James Nestor Quotes

The animals are usually very wary of scuba but... they saw something similar to themselves. ...[W]hales also have mammalian dive reflexes. That's how they're able to dive down to 8,000 feet for 90 minutes...

[T]he lowest recorded heart rate [of a free diver]... was 7 beats per minute... about 1/2 of someone in a ...

[A]fter around 30 feet... the water stops buoying you... and starts dragging you down to the sea floor. ...[T]he deeper ...the more your body changes. ...Your organs allow for the free flow of fluids so they don't collapse. Your brain waves slow down. Your heart rate will slow to about 1/3 its resting rate.

[A] few years ago a French researcher and a Belgian freediver... thought "What if we try freediving with whales? Maybe we could get close enough... and start communicating..."

But they could not crack the communication code. To do that you have to get below the surface. You have to see these animals... to gauge their behavior.

So for the past 50 years we've been... studying these animals from the deck of a boat. Now this is very limiting. You can't see... you... have to put... s off the deck... But... they've found... that... sperm whales have dialects... they can shoot this click communication in focused sound beams to other whales across great distances... [T]hese sperm whales can cram 1600 micro-clicks into a single second... and move discreet frequencies around...

Lilly... wanted to... figure out the communication code. He said these animals are by far the most intelligent... on the planet. They have a form of communication that is far more sophisticated than ours. But you can't quite put a 60 foot long whale into a lab.

He... had dolphin English language immersion workshops... where... an intern [would] grant dolphins sexual favors if they learned English words, and this... worked.

He had a dolphin telephone... and he would listen in as these dolphins would have these very complex conversations...

Back in the 60s... John Lilly had a lab... dedicated to solving the dolphin communication problem...

[T]he more you focus in on these clicks, the tinier... they get, [growing] into more complex structures. ...[O]ther ns such as dolphins and orcas also use these. It's this secret language... discrete codes... down to the millisecond.

Inside of these clicks is encoded information... a secret language...

They're able to see better with sounds than we are able to see with our eyes.

I found out later that these clicks are actually used for communication. These animals also use them to see in the deep ocean. ...It's a form of called echolocation.

These animals came up to us, welcomed us into their pods and started showering us with these clicks.