Season 6 Episode 16: Moon Fitness and Deep Sea Discoveries with Dr. April Abbott

Can you imagine astronauts running sideways inside a lunar cylinder to stay fit?

This innovative exercise routine could revolutionize how astronauts maintain muscle mass and cardiovascular health during prolonged space missions.

We reflect on the importance of exercise routines, especially as we age, and how imaginative approaches can make fitness fun, even on the moon.

Get insightful revelations from a comprehensive study on osteosarcoma in dogs. Using data from over 900,000 dogs in the Vet Compass program, researchers have identified specific breeds at a higher risk for this severe bone tumor. We explore how breed, body weight, and skull length influence these risks, shedding light on practical implications for veterinary practices. Learn how these findings can help vets diagnose and manage osteosarcoma more effectively, especially in high-risk breeds like the Scottish Deerhound and Great Dane.

Take a leap into the captivating world of marine science with Dr. April Abbott. Experience life aboard research vessels, from the camaraderie of midnight rations to the logistical challenges of marine expeditions.

 We also discuss the critical study of sediments and elements like neodymium and chromium to understand Earth's historical climate changes and predict future environmental shifts. This episode is packed with scientific discoveries, engaging anecdotes, and the thrill of oceanic exploration.

Dr. Abbott's Link
https://x.com/April__Abbott

Bunsen and Beaker's Links:

30% off the first month at Zencastr - use the code in the show!
https://zen.ai/3LXIX2UYb1RLXwtWHHjryXAutdr3HS5EpVHMW80BOKg

Save 10% at Bark and Beyond with the coupon code BUNSEN!

The Ginger Stuffie is on presale so check the link here!

Join The Paw Pack to Support The Show!

https://bunsenbernerbmd.com/pages/paw-pack-plus-community

Our Website!

The Bunsen and Beaker Website has adorable merch with hundreds of different combinations of designs and apparel- all with Printful- one of the highest quality companies we could find!

www.bunsenbernerbmd.com

Sign up for our Weekly Newsletter!

Bunsen and Beaker on Twitter:

Bunsen and Beaker on TikTok:

Transcript

Speaker 2: 0:08

Hello science enthusiasts. My name is Jason Zukoski. I'm a high school chemistry teacher and a science communicator, but I'm also the dog dad of Bunsen and Beaker, the science dogs on social media. If you love science and you love pets, you've come to the right place. Put on your lab coat, put on your safety glasses and hold on to your tail. This is the Science Podcast. Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Science Podcast. We hope you're happy and healthy out there.

Speaker 2: 0:37

This is episode 16 of season 6. As I'm recording this, it's a Thursday. We're a day behind. Chris actually had to help out a family member with a medical appointment, kind of far away from where we live. We're scrambling a bit to get it done. But and Bernoulli, our, our new little puppy, is arriving on Saturday. Well, not arriving, we've got to drive halfway to meet the family. So it's very surreal. And we have Bunsen and Beaker, so it's not like before. There was just so much anticipation, but it's starting to build. I swear time is becoming slower. We can't wait to tell you guys, like especially next week, we'll be able to mention you know how much our lives have changed having this little puppy in our lives, um, bernoulli, and how Bunsen and Beaker and Ginger are interacting with this new little creature, new little family member.

Speaker 2: 1:33

All right, well, what's on the science podcast? This week in science news, chris and I are going to be looking at? Uh a pretty. It's wholesome and really interesting. It's a different way that astronauts could exercise on the moon. You'll want to listen to this. It's actually pretty hilarious. And in pet science, we take a look at a enormous data set that was analyzed by scientists in regards to a specific type of cancer in dogs called osteosarcoma. Our guest and ask an expert is Dr April Abbott, who's going to be teaching us a little bit about marine science. But specifically mud. Okay, the bad joke. Why should you probably not tell muddy jokes at work? We never know if your coworkers-workers have a dirty sense of humor. Okay, that's terrible. All right, on with the show, because there's no time like Science Time. This week in science news, chris and I are going to talk about running sideways Before we get there. Do you like to work out, chris? Are you big into exercise?

Speaker 3: 2:47

I am. I work out three times a week at a facility called C-Fitness.

Speaker 2: 2:53

And I work out at the same place. What's your favorite day? Leg day, chest day, back day?

Speaker 3: 3:02

So my workout regimen has two leg days a week and one full body.

Speaker 2: 3:07

Oh, two leg days.

Speaker 3: 3:09

Yeah, so I do leg press and RDLs. And then today I did I call it the butt blaster and abs. And they have a new machine there that works the quads. Have you tried it yet? It's like a torture chamber.

Speaker 2: 3:30

No, on my leg day I just lift crazy heavy weights like deadlifts and squats and stuff.

Speaker 3: 3:37

Nice.

Speaker 2: 3:38

Yeah, I don't necessarily like leg day because it's hard to stay for me, but I know how important strength training is as we get older, like literally every single scientific report, and we've talked I've actually talked to scientists who specialize in exercise physiology before on the podcast and they're like the number one thing you can do is keep your body strong, like the stronger you are, the better you will be as you age Less joint problems, less health issues. Strength training is number one.

Speaker 3: 4:08

Right, and the good news is it's never too late to start.

Speaker 2: 4:12

Right, yeah, but what does this have to do with running sideways? Why are we talking about this, chris?

Speaker 3: 4:19

Astronauts are required to exercise for approximately two hours each day while in space. And although we're talking about exercise on Earth, it's important for astronauts to also maintain physical and aerobic health while they're in space, so their regimen includes a combination of aerobic resistance and flexibility exercises to mitigate the effects of prolonged weightlessness on their bodies.

Speaker 2: 4:49

Start to look like the people from WALL-E if you're not careful.

