The Leap: And Then The Sub Went Silent

Oceanographer Victoria Orphan’s dream was coming true—she was onboard the Alvin submersible. But the trip was anything but smooth sailing.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Ira Flatow?

  Science Friday is supported by MathWorks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink software for technical computing and model-based design. MathWorks, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at mathworks.com.

• 0:16Speaker 01

  WNYC is supported by Bear. Science is about asking questions, testing, trying again. It's not easy, but it's relentless. It evolves, and that's why science delivers. Learn more at sciencedelivers.com.

• 0:34Speaker 02

  Bridge point air hatch is sealed. Oweing permission to launch on your work.

• 0:38Speaker 03

  This is Alvin Dive 5268.

• 0:42Flora Lichtman?

  Victoria Orphan is a Caltech professor and a deep-sea explorer, which means that a few times a year, if she's lucky, she climbs down a ladder into a seven-foot-wide titanium globe that serves as the cockpit of the submersible Alvin. And then, with a pilot and another scientist, she sinks miles into the sea.

• 1:03Speaker 03

  Can't wait to see what the seafloor looks like here.

• 1:06Flora Lichtman?

  To places no human has ever been, to collect creatures no one has ever known, to study some of the most alien ecosystems on Earth.

• 1:20Flora Lichtman?

  When I mentioned to other scientists that I was interviewing oceanographer Victoria Orphan, they all basically said the same thing. Oh, yeah, she's a badass. So I had this idea in my mind of what to expect. I've interviewed a number of explorers, and I've found that it is a profession that sometimes attracts big personalities, people who seem energized to risk life in limb to find something new, people who are always ready to tell you a swashbuckling tale, exaggerated or not. And so when I sat down for my first interview with Victoria, I was a little surprised. What is your personal relationship to risk?

• 2:02Speaker 03

  I'm definitely not a risk taker. I am not somebody who wants to, you know, jump at the chance of bungee jumping or paragliding or any of those sort of like adrenaline junkie sports. Nope, no thanks.

• 2:16Flora Lichtman?

  I wasn't getting a hint of swagger.

• 2:20Speaker 03

  It would scare the pants off of me.

• 2:22Flora Lichtman?

  And the more I talked to Victoria, the more it became clear that her reputation for badassery was definitely not thanks to self-promotion. In fact, it was so buried under layers of humility and understatedness that to find that part of her personality, I had to follow her to the bottom of the sea on her deepest dive yet, a dive that did not go as planned.

• 2:46Speaker 05

  I don't know. Should I be concerned about that?

• 2:51Flora Lichtman?

  This is The Leap, a series about scientists who are risking their careers, reputations, and even their lives to discover something new.

• 3:08Speaker 05

  All right, we got the end of the bridge. Race on.

• 3:11Speaker 03

  We're now slowly making our way out of the harbor. It's all sorts of...

• 3:16Flora Lichtman?

  Victoria is sailing on the RV Atlantis, a huge science research vessel with cranes, a library, labs, a machine shop. It'll carry the scientists, the crew, the Alvin submersible, and all their equipment to sea.

• 3:31Speaker 03

  I don't know. It brings this inner joy of being able to be part of this, this great science adventure.

• 3:39Flora Lichtman?

  They're zigzagging around Alaska's Aleutian Islands.

• 3:42Speaker 03

  There's all sorts of snow-capped mountains around us. We saw a lot of orcas go by. I mean, it's just about as epic as you can get.

• 3:52Flora Lichtman?

  The seafloor is epic, too. Here, two continental plates are ramming into each other, creating a deep trench. And that trench is exactly where Victoria is headed. The water down there is just above freezing. There's no light. And the creatures that live there have found unusual ways to survive, some of them living off of methane that bubbles out of the trench. It's about as remote as it gets. And yet, we're deeply connected to these ecosystems and the creatures that live there. By eating methane, these deep-sea microbes trap a powerful greenhouse gas at the bottom of the sea, rather than letting it bubble up into the atmosphere. But to understand how that works, you need to go there, which means diving to depths

• 4:36Flora Lichtman?

  few people have ever visited.

