Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. A DIY camera jury-rigged with suction cups captured something no one had ever seen. Two sperm whales communicating and swimming together in the deep ocean.
And then we started hearing a different sound. It was a rapid series of clicks. That's called CODAS. This is the way sperm whales used to communicate with each other. So we were hearing her talking to another whale. We could not believe our ears.
Chapter 2: What innovative tool did Eric Stackpole use to capture whale behavior?
And then we couldn't believe our eyes.
That's engineer Eric Stackpole. In his talk, he shares the story of how a scrappy, hand-built tool gave an intimate glimpse at the lives of these giants. He also makes an important case that in an age of rapidly advancing technology, the only limit to what we can discover is what we're curious enough to look for. Stick around afterwards. I sat down with Eric to go beyond his talk.
We dig into why it's good that everyone has a different approach to learning, the emotional side of science, and why wonder is a vital part of discovery.
It's almost like you can relate to your human aspects of those types of feelings and not just get the data, but actually picture what it might feel like to be the whale. And I think we're all explorers. We're all trying to find those things to relate to, even in the natural world.
That's all coming up right after a short break.
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Chapter 3: How do sperm whales communicate underwater?
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And now, our TED Talk of the day.
During COVID, everyone was sequestered in their own corners of the world. I had the strange fortune of being sequestered here aboard the Ocean Explorer, one of the most advanced research vessels on the planet, filming a show for National Geographic. The ship was designed not just for research, but also for storytelling.
My job was to travel the world and show people what exploration is like from the perspective of an engineer. When I tell people this, they usually have three questions. What was it like? What did you learn? And how did you get the job? I'll go backward. I wasn't always a great engineer. I wasn't even a good student. I spent more time tinkering than doing homework.
But I love engineering, and that has led me on an incredible journey. With friends, I built low-cost underwater robots designed to democratize exploration, and that democratization drew the attention of the show's producers. You can watch the show to see what we discovered, but for me, the most powerful moments were seeing things that no one had ever seen before using the tools that we had built.
In the Azores, we teamed up with Rui Pareto, renowned whale biologist who spent decades studying sperm whales. These giants can dive to over a mile deep to hunt, and we know very little about what they do when they're down there. So to find out, Rui had put together a very DIY tag.
It used a taken apart action camera, it had a light, there was a radio beacon, and it had suction cups designed to stick to the whale for a few hours and then pop up and float to the surface. It was very DIY, but even on an advanced research ship, Building your own tools is often the way to get the information you need. It barely worked.
We had to spend nights soldering and improvising to try to get it going. And at like two in the morning, we finally got it going. And while I overslept, Drew was already out on the boat. He placed the tag on a whale, and I remember him radioing back the tag was on. Okay, a huge amount of suspense. Would it ever come back to the surface? Or would it flood with water? Would the battery die?
Would the camera work? We had no idea. but it did come up, we found it, we took it back to the ship, and fingers were crossed. Finally, we opened it up, there was no water inside, oh my God, we pulled out the SD card, and like with bated breath, we put it in the computer and waited for the files to load. And oh my God, we had footage from the back of a sperm whale. Oh, my.
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Chapter 4: What challenges did Eric face while creating the DIY whale tag?
We could build this tag and do all that. And we can learn all these things about their eating habits and where they hunt and what they hunt, which is maybe useful for preservation. But I think that the biggest thing is like, wow, we are experiencing planet Earth in a way that's profound.
In the same way that we can go outside and see trees growing from the ground or look at the night sky and with the help of the telescope now understand what that means. I feel like that moment, at least for me, really helps me understand in a broader sense what being alive on the planet means.
And why do you think moments like that resonate so strongly with people who watch them?
That's a great question. Because yeah, you don't have to, you know, someone didn't need to- You don't have to be the one in the ship. Yeah, no, you don't. And in fact, you also don't need to know anything about science. You know, you can be very, you can have just learned that there's a thing called a sperm whale that day and still found this fascinating.
Find it very moving, right.
Yeah. I remember aboard the ship with a lot of people who have dedicated their lives to researching these types of animals. They'd always warn us not to personify them too much. They are different than we are, you know. But I think you don't have to personify an animal to relate to it.
When you see it diving into the abyss, you know, that kind of energetic desire to go into the place where you can get your sustenance. I think we've all had that feeling, you know. And then as it's starting to concentrate, now it's gotten into the deep, dark abyss and it needs to listen for that echo coming from its echolocation.
I felt an emotion of kind of like, okay, now there's this stillness. We got to the place. Mission on, like, let's see if we can find this food. And then you bring back in the human factor that it's almost sort of scary down there. It's dark. You don't know what's lurking. To me, I think that that's an emotional roller coaster that is sort of relatable.
It's almost like you can relate to your human aspects of those types of feelings and not just get the data, but actually picture what it might feel like to be the whale. And I think we're all explorers. We're all trying to find those things to relate to, even in the natural world.
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Chapter 5: What emotions did Eric experience while witnessing the whale footage?
Engineer and ocean explorer, Eric Stackpole. Eric, thank you so much.
This has been a real pleasure. And thank you very much as well. Absolutely.
That was Eric Stackpole at TED Next 2025 and in conversation with me, Elise Hu. If you're curious about TED's curation, find out more at TED.com slash curation guidelines. And that's it for today. This episode was produced by Lucy Little, edited by Alejandro Salazar, fact-checked by the TED Research Team, and engineered by Xander Adams. TED Talks Daily is part of the TED Audio Collective.
Our team includes Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Ryan Green, Lucy Little, Emma Taubner, and Tansika Sangmarnivon. Additional support from Daniela Balarezo and Banban Chang. I'm Elise Hume. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed. Thanks for listening.