Speaker 3: 4:53

Yes, exactly so. The exercise helps maintain muscle mass, bone density, cardiovascular health and overall physical fitness, and all of those things are compromised due to the lack of gravity in space.

Speaker 2: 5:09

So where this running sideways comes from is like in the near future we're going to have an orbital moon base and probably like a base on the moon within our lifetime. Like they're working on this, this stuff, and the gravity on the moon isn't like it is, I guess, at the ISS, where it's effectively zero. So all of their like exercise stuff is going to have to be different. So they were thinking some scientists were thinking outside the box and the idea came from this wall of death which is like a barrel with the top sawed off and these motorcycles zip around the inside. Now, I've never seen the wall of death made out of wood, but at the Westerner, which is like the fair that happens in Red Deer, there've been like motorcycle daredevil shows and it's like this great big cage and the motorcycles can zip around like perfectly horizontal or do loop to loops and sometimes both of them go at the same time. And it is bananas. Do you think you get like scared? They're going to smash into each other.

Speaker 3: 6:16

Absolutely. I am so certain that they are well-practiced. But, seriously, there could be a catastrophic accident if they were to crash into each other. But it is definitely a feat what they're doing.

Speaker 2: 6:31

So just to wrap this up before you get going, chris, because this is a hilarious and awesome little study, the physiologists at the University of Milan did a bunch of calculations, did a bunch of calculations and they found that, due to the moon's lower gravity, if you ran fast enough in a cylinder, you would be able to run on the wall perfectly horizontal like spider-man, rather than fall to the ground or slowly fall on the moon so that suggests that this technique could one day offer lunar inhabitants a new means of Earth-like exercise.

Speaker 2: 7:07

Instead of running on a treadmill, you run sideways.

Speaker 3: 7:11

Some 384,000 kilometers from our home planet. Like I said, lower gravity means people's bodies don't experience the same physical stresses that they do on Earth, which leads to that muscle atrophy and brittle bones. And because the moon has only about a sixth of Earth's gravity, this creates significant challenges and a significant difference between exercising on the moon and here and, interestingly, six months in space can damage the bones as much as a decade of aging.

Speaker 2: 7:45

Yeah, space is no joke. Like you and I, we actually got to listen to Jeremy Hansen, right? Is that his name? Jeremy Hansen, the Canadian astronaut that's on the next mission to the moon?

Speaker 3: 7:57

Yes, Jason, he was so fantastic.

Speaker 2: 7:59

I know he was a really good speaker.

Speaker 3: 8:00

He came to the Earth Pride Festival in Jasper.

Speaker 2: 8:02

And we saw him with Bill nye and I learned so much from attending his talk and of course I'm a space nerd, so I I've, I like, followed when chris hadfield was the commander of the iss. He's the canadian older gentleman with the mustache that brought a guitar up to the iss. He's a canadian hero, by the way. This he's like a crack jet fighter. Anyways, like he talked about how rough space is on your body, like you come back with like permanent eye damage from all of your head swelling from the lack of gravity and you lose a lot of muscle mass if you don't exercise like a fiend every single day. But one sixth earth gravity, that definitely would help me with my PR, my personal records, with my deadlifts. Technically I'd be able to lift six times more right.

Speaker 3: 8:55

Yes, and that's a lot of weight, jason. The gym is almost running out of enough weight for you to lift no, that's not true.

Speaker 2: 9:04

They can always find more, did they? This is all an idea, but what makes this so hilarious, chris, is that they tested this idea. A couple of the lab members from milan put on harnesses that mimic the one sixth gravity, and the harnesses were attached to a bungee cord. So they had a crane that had a bungee cord and effectively reduced their weight and mimicked the exact gravity on the moon. And then these guys started to run real fast sideways at this, like cylinder that they built, and it worked. So these maybe they're grad students. They were like okay, run at the wall as fast as you can, try to run sideways. And it absolutely worked because the gravity was emulating the gravity on the moon. The force of them running, their centrifugal force was enough to keep their feet on the wall and it overcame the gravity force of the pole downwards. So I guess they don't need treadmills, they'll just need some kind of cylindrical room, possibly to run around in on the moon.

Speaker 3: 10:18

Just run around on the wall.

Speaker 2: 10:22

I would pay money to see that on the moon. Actually, I would pay money to go to the moon. I don't think we have that kind of money. But I would watch a video of astronauts running like Homer Simpson style, like three stooges around. That would be hilarious to see.

Speaker 3: 10:39

Or we can just go to the Westerner and watch the death defying motorcycles in the spherical cage.

Speaker 2: 10:45

Yeah, that's true, that's science news for this week. This week in pet science, Chris and I are going to break down a fairly large study that looked at something that's quite sad for a lot of pet owners and that's cancer, specifically osteosarcoma and our family has experienced cancer in dogs. Callan died of a splenic sarcoma.

Speaker 3: 11:09

Jason. We took Callan to the vet and we weren't sure what was going on. And they checked her over and they felt her spleen and they couldn't find anything, couldn't feel anything. And then she just got sicker and we were like no, there's something seriously wrong here. It's not that she's eaten anything, she's not sick that way. And then she deteriorated over about two weeks. Was that about right.

Speaker 2: 11:35

Yeah, we started to notice something weird two weeks in, but it was really like the last three days. That was like the turn that a lot of pet owners talk about when a dog has cancer, like the big turn, and that's what sadly happened to kellen.

Speaker 3: 11:49

It was super heartbreaking but she, the vet, told us dogs hide it. They hide it so well and she just tried really hard, but it was just too much yeah, so it's common.

Speaker 2: 12:03

the splenix sarcoma is very common in legum retrievers Labrador retrievers and German shepherds, I believe but this study is about a different type of cancer. What type? What's osteosarcoma, chris?