• 4:39Speaker 03

  For me, it's the deepest dive I've ever done. Yeah, almost 5,000 meters.

• 4:45Flora Lichtman?

  Three miles down.

• 4:46Speaker 03

  A little over three miles down.

• 4:48Flora Lichtman?

  You're grinning ear to ear right now.

• 4:50Speaker 03

  I know.

• 4:54Speaker 03

  It's pretty exciting. You know, it's a lot of times we live vicariously through our students and they get to do all the fun things in the lab. And so, I'm happy. I love, you know, if I've got mud under my nails, I'm a happy camper, so.

• 5:11Flora Lichtman?

  This isn't just Victoria's deepest dive in the Alvin Submersible. It's also one of the Alvin Submersible's deepest dives. Alvin's been in operation for decades, but it was just retrofitted so it could go deeper than it ever has before. But so far in this cruise, the sub hasn't gotten much time in the water.

• 5:29Speaker 03

  I was supposed to be diving in the Alvin Submersible today, but sadly, we are dealing with 30 knot winds and lots of white caps.

• 5:43Flora Lichtman?

  You can hear the thud of the waves on the ship.

• 5:47Speaker 03

  Boy, the whole ship vibrates when the waves hit it. The full-body experience out here.

• 5:54Flora Lichtman?

  It's been stormy, and when it's too wavy, it's not safe to put the sub in the water. It took years to plan this cruise. It's rare to get access to this sub, so it sucks to be benched. And you can hear the disappointment in Victoria's voice.

• 6:10Speaker 03

  Can't do much of anything right now because the weather is kind of crappy out.

• 6:14Flora Lichtman?

  So when the weather finally breaks, Victoria is pumped.

• 6:20Speaker 03

  All right, it's Monday morning. It's a beautiful day for diving. I'm happy to report they're rolling Alvin out of the hangar as we speak. Everybody is on the back deck.

• 6:36Speaker 03

  Waiting with anticipation.

• 6:38Flora Lichtman?

  This cruise has four principal investigators, all women, which is unusual. And even more unusual, two of them are married to each other. Victoria and her partner, Shauna Gofredi, another oceanographer. She'll see Victoria off today, and you can hear her in the background.

• 6:53Speaker 03

  It's getting real now.

• 6:58Speaker 03

  Getting the weights loaded up on.

• 7:01Flora Lichtman?

  The weights that will sink them to the bottom of the ocean, and the weights that they'll drop when they're ready to come back up.

• 7:08Speaker 03

  There's another storm that's going to be rolling in soon, so I'm feeling a little bit of extra pressure to try to get as many of our samples as possible.

• 7:20Flora Lichtman?

  One of the big reasons to actually go to the bottom of the sea is so you can bring stuff back. Animals, microorganisms, mud samples, water samples, bits of slimy rocks, anything that can be looked at, researched, studied, to help us understand this mysterious ecosystem. Visits to these deep-sea sites are so rare that if you make it all the way down there, you better not come back empty-handed.

• 7:46Speaker 03

  There's no, no worse feeling of disappointment coming up to the surface and having to tell people that you didn't bring any samples back.

• 8:02Speaker 03

  All right, they just called Nick up, our pilot. Starting to get a little bit of that nervous energy and some butterflies. And I'm so, so excited to finally get back into the sub.

• 8:19Speaker 03

  Hard to believe that's going to be home for the next nine hours.

• 8:26Flora Lichtman?

  Nine hours with two other people in a metal globe about the size of an SUV. There are computer screens all around, five viewports to look out, and a hatch in the floor where you store your pee bottles. The sub is sitting on the back deck of the Atlantis under an A-frame that will hoist it into the water. Victoria walks up a ladder and over a little bridge to the sub. The team cheers as Victoria, her colleague Ekin Tilik, and Alvin pilot Nick Osasia embark.

