certain amount of respect that exists and i feel like if one conducts themselves with respect in almost like not physical of course physically also but also just like submitting to that animal's ecosystem right like you are with a scuba tank in a mask for 30


are with a scuba tank in a mask for 30 minutes that animal is there for 30 years it's it's home or hunting grounds or whatever i feel like that sentiment is the safety barrier between that animal and me that's what i at least naively like i said tend to believe because on that same dive i had this other shark i forget which one it was but it came and bit the fin of one of the one of the divers and he just stood there and it bit its fin and he lost a chunk of the fin and then we continued diving you mean the flipper yeah there was the flipper god wow what animal was this it was a shark i forget which shark it was but it was a shark it was a predator shark that came and bitten so i feel like that's that that that's that's the safety barrier perhaps that you respect an animal and the animal respects you visiting it for a little bit yeah both tigers and sharks have these like little dead