Speaker 3: 12:16

Yeah, osteosarcoma is a serious malignant bone tumor affecting dogs, and dogs with osteosarcoma often show bony or soft tissue swelling with severe pain. And, interestingly, canine and human osteosarcoma share similar characteristics, and so studies on canine osteosarcoma are valuable for understanding human.

Speaker 2: 12:39

So that's one of the things that we lose sight of. Some people lose sight of like why are you studying dogs? I hear that very rarely, but it's like why are we putting money into studying dogs? And the answer is the more we learn about mammals and dogs, we actually learn more about ourselves too right.

Speaker 3: 12:56

So the study aimed to analyze veterinary clinical data from the vet compass program and it explored whether demographic information such as breed, body weight and body shape could predict osteosarcoma in dogs.

Speaker 2: 13:10

They got their data from something called Vet Compass and that was a bunch of anonymous veterinary clinical records. So the only thing they knew was they didn't know the name of the dogs or the owner's names or any data, but specifically the breed of the dog and, sadly, that the dog got osteosarcoma or how the dog died later. And this was an enormous study Vet Compass. The data from Vet Compass came from 2016. So it's taken a bit of time. This is a relatively new study. It's taken a long time to go through all that data. So over 900,000 dogs were part of this massive study. It's taken a long time to go through all that data. So over 900,000 dogs were part of this massive study. That's almost a million dogs, chris. That is a crazy, huge number of dogs.

Speaker 3: 13:53

That is a large amount of dogs.

Speaker 2: 13:55

From all of those dogs, only 331 dogs in that group had osteosarcoma, so that meant the prevalence of it is extremely low 0.037%. So osteosarcoma is not as common as other types of cancer and I don't want you to feel bad. If you're listening You're like, oh man, my dog got that, it's what they died from. But within the study it's not the most common thing that dogs get. There are some dog breeds that were more susceptible to osteosarcoma. That was, I guess, something that should be highlighted. I've never heard of this dog breed before, but the Scottish deer hound made up 3.3% of all of the cases, which is significant. If you have such a low amount and one dog breed is like there over and over again, which is significant. If you have such a low amount and one dog breed is like there over and over again, that seems significant. Have you ever heard of the Scottish deerhound, Chris?

Speaker 3: 14:51

No, I haven't.

Speaker 2: 14:52

No, the Leonberger was about 1.5. The Great Dane was just under one, as was the Rottweiler, and the Greyhound was just over 0.5, 0.62%. So the top five Osteosarcoma breeds were the Deerhound, leonberger, great Dane, rottweiler and Greyhound. So from that, the elevated risk for Osteosarcoma obviously was the Scottish Deerhound, which had a 118 times the risk of other dog breeds, followed by the Lehman-Lehmanberger at 55, the Great Dane at 34, and then the Roddy at 26.

Speaker 3: 15:33

Additionally, demographic factors came into play. Aging was strongly associated with increasing osteosarcoma risk, and heavier dogs had 1.65 times the risk compared to later dogs with the same breed, and insured dogs had 1.71 times the risk compared to uninsured dogs. But that could possibly be due to better healthcare access.

Speaker 2: 16:00

Yeah, I've seen that in other studies where they're like where, like, insured dogs are more sick. That was like a if you did, if you just looked at the study at face value, it would be confusing because you'd be like, wait a second, how come insured dogs are, are, don't live as or are more sick? And it's because folks can take them in more often to get checked out so they catch things like osteosarcoma rather than a dog maybe without insurance. It never gets caught and they die from it and nobody knows why the dog died.

Speaker 3: 16:28

Another factor was body confirmation. So short-legged breeds had 0.10 times the risk compared to non-short-legged breeds, and long skull breeds had 2.72 times the risk, and short skull breeds showed actually a reduced risk of 0.5 times.

Speaker 2: 16:49

So that's those brachycephalic dogs like pugs and French bulldogs. They actually. The incidence of osteosarcoma in them is extremely low. They have other health issues, obviously, but in those short-legged, short-skulled dogs they seem to have some kind of protective effect.

Speaker 3: 17:06

The study highlights that breed, body weight, skull length are all significant risk factors for osteosarcoma in dogs, and veterinarians can use this information to update clinical suspicion and judgment in cases.

Speaker 2: 17:24

As we close out the study, one of the things I read is that unless a vet knows or has a lot of experience with osteosarcoma remember, like within the study, it's extremely low prevalence it gets missed, it gets. It's just not something that it's so rare that, unless a vet has experienced it before through no fault of their own Remember, like they're, they don't just look after dogs, it's like all the animals they are trained to watch over. So it gets missed. And that's what you mentioned, chris, is that can allow vets to say, oh, from this study, the lean burger, which I guess we've seen a few of those in Alberta has a greater risk, as does the Great Dane and the Roddy, three dogs that I've seen quite often in Alberta. A good little roundup of something. That's sad. It's about cancer, but there's a lot of good data in this Vet Compass program and it's interesting to see it parsed out with almost a million dogs. That's Pet Science for this week.

Speaker 4: 18:23

It's time for Ask an Expert on the.

Speaker 2: 18:25

Science. Podcast and I am thrilled to have Dr April.

Speaker 1: 18:30

Abbott Assistant.

Speaker 3: 18:31

Professor in Marine Science with us today.

Speaker 2: 18:34

Doc how you doing.

Speaker 4: 18:35

It's an amazing community of folks who love pets and folks who love science we have tons of bonus content there and we have live streams every Sunday with our community. I'm calling from Conway, south and yes we have tons of bonus Bunsen and Beaker content there.

Speaker 1: 18:45

Where are you on the?

Speaker 2: 18:45

world. Where are you calling into the podcast from?

Speaker 4: 18:46

I'm calling from Conway, south Carolina, probably better known for our next door in Myrtle Beach.

Speaker 2: 18:51

We've got the Bunsen stuffy the Beaker stuffy and now the Ginger stuffy. That's right, ginger the science cat.