• 8:57Flora Lichtman?

  Everybody has been waiting for this day. It's why they're all here. It's a buoyant moment. So it's easy to forget that going over three miles down, way deeper than the Titanic's resting place, for example, to icy waters with skull-crushing pressures, comes with risks.

• 9:14Speaker 03

  I almost don't want to talk about it. Like, there's always a level of superstition with,

• 9:19Speaker 03

  you know, getting entangled is the biggest concern because a lot of these, you know, ghost nets and things like that are not mapped.

• 9:26Flora Lichtman?

  What's a ghost net?

• 9:27Speaker 03

  It's like old fishing gear that has been lost and is basically floating around. And we know there's a lot of fishing up in that area.

• 9:36Flora Lichtman?

  Hmm. If you did get entangled in a net, like, what happens? Like, why is that so bad?

• 9:42Speaker 03

  Two reasons. So it's bad any time, but especially because we're in a remote part of the world and because we're really deep. It makes it very challenging to get any other vehicle there to rescue you. We sort of saw this play out in real time with the Titan.

• 9:58Flora Lichtman?

  Titan, the sub that went missing for days in June 2023. Before it was found in pieces, there was this desperate race to get rescuers there.

• 10:08Speaker 03

  Trying to get vehicles there that can reach those depths, it's a concern. So the best thing is just not to have that happen. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, things also can break, like the batteries are shorting or something like that. Those kinds of things are not great.

• 10:29Flora Lichtman?

  But Victoria doesn't sound nervous.

• 10:34Speaker 03

  All right, we're here in the Alvin submersible with Ekin and Nick. He's just closing the hatch right now.

• 10:45Speaker 02

  Bridge coordinator, hatch is sealed. I await permission to launch on your word.

• 10:48Flora Lichtman?

  This is one of the sounds of the sub, the messages back and forth with the top lab on the ship.

• 10:53Speaker 05

  Atlantis Alvin, my three vent valves are open. ID light is on. Hatch is sealed.

• 10:59Flora Lichtman?

  They're off. And at first, all is swell.

• 11:03Speaker 05

  I got a couple playlists and a couple podcasts for the way out.

• 11:06Speaker 03

  All right.

• 11:07Flora Lichtman?

  The music's going. Nick queues up. "That's Life" by Sinatra.

• 11:16Flora Lichtman?

  And they begin their descent. It'll take them about two hours to get to the bottom.

• 11:20Speaker 03

  Getting dark.

• 11:21Speaker 05

  They said there's a lot of bioluminescence.

• 11:22Flora Lichtman?

  The light dims as they sink, but the mood could not be brighter.

• 11:28Speaker 03

  You just never get tired of looking at the view.

• 11:32Speaker 05

  I know.

• 11:32Speaker 03

  The anticipation.

• 11:33Speaker 05

  Of course, the one day the freaking sun comes up.

• 11:35Speaker 03

  I know.

• 11:36Speaker 05

  It's far away, it's possible.

• 11:38Flora Lichtman?

  They're slowly sinking down. The bioluminescent creatures are streaking by their windows.

• 11:44Speaker 03

  Deep sea fireflies.

• 11:46Flora Lichtman?

  And then the trouble starts.

• 11:47Speaker 05

  Okay, Top Lab, so both legs of that ground just dropped at the same time.

• 11:54Flora Lichtman?

  It's an electrical issue with the sub.

• 11:57Speaker 05

  I don't know, should I be concerned about that?

• 12:01Flora Lichtman?

  The engineers on the ship, they're not concerned.

• 12:03Speaker 05

  Well, I'd say just keep going, keep an eye on it, and let me know when it changes.

• 12:09Flora Lichtman?

  These things happen. Everything looks fine now. Keep on keeping on, they say.

• 12:13Speaker 03

  All right, working through some initial pre-dive issues.

• 12:18Flora Lichtman?

  They're about half a mile down. Victoria starts getting down to business.

• 12:22Speaker 03

  I'm gonna start looking at my clipboard and going through our checklist for the dive.

• 12:29Flora Lichtman?

  They go over their route once they get to the bottom.

• 12:31Speaker 05

  Yeah, Roger that. I think our plan is to start at waypoint four and then work our way to waypoint three.

• 12:36Flora Lichtman?

  And they're sinking farther and farther away from the ship.

• 12:40Speaker 05

  Depth 4013 meters.

• 12:43Speaker 03

  We are officially past the deepest depth I have ever been. Pretty exciting.

• 12:51Flora Lichtman?

  The messages from Top Lab start getting difficult to make out.

• 12:54Speaker 05

  I can't really hear you on this thing.

• 12:58Speaker 05

  I'm gonna switch back to the video and try a different mic.

• 13:03Flora Lichtman?

  Meanwhile, they've almost made it to the seafloor.

• 13:06Speaker 05

  Depth 4689, 200 meters off.

• 13:11Speaker 03

  We're getting close to the bottom here. Some little jellies in the water.

• 13:18Speaker 03

  It's pretty amazing to think we're down here almost 5,000 meters.

• 13:22Flora Lichtman?

  This is a huge moment for this whole expedition.

• 13:26Speaker 03

  It's very exciting.

• 13:27Flora Lichtman?

  And the scientists on the ship are excited, too. So up in top lab, where they're radioing with Alvin, the scientists are gathering.

• 13:35Speaker 03

  Hi.

• 13:36Flora Lichtman?

  That's Victoria's partner, Shawna. She's talking with one of the Alvin engineers up top.

• 13:40Speaker 06

  Hello.

• 13:41Speaker 03

  We're here to watch them hit the seafloor.

• 13:43Speaker 06

  They're not going to hit the seafloor. They're going to hover above it.

• 13:46Speaker 03

  Softly. Hit the seafloor.

• 13:50Speaker 06

  Yeah, they're not there yet. They're getting there.

• 13:52Speaker 03

  I know. We can talk, but it's close.

• 13:57Flora Lichtman?

  I must admit, I pay more attention to the submersible when Victoria's in it. Picture them huddled around this speaker at the top of the ship, listening to these dispatches from deep below.

• 14:07Speaker 05

  About 10 meters off.

• 14:09Speaker 03

  All right, we should start to see it, something. 10 meters off the bottom.

• 14:15Speaker 03

  You can start to hear the thrusters go. Nick's starting to navigate us.

• 14:22Speaker 03

  I think I see some muddy bottom down there. Okay. Yep, there's a sea cucumber. Surprising lot of life down here. Some beautiful little stocked flowered crinoids.

• 14:36Flora Lichtman?

  They're these deep sea invertebrates with long fluffy petally arms, kind of like miniature palm trees blowing in the breeze.

• 14:43Speaker 03

  Oh, man, it's beautiful.

• 14:46Flora Lichtman?

  It's a celebratory moment that does not last long. Because when Nick powers up the robotic arm that they'll use to collect creatures, something goes wrong.

• 14:58Speaker 05

  My port manipulator power switch on the control bus, the breaker is breaking. I can't power on my port manipulator right now.

• 15:08Flora Lichtman?

  This is a huge problem. The port manipulator is the sub's primary tool for collecting samples. Collecting samples is the primary objective of this trip.

• 15:20Speaker 06

  Yeah, Roger. Understood. Stand by.

• 15:24Speaker 06

  That's not good.

• 15:26Flora Lichtman?

  "That's not good," he says.

• 15:27Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 15:28Flora Lichtman?

  Victoria immediately goes into troubleshoot mode.

• 15:31Speaker 03

  No push pouring?

• 15:33Flora Lichtman?