Speaker 1: 18:57

A little bit of both, a little replica.

Speaker 2: 19:00

I prefer the beach.

Speaker 4: 19:01

I think I would too.

Speaker 1: 19:02

I'm not a great golfer and number three, if you're listening to the podcast have you lived in that neck of the world for a while, or have you?

Speaker 2: 19:10

jumped around due to academia and training and stuff like that. Okay, on with the show.

Speaker 4: 19:13

I've jumped around quite a bit, so I actually only moved to Conway in 2022. I've been here about two years now. Before that, I was living in Sydney, australia.

Speaker 2: 19:22

Before that I was living in Sydney, Australia. Okay, cool, I introduced you as Dr Abbott.

Speaker 4: 19:30

What's your training in science? So I have both a master's and PhD in science after I finished my bachelor of science and I started off more as a geologist, so looking at earth science and really focusing on the rocks or, as my preferences are, the mud. And then I moved from small lakes so I did my undergrad in upstate New York in the Finger Lakes region.

Speaker 4: 19:54

And from there, went up to bigger lakes and did my master's in University of Minnesota at Duluth to look at the large lakes and actually worked on some large lakes in East Africa.

Speaker 2: 20:06

Wow.

Speaker 4: 20:07

And then went to Oregon State for my PhD, where I made the jump to saltwater and started working in the marine system.

Speaker 2: 20:16

I got to ask the question like when you were young, were you all into dirt and mud and rocks and geology type stuff?

Speaker 4: 20:24

I really was. So I think I probably still have more rocks in my dad's barn than he wants to admit and shells and other stuff I collected at the beach. But he worked on a research vessel. So during the summer was when I didn't have school I was actually out on the local university's research vessel playing in the mud, so I got started really early on that respect.

Speaker 1: 20:47

I love it.

Speaker 2: 20:49

So my I guess the followup to all of this is that you're considered a geochemist. Is that correct? Like you, you look at go ahead Sorry.

Speaker 4: 21:02

I was just going to say. I jump back and forth whether I'm more geo one day or more chem, but definitely on the line between the two.

Speaker 2: 21:10

So all of that has to do with you. Look at sediments and I was wondering what does that science learn? What is the importance of that kind of science?

Speaker 4: 21:21

So it can actually tell us a bunch of different cool stuff. Science, so it can actually tell us a bunch of different cool stuff. And one of the things I'm really interested in is how the combination of kind of what rocks or minerals are there and the chemistry of the water they're in interact to tell us about the environment they're being deposited in. Or if we're interested in how Earth has changed through time, how Earth's climate has changed through time, how we can use those sediment properties going back hundreds of years, thousands of years, millions of years, to look at Earth's climate as recorded in the mud.

Speaker 2: 21:58

So it's like a book of the past.

Speaker 4: 22:00

It is, and part of what I find most fun is actually learning how to read. So for a lot of the elements on the periodic table we don't know where 95% is coming from. We only can account for $5 out of every hundred. So solving kind of the mysteries around the modern ocean and how these elements are moving between solid phase and the water and what the role of different types of mud is in controlling these so we can then use them. Going back into the deep past is what one of the areas I'm most interested in.

Speaker 2: 22:51

So, like you're talking about the elements on the periodic table, like some they just have shown up and science has no idea where they came from.

Speaker 4: 23:00

Yes, For example, if we look at I've worked a lot with neodymium, so the nice rectangle way down at the bottom of the periodic table that most people don't look at- I love those guys.

Speaker 4: 23:11

The rare earths. Yeah, and based on kind of models, assuming that most of the neodymium in seawater is coming in from rivers, with minor inputs from other sources, we can account for about 5% of the concentration in the isotopes we see in the ocean. So that's a big gap in terms of just we know what possible sources are, we just don't know how or how much they're contributing.

Speaker 2: 23:41

And of course that's a pretty important element, for I want to say smartphones, right.

Speaker 4: 23:47

It is, and there's probably more neodymium in the technology I use every day than how much I'll be trying to study in seawater over the course of my career. It definitely lives up to its name of rare when we're talking about seawater.

Speaker 2: 24:02

My apologies, I just had a little cough there. Aside from neodymium, is there some other elements that are bizarre like that? I'm a chemistry guy, so I love hearing anybody talk about elements on the periodic table.

Speaker 4: 24:14

So I've been mainly working with neodymium, but of course as part of the lanthanides, or rare earth elements, we consider the whole series when we're doing that. So that's, I guess, my big project. Recently I've also been branching out a little bit and looking at chromium, because the hope is, if we do similar modern studies with several trace elements that might behave differently, they could help tell us about process, if one's behaving like another or if they're not behaving the same. So we started to look at chromium in the water in between the sediment grains so the pore water and trying to get data sets for chromium and iron and neodymium all out of the same set of that pore water.

Speaker 2: 25:07

Okay, so the bigger question, and maybe a tough one, is so the hope is to understand where it's coming from. Is that to help mining processes, is that to help get more of it for humanity? Or is that just answering a question, an unanswered question, or maybe both?

Speaker 4: 25:27

So there's definitely work going on in the economic side of things. It's a very specific part of the ocean that that might might and it's still quite a stretch from my understanding even be a reasonable endeavor. But from the more science question perspective, neodymium isotopes are used and are one of our most used ways to look at how ocean circulations change through time. So media in the last what has it been two months now shut down of the Gulf Stream all the really scary headlines. With changing circulation in the Atlantic, one thing that we like to be able to do is go back and say, okay, last time we had a warming environment, not only did the circulation change, but how quickly was it able to change? So we want to make sure we really understand these proxies, that we're trying to look at how circulation changed 50 million years ago during the Paleocene, eocene, thermal maximum, before we start making any type of assertion about how quickly something like that could change oh, I got you, so you are.