  And it's not just Victoria. More than three miles up on the top deck of the ship, Victoria's partner, Shawna, is also brainstorming workarounds. I mean, literally asking the exact same questions at the exact same moment.

• 15:44Speaker 03

  How about the Niskins? Can you reach the Niskin bottles, sorry? Biotubes? But we can't open the bio box. Can they suction? And you can get the slurp?

• 15:54Speaker 05

  I think I could do the slurp, yeah.

• 15:56Flora Lichtman?

  So this sucks, but it's not the end of the world.

• 15:59Speaker 03

  Slurp is an option.

• 16:01Flora Lichtman?

  They can still try to pick up some stuff. They can cruise around and survey the area. So Shawna goes to lunch, and Alvin goes on to its destination.

• 16:09Speaker 05

  Okay, top lab, we're heading up, doing what we can with the cyber manipulator.

• 16:15Speaker 03

  Well, we've got Alvin with a broken wing. Definitely disappointing. But the good news is we can still drive, and we are still in hot pursuit of some methane seeps.

• 16:32Flora Lichtman?

  So they're looking for these spots where methane is bubbling out. And there are some telltale signs.

• 16:36Speaker 03

  Clam beds, that would be, give us some indication that there's methane seeping.

• 16:42Flora Lichtman?

  Tube worms, or frenulates, also live in these methane seep spots. You can picture stalks with kind of swoops of red hair. They were on the wish list to find and bring back, at least before Alvin's arm broke.

• 16:54Speaker 05

  Drop 4900, heading to waypoint 3.

• 16:59Flora Lichtman?

  So they're cruising along, scoping seep spots,

• 17:06Flora Lichtman?

  when suddenly there's another problem with the sub. The lights go out, the computers go dark, the video system goes down. Nick, the pilot, is trying to figure out the issue. You can hear him furiously flipping switches.

• 17:24Flora Lichtman?

  This is not normal. Nick talks first.

• 17:26Speaker 05

  Okay, I just browned out. I'm gonna secure the video.

• 17:33Flora Lichtman?

  Victoria and Ekin stay quiet. They look at each other, their eyes wide. Nick tries to reassure them that everything is okay.

• 17:43Flora Lichtman?

  "Everything's good," he says. "I promise." "I promise."

• 17:48Flora Lichtman?

  And then suddenly...

• 17:49Speaker 05

  You said you had a brownout. What do you mean by that?

• 17:51Flora Lichtman?

  The recording stops.

• 17:56Flora Lichtman?

  It's silent.

• 18:01Flora Lichtman?

  Up on the boat, Shauna returns to the top lab.

• 18:04Speaker 07

  I came back after lunch, and no joke, every single Alvin Ops person was in top lab.

• 18:16Speaker 07

  They had, like, the blueprints out for Alvin.

• 18:19Flora Lichtman?

  Shauna's heart starts beating fast. She's pacing. She finds out that one of the sub's two batteries has gone out.

• 18:27Speaker 07

  I've been using Alvin for 30 years. Like, I've never had the power go out in Alvin. That would have been so scary.

• 18:35Flora Lichtman?

  And on top of that, the communication system with the ship cut out.

• 18:44Speaker 07

  So you call regularly for depth and status update, especially when something like this has gone on. And there was no reply.

• 18:52Flora Lichtman?

  It's a tense situation. The sub is down to one battery. Its power supply is cut in half. Now, even if that remaining battery went out, there are emergency batteries on board as a failsafe to get them back to the ship. But at this moment, no one's exactly sure why these problems are happening. So it's stressful. And for Shauna, the person in that sub isn't just her colleague, it's her life partner.

• 19:18Speaker 07

  Of course, my blood pressure and my heart rate is racing. It's not like I thought I wouldn't see her again. I was just afraid that she was afraid, I guess.

• 19:28Flora Lichtman?

  But if Victoria was afraid, that was not the feeling she was radiating.

• 19:35Flora Lichtman?

  A few minutes after the brownout, Victoria turned the recorder back on. She'd cut it off to let her submates freak out privately. They were back in contact with the ship, too, and Nick calls up.

• 19:48Speaker 05

  As I mentioned, I don't see a reason to continue, especially without a port manipulator.

• 19:54Flora Lichtman?

  Nick is ready to go back up.

• 19:58Speaker 05

  Honestly, I think we should just have it.

• 19:59Flora Lichtman?

  The sub is having problems. He knows the only way to fix them is to go to the surface. But then something happens that I really, really did not expect. Victoria pipes up.

• 20:15Speaker 03

  Obviously, safety is definitely what we are prioritizing here. And we'll follow your lead, but if we could get something to bring up from the deep sea before we return to the surface, that would be great.

• 20:31Flora Lichtman?

  And to me, this is the most revealing part of the dive. Victoria, a person who would never bungee jump, a person who says they do not like risk, starts to mount a quiet campaign to keep Alvin down at the bottom of the sea just a little longer.

• 20:51Speaker 03

  I mean, I'm all for it if you're for it, but it's totally, it's totally up to you.

• 20:59Speaker 05

  I mean, it would just be observation.

• 21:00Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 21:01Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 21:01Flora Lichtman?

  Nick says, okay, sure, we can look around quickly, but I'm not going to try to grab anything. That takes a long time. It takes power.

• 21:09Speaker 05

  Pop, we're just going to go to waypoint three. We're not going to try and sample anything. We're just going to investigate it. And then after that, we're going to head home.

• 21:18Flora Lichtman?

  So that's the plan. But listen to Victoria delicately and methodically lay the groundwork for bringing back samples.

• 21:28Speaker 05

  If I had my port manipulator, it would be all over.

• 21:32Speaker 03

  Think about like the pilot crud you'd get if you could gently pick a sea daisy with your starboard manip.

• 21:40Flora Lichtman?

  And in this moment, I got a window into Victoria, into another way to be a badass explorer. This is confidence without swagger, cool-headed but warm to her colleagues, and a willingness to push just a little bit on everyone's comfort zone, including her own, to make this trip worthwhile. And it's infectious.

• 22:09Speaker 05

  Like if we saw something that was like...

• 22:13Speaker 05

  The most incredible thing ever I would try.

• 22:17Flora Lichtman?

  And then, something incredible pops into the viewport. The tube worms they've been looking for all along.

• 22:23Speaker 03

  Ooh, there's some frenulets right in front of us.

• 22:26Speaker 05

  Oh, nice.

• 22:28Speaker 03

  The little redheads.

• 22:34Speaker 05

  If I sampled one of those, would I be a hero?

• 22:36Speaker 03

  You would.

• 22:38Speaker 05

  Can I put it in a biotube?

• 22:39Speaker 03

  You sure can. You can put it wherever you want.

• 22:43Flora Lichtman?

  It's easy to forget that mere minutes ago, this sub lost power, all the lights went off, all the computers went dark.

• 22:53Speaker 03

  Alright, Nick's gonna try for the hail mary frenule grab. I'm not going home.

• 23:00Flora Lichtman?

  They get in position, Nick reaches out with the little manipulator that's not designed to pick up tube worms. And he gets it.

• 23:08Speaker 05

  In a tube.

• 23:10Speaker 03

  Yeah? High five. Yeah!

• 23:16Speaker 05

  That was probably the most absurd way to sample that.

• 23:19Speaker 03

  Excellent.

• 23:20Speaker 05

  But it worked.

• 23:21Flora Lichtman?

  The worm is grabbed and bagged. And Victoria seems delighted.

• 23:26Speaker 03

  Good news is, we're not coming up empty-handed and hopefully we'll have an uneventful return to the ship.

• 23:34Speaker 03

  As Nick laughs.