Speaker 2: 26:45

It's a question, it's a blueprint for the future. If this does happen, right, it's not like what's, that terrible sci-fi movie where everything freezes because the Gulf stream shuts down.

Speaker 4: 26:56

Oh, Day After.

Speaker 2: 26:57

Tomorrow, the Day After Tomorrow, right, or maybe it's not such a terrible movie after all. I watched it when I was younger and I was like this is so far-fetched. But then I've heard some climate scientists say Europe isn't supposed to be as warm as it is, based on its latitude, because of all these weirdo ocean currents funneling hot air there.

Speaker 4: 27:16

And you're not the first one I've heard say this, because we were all like it's crazy how quickly they're saying things can change and then all of a sudden maybe things can change quicker than we thought, but still I don't think it's going to be tomorrow. So I think we're still okay on that respect.

Speaker 2: 27:29

Yeah, you're not going to be. We won't have to outrun flash freezing. I don't think. No, I believe that's one part of the movie. They're like it's freezing, Start to run and they're like running away from minus 1,000 or something chasing them. I don't know, I forget.

Speaker 4: 27:45

Although, if you want to add to your bad geology films, I highly recommend Monolith Monsters.

Speaker 2: 27:52

Monolith? I've never heard of that. What is this doc? What is that it's?

Speaker 4: 27:56

a 1950s and I put horror in quotes.

Speaker 2: 28:02

Uh film about crystals and the geologists that had to save the day well, at least geologists are the heroes, I kind of think. I kind of feel like in movies they're kind of the unsung heroes. They're not really front and center lately.

Speaker 4: 28:19

Usually the ones being ignored at the beginning. That's right.

Speaker 2: 28:23

They're like excuse me, hello, okay, I've lost my train, all right, so sediments, neodymium, chromium what's some of the stuff you've done in the past for research, if this is what you're working on right now?

Speaker 4: 28:37

so this has been an ongoing project now for probably about a decade.

Speaker 4: 28:44

We've got the first isotope measurements for neodymium in in poor water in 2016 and it's been kind of consistent trend for me since then, keeping progress in the space at least.

Speaker 4: 28:59

But I've also expanded to some fun other projects, especially as I've grown a lab group with more PhD students and master's students kind of taking research in different directions, and one of the really exciting ones lately was I had a phd student on this and we were looking at really old sediments from a deposit in china, and the reason these are exciting is they're one of the locations that are a key candidate for where animal life emerged, so thought to be either the first or some of the first metazoan fossils. And despite kind of that tie to evolution of life, there's still a lot of debate in the community about what type of environment those animals emerged into, whether it was freshwater or saltwater, and the student, using a bunch of the techniques that we use to look at sediments to answer modern questions, was able to narrow down the chemistry of the water at the time that those animals appeared to be able to say it was a lagoon.

Speaker 2: 30:16

Oh, that's cool. That's like a snapshot of the past.

Speaker 4: 30:19

Yeah, exactly. So those are the stories that are a lot of fun, it's.

Speaker 2: 30:24

I feel like what you're doing is like a form of what's the correct science, Like a mixture of paleontology and archeology, except it's like mud. That's cool, Because that's what both of those two different scientists do, if I'm not mistaken. They take clues to understand the past, and that's what you guys are doing too. Absolutely. When you get data like that, do you daydream and you're like make a picture in your head. This is what it was like. Because of the data, we're getting a picture in your head like this is what it was like because of the data we're getting.

Speaker 4: 30:56

Sometimes you almost have to in order to start to figure out how all the pieces fit, because usually it's one or two, maybe three kind of lines of evidence or lines of information that make you think, oh yeah, okay, this had to be a lagoon, but how does that fit with everything else we're seeing? Does it fit until someone invents time travel? There's no way to go back and check. So we want to make sure that we're tying any evidence that's present together and making sure it all fits into that same story and not just going down a rabbit hole that leads us to a dead end.

Speaker 2: 31:37

Gotcha, do you talk to other science disciplines about what you find? I would imagine that would be interesting if somebody's studying the area and maybe the creatures that lived there long ago.

Speaker 4: 31:50

Yeah, there's always overlap. I love that part of science is the collaboration. Yeah, there's always overlap, and I love that part of science is the collaboration with the neodymium work, talking to the modelers who, what do they need to know or what areas of the ocean would be of most interest. Or even talking to a geochemical modeler who can look at how maybe some of the processes we can't measure yet might appear in our data. And for the questions going back in time, for the more kind of paleo climate stuff, what do the models say were the environments?

Speaker 4: 32:29

So for the metazone research that my student was doing, we had to look to some of the people modeling what the plates were doing at that point. And was it a shallow enough environment? Did the pure geology of the area agree with this idea that it could have been a shallow, at least semi-restricted environment? And fortunately in that case it did. We found these models that said it was this whole block was fairly shallow and you had a nice carbonate rim, like you'd associate with coral reefs that was likely providing that restriction and blocking it from the open ocean.

Speaker 2: 33:09

That's a that's. That just seems like a fun collaboration. That's very cool. So my I guess I got a couple other questions. Are you, do you go out in quote unquote the field often, or is it? Are you in a lab most of the time looking at the data and then crunching numbers on the computer?

Speaker 4: 33:31

for probably every week in the field. It should be a year in the lab and data and crunching numbers, but I always find that fieldwork comes all at once and then there's a gap. So in 2018 and 2019, right before COVID shutdowns I got a lot of fieldwork. Covid shutdowns, I got a lot of field work and then actually I'm just getting back into it and the field work is by far one of my favorites. I love going out on the big research ships and I just spent 70 days in Antarctica over the holidays.

Speaker 2: 34:11

So that was absolutely incredible. You spent, did you say, 70 days, or seven days, 70. In Antarctica.

Speaker 4: 34:17

Right off the shore.

Speaker 2: 34:18

We were on a ship, but yes, Okay, I've got so many questions now A, was it freezing cold? And B, how were you getting samples? Was it water? Did you dredge the floor? Was it from glaciers? What was going on there?

Speaker 4: 34:37

So we were on one of the US Antarctic program icebreakers and we left out of Chile going across the kind of infamous Drake Passage down to the Edmonton Sea, and we were working in sea ice, but the ship's able to make a hole or make enough open water that we can sample the bottom just like we would anywhere else in the ocean using really fancy water bottles that go down and then are triggered electronically to close at the depth that we want water from, and what I like to call glorified straws but are officially called cores that collect the mud from the bottom and bring it up to the deck for us to dig through.

Speaker 2: 35:21

Did you see? Was there any wildlife you saw like being that far away from everything.

Speaker 4: 35:27

There were so many penguins, we saw a few emperors, we saw some gentoo's, we saw some chinstraps, but once we were really doing our work and we had a group of scientists on board that would get off the big icebreaker and go onto the sea ice to collect samples, and anytime we put them on the sea ice, the Adelie penguins showed up in force to come see what we were doing. So it was really surreal to be surrounded by white and penguins and seals and every day, and the sun never sat because we were there in the summer.

Speaker 2: 36:03

Okay, so 24 hours of brightness. Yes, was the food good, at least?

Speaker 4: 36:09

It was. We're always well cared for on the ships. That particular vessel did what is called fondly on board mid rats or midnight rations. So there was four meals, four hot meals a day breakfast, lunch, dinner and then a midnight meal. What was the midnight?

Speaker 2: 36:26

meal, for you would just get hungry and wake up to have it. Or was it because there was?

Speaker 4: 36:29

shift work. So because these ships take so much time and expense to operate, science operations are 24-7 most ships Gotcha, so there's always someone awake, always someone working, and a hot meal can make a difference in morale on board, especially for the longer ones.

Speaker 2: 36:49

You don't got to tell me about that, I would be. I am pretty motivated by food, and if it was a hot, nice meal, you can get me to work in Antarctica probably.

Speaker 4: 36:59

Oh yeah, there was one night that they told me it was French toast for midrats and even though my shift that day didn't have me awake at midnight, I was awake at midnight for the French toast. Yep.

Speaker 2: 37:10

Was it good, was it worth it?

Speaker 4: 37:12

It was the chef had done like a homemade cream for ice cream and then like a strawberry compote.

Speaker 2: 37:18

My next question is about things that you're working on in the future.

Speaker 4: 37:23

So I'm actually headed back out to sea in June in the North Atlantic with a bunch of my current students.

Speaker 2: 37:30

Maybe I'll ask that question and then you can talk about it.

Speaker 4: 37:34

Okay.

Speaker 2: 37:35

Perfect, that's very cool, the field work taking you to Antarctica, and are you heading out again in the future?

Speaker 4: 37:44

work taking you to Antarctica? Are you heading out again in the future? So I actually have another trip coming up really soon. We're headed to the North Atlantic in June and July because one of the kind of, I guess, questions around when we're working in the modern ocean for geochemistry and looking at the sediments is how spatial variations work and whether what we can measure in the North Pacific or the South Pacific represents the global ocean or whether it only represents that basin or even smaller area. So we want to go out to the North Atlantic and see if what we found in the Pacific those type of observations for the cycling of rare earths in the sediment still hold true or whether we see something completely different going on in a very different ocean basin.

Speaker 2: 38:36

Do you count down the days for field work like this? Is this a huge exciting thing for you or are you more like somebody like me? It takes a little bit to get them motivated to go traveling.

Speaker 4: 38:50

Both. I'm really excited to get on the ship and usually I would be counting down a little bit more than I am, but this time there's so much prep that still needs to happen. I'm not in my full excitement mode yet. I'm still in my full logistics. I need x supplies at this port by this day type mode. But you're in charge of the team right yeah, first on board. I'll definitely be very excited.

Speaker 2: 39:23

How I've got just so many questions about these research vessels. Do you have your own room? Do you bunk with other people? Is it a teeny, tiny room? Is it comfortable? Those questions are spinning in my head.

Speaker 4: 39:36

So usually you are in a room with one to three other people. I'd say most ships I've been on I've shared a room with one to three other people. I'd say most ships I've been on I've shared a room with one other person. Occasionally you get lucky and you get your own room. Especially the higher up you are in terms of running things in the science party, the more likely you are to have your own space. I think they're quite comfortable. Part of it's you're going to be tired after a day of work at sea. So I don't think they're quite comfortable. Part of it's you're going to be tired after a day of work at sea. So I don't think we're necessarily as picky as we might be in other times. But it's a standard bunk bed and some ability to control the temperature in the room. They're usually kept between 65 and 72 would be my guess. I'm always cold so if anything, I find them a little bit chilly.

Speaker 2: 40:26

What's the Wi-Fi like?

Speaker 4: 40:28

Depends on the ship and the weather.

Speaker 2: 40:30

Okay, I was just teasing. I assume there would be some, but not great.

Speaker 4: 40:35

Sometimes it's actually pretty impressive. They've gotten to the point where some of the bigger ships, like the International Ocean Discovery Program coring ships, can do live broadcasts. So skype a scientist type equivalents, maybe a little pixely, and if the weather turns really bad and the satellites aren't as reliable because of the bad weather, it might have to be rescheduled. But I've been on a few ships that we've been able to do a decent Zoom call. We even got a classroom a little bit seasick because it was a rough day the day that we had our call.

Speaker 2: 41:13

You've made a classroom a kid seasick, there you go. Yeah, that would be a problem for the classroom teacher, not for you to deal with.

Speaker 4: 41:21

Exactly, we just had to try to not fall as we were showing them around the boat.