• 23:43Flora Lichtman?

  When they make it back to the boat, you can hear a relief in everyone's voices.

• 23:50Flora Lichtman?

  Shawna's there to greet them.

• 23:52Speaker 07

  I was pretty happy to see her when she got back on board, I have to say.

• 23:57Speaker 07

  Definitely think we hugged a lot longer than we would normally.

• 24:01Speaker 03

  Definitely want to hear

• 24:04Speaker 03

  grown out. Yeah. You can set all the lights.

• 24:07Flora Lichtman?

  When I first listened to the recording of this dive, the question that kept sloshing around in my head was, what was this like for Victoria? I mean, she seemed so cool, but the experience seemed so scary. I caught up with Victoria a few days after the dive. She was still on the ship. And she said, "Yeah, it was scary." Particularly when communication got cut off with the ship.

• 24:33Speaker 07

  I had never...

• 24:35Speaker 03

  Really spent much time thinking about the importance of the noise in the sub. And when that went away, it really did feel like we were alone.

• 24:48Speaker 03

  This is like the lifeline to the ship. But when it seemed like things were a little bit more stable and calm, I just asked whether or not it was possible to salvage anything from this dive before like immediately heading back to the surface.

• 25:07Flora Lichtman?

  I heard that part and I was pretty shocked.

• 25:14Flora Lichtman?

  Cause I would have been like elevator up, please.

• 25:16Speaker 03

  So I guess I can tell you my, my thinking at that point. And that is we, we had already been dealing with horrible weather. The rest of the week looked really sketchy for diving. And so this could be our, our shot.

• 25:32Flora Lichtman?

  Their shot to understand this mysterious place, a place that has a rudder on our atmosphere, a place that Victoria has dedicated her life to studying.

• 25:45Speaker 03

  I'm, I'm all about just the joy of, of observation and the opportunity to go to this very remote world. That has always been such an amazing thrill, you know, for me. And, and just my training from graduate school on is just don't ever leave the bottom without something, right? Like, because it's so, it's such an investment. You want to try to eke out every last possible sample.

• 26:16Flora Lichtman?

  It makes sense in that context. It took four years to plan this expedition. Getting sub time is rare and expensive. Who knows when another person might be back at this place. But at the same time, it's a rare trait to be able to hold on to the 20,000 league view, even when your sub is on the fritz at the bottom of the sea. And it's the kind of person you probably want in your vessel when things go wrong.

• 26:41Speaker 07

  She rarely gets ruffled. She's been that way the entire time I've known her.

• 26:46Flora Lichtman?

  Here's Shawna again.

• 26:47Speaker 07

  And so she's usually the one in the relationship that, you know, it diffuses everything that's stressful. So, you know, if you picked anyone to be in this situation, it would, should be Victoria.

• 26:58Speaker 03

  But we really made the most of that one tube worm. And

• 27:01Flora Lichtman?

  It does seem like it.

• 27:03Speaker 03

  It turned out to be pretty cool. So this was a male tube worm. And it had these cool, like, almost like weed-like sperm that are shaped like little arrows. And they get jammed. I don't know. It was really cool. So.

• 27:40Flora Lichtman?

  The Leap is a production of the Hypothesis Fund. Victoria volunteers on the Hypothesis Fund's Scientific Advisory Board. This show is hosted by me, Flora Lichtman, and produced by Annette Heist. Editing by Devon Taylor, Pajao Van Ghe, and David Sanford. Back checking by Nicole Pasulka. Mixing and scoring by Emma Munger. Music by Joshua Budokh. Special thanks to Dan Utter and Rebecca Wiffler for the excellent additional recordings on the ship. And thanks to you for listening.

• 28:17Flora Lichtman?

  This episode wraps up the debut of The Leap. I really hope you enjoyed these stories. We loved sharing them with you. And if you have feedback, we always want to hear from you. You can email us at sci [email protected]. Thanks for listening.