Speaker 2: 41:26

That's so cool. That is neat. I love being on boats and I live in an incredibly landlocked area of the world, so it's always like a magical treat whenever I get to go out on the ocean.

Speaker 4: 41:39

And it's always different. Every time you look out the window or go out on deck, it's something new to see.

Speaker 2: 41:44

At night do you see like wicked stars? Because I'd imagine you're in areas where there's zero light pollution except from coming from the ship itself.

Speaker 4: 41:53

Oh yeah, if you get a clear night, the stars are absolutely incredible. There's always some caution to be had and negotiations in terms of safety, whether the lights need to be on the deck for you to get out to some place that you can watch the stars and whether you can actually get away from some of the deck lights to look up. But most of the time, as long as, uh, the seas are flat, there's somewhere on deck you can go out and look up with very little light interference neat Neat.

Speaker 4: 42:23

That's awesome. I still haven't seen it, but I'm hoping for either the northern lights or the southern lights on one of these voyages.

Speaker 2: 42:30

Oh yeah, you would be in Antarctica. You're in the right spot, but it's a crapshoot seeing the northern lights anyways.

Speaker 4: 42:36

Going down when there's no sunset didn't help us.

Speaker 2: 42:39

Oh, that's too shit. You actually wouldn't have been able to see them at all.

Speaker 4: 42:43

We were hoping, like when we crossed the Antarctic Circle, to come back north. We had two days of opportunity, but the sun was quiet.

Speaker 2: 42:51

They are pretty spectacular. I live in Alberta, canada, so during any day during the summer, winter, they could show up. All right, I could talk to you about boat adventures for hours, but I think we better move on. We have a couple of standard questions on the science podcast, and one is a pet story. We ask all of our guests to share a pet story with us, and I was wondering if you could do that too.

Speaker 4: 43:14

Of course. So we adopted our hound mix Maddie when we moved to Conway, our hound mix Maddie when we moved to Conway.

Speaker 4: 43:22

And one of the first things we did was take her down to the beach and she immediately loved the sand and decided that's where she wanted to be. Wasn't quite sure of water and we've been down there enough We've started to work through our questions of saltwater. She still won't swim, but we had her down there last summer and there was some fish swimming by and she'll wade. But she put her head underwater to try to smell the fish and just took this big inhale and, I think, learned an important lesson about saltwater.

Speaker 2: 43:57

And that is don't breathe it in, don't try to drink it.

Speaker 4: 43:59

Yeah, yeah. She looked so offended like it was something we had purposely done to her yeah, that is a funny thing about dogs.

Speaker 2: 44:08

Both bunsen and beaker are two dogs. We've taken them twice now, yeah, twice to the west coast of canada has been. It was a quite a drive and that's the first thing they tried to do when they were never saw the ocean before. Is they try to drink it? And then they I remember their expressions bunsen was like what, and? But beaker was like shocked, like absolutely shocked. It was like it was spicy and she drank it and she did like this little weird hop like it had just attacked her and then she tried it again just to make sure and it was disgusting.

Speaker 2: 44:41

So that was the end of them drinking it I love that they're just so silly dogs. How long have you had the rescue for? Sorry, I missed that, maybe two years and two weeks okay, any other pets in your future we'll see, not in the immediate future I've been traveling a lot, but we'll see.

Speaker 4: 45:00

Got in the immediate future. I've been traveling a lot, but we'll see.

Speaker 2: 45:04

Gotcha. I always ask cause some people? Some people are like when you get one, it's easier to have two and maybe we'll get a cat and so I'm still working on that argument. Oh, it's an argument with somebody in your household. You must convince. Is that what's happening?

Speaker 4: 45:20

Exactly.

Speaker 2: 45:22

Oh, I see we have a cat now and I was the person who didn't want the cat, but the cat is pretty cool. So there you go. You can use that as ammunition that I was not a cat person. I don't think I'm a cat person now. I'm more of a cats are pretty cool person. Cats are okay.

Speaker 4: 45:39

I like it. I grew up with two cats and two dogs, so I am happy to go whichever direction.

Speaker 2: 45:45

The other standard question is we ask our guests to share a super fact with us. It's something that kind of blows people's minds. I was wondering if you have a super fact for us.

Speaker 4: 45:56

So what most people don't realize is that we have better resolution maps of the moon's surface than most of the seafloor.

Speaker 2: 46:06

Is that because it's so hard to image? It's too deep.

Speaker 4: 46:09

A lot of the highest resolution imagery. To get that sub-meter resolution requires a ship passing directly over. So there's actually an international effort right now Seabed 2030, trying to get higher resolution maps of most of the global ocean by 2030. And it's really encouraging various ships, commercial research industry to share data to put together a combined seafloor map. But what it also means is sometimes where areas that are poorly mapped you can get an idea from satellite data if there might be something there. And I was on the Australian research ship probably six, seven years ago and we went to one of these areas that the satellite suggested there might be small seamounts and actually found very large seamounts. I think, if I'm remembering correctly, they came about three kilometers off the seafloor, so they were really tall features and to be on the ship that was seeing them for the first time was really cool.

Speaker 2: 47:15

That's bananas. So what you're saying but you're not saying is that there could be Atlantis down there somewhere. Sure, no, I'm just teasing doc. We spoke to Dr Dawn, right? I don't know if Dr Right Deep sea Dawn, yeah, but her trip down to, like the oh, what was it? The deepest place of the Marianas trench? I?

Speaker 4: 47:37

forget. Oh yeah, that's right. You forget the game. Oh yeah, that's right. She went on which ship was she on? Was it the Philanthropist?

Speaker 2: 47:46

Yeah, it was like oh man, I keep getting it screwed up. I keep wanting to say it's Deep Impact, but that's a disaster movie with Morgan Freeman. That's not what it's called Limiting Factor. Horizon, yeah, horizon Deep or Deep Horizon. No wait, that's another. That's with Mark Wahlberg. See, I'm just getting movies mixed up, but yeah, it was. Limiting Factor was the submersible Challenger? Deep, there we go. That's what it was.

Speaker 4: 48:10

Okay.

Speaker 2: 48:11

Yeah, yeah, and that's what they were doing down there was. They were mapping the seafloor. That's pretty extreme, so I'd imagine that just a boat passing over top of that isn't mapping anything down there.

Speaker 4: 48:22

Not well, there's a lot of shadows when you're trying to look down that deep.

Speaker 2: 48:28

That's so deep. That's awesome. Do you, just as an aside, do you scuba dive or snorkel? Are you a swimmer in the water? Oh?

Speaker 4: 48:36

yeah, absolutely, I got spoiled. In Sydney we were scuba diving two or three days a week. What? No I haven't been in the water nearly enough since I got here that's awesome.

Speaker 2: 48:49

I love snorkeling. There's not a lot of places to snorkel in central Alberta, canada, just throwing it out there. And if it is, it's a mountain lake and you'll die in about five minutes.

Speaker 4: 48:58

So I can see that we did get our dry suit certification so we could dive in Iceland. So there are are ways around the cold, but doesn't necessarily add the interesting water.

Speaker 2: 49:09

No, I think in a mountain lake all you'll see is nothing like silt. I have snorkeled before in a mountain lake and it's just nothing it rocks.

Speaker 4: 49:21

That's why they're so clear, right Yeahs, that's fair. That's why they're so clear right?

Speaker 2: 49:25

Yeah, true, that's true. Yeah, they're a really cool color. It's that aquamarine rock salty color. So there's that. They're just freezing cold. That is a super fact. How long do you think it's going to? Will we ever be able to catch up to the moon?

Speaker 4: 49:44

Like mapping the moon, are we always going to be behind what we know about the surface? I think so. I think 20 the cb seabed 2030 isn't going to get the entire seabed, but it's definitely made huge steps forward and I think the interest in whether the seafloor has anything economically interesting might also help with the mapping efforts. Of course, coastal environments you can't map as much with each pass just because of the geometry of how the systems work, but you also get into countries' economic exclusion zones and they don't either want the data collected or want the data shared. So I think there's some areas that we likely won't as at least as the general public ever get the high resolution of.

Speaker 2: 50:32

Ooh, countries don't want to let people know what's there. That's sneaky, but I get it Like maybe they've got a bunch of mineral deposits they don't want people poking around to find.

Speaker 4: 50:42

That and I guess canyons and stuff, at least traditionally have had major implications for submarines and navigation oh gotcha, doc.

Speaker 2: 50:54

This has been a really interesting chat. We're at the end. Are you on social media? Anywhere can people follow you to see what's up, what's going on?

Speaker 4: 51:08

I am on social media, but I've been absent for a few months. I've been trying to make the transition from Twitter over to Blue Sky, but it hasn't quite happened with the lack of internet on my last research cruise my last research cruise. So I do still have my Twitter account. At April underscore Abbott and I will post my new social media once I get it up and going there just hasn't been a whole lot for me recently.

Speaker 2: 51:34

So would you say, you're on Twitter, but you're not on Twitter, is that?

Speaker 4: 51:36

Yeah, I also have a blog slash research page, that will get a lot more activity when I have field work, and then it will go quiet. And then it will get a lot more activity when I have field work, and then it will go quiet. And then it will get a lot more activity when I have field work.

Speaker 2: 51:46

Sweet. If you send me that link, we'll make sure it's in our show notes, Dr Abbott.

Speaker 4: 51:50

I can do that.

Speaker 2: 51:51

Okay, perfect, this has been a treat. We don't normally get to talk to people who study the ocean, like stuff in the like elements in the ocean, so I do appreciate you taking the time to talk to us today on the science podcast thanks again for having me.

Speaker 2: 52:07

It's been great yeah, and take care on your uh next excursion. I'm going to be waiting for some updates in your blog and, um, if you could give a couple food reviews, that would be right up our alley too perfect and you'll have to say hi to the pups for me okay, it is time for story time with me, adam.

Speaker 1: 52:29

If you don't know what story time is, story time is when we talk about stories that have happened within the past one or two weeks. Uh, I have a story. My story is about, uh, the chickens at the farm. Uh, so they are, um, they're getting pretty big uh, so we think they're gonna go outside either tomorrow or, like within within the next few days. They're gonna go outside and then they're gonna get acclimated to outside and then we'll uh introduce them to the other chickens that we've got. But they're, they're doing really well. We have a bunch of really cool looking ones, um, and yeah, just giving an update on the, on the, the, on the chick situation there, they're doing good, they're getting bigger and they're going to go outside, uh, pretty soon. So that's that's nice and that's that's super cool. Uh, I didn't count, but they're, they're getting big, they're really cute, they're super cute. Maybe mom can take some, uh, some videos of them soon.

Speaker 1: 53:21

I, I have a little mini story as well. I was very tired yesterday. I was super tired yesterday, which is weird because I didn't really do much, but I was just really tired at the end of the day and I fell asleep on the couch. And then Ginger came and slept on the couch with me. She was at my feet all night and then Beaker in the morning got mad at me that I was with ginger. So I had to kick out the the like the foot rest on the couch so that beaker could climb up and sleep there with me too, because she was very jealous about ginger and she was barking at me and waking me up. Yep, um. So yeah, those are my. Those are my two stories. Uh, dad, do you have a story?

Speaker 2: 54:00

I'll just second what Adam says about Beaker. Beaker loves to sit next to people and cuddle them on the couch but she needs like a special room. So if there's like a blanket in the way, she doesn't like that. So she'll let you know. So you have to move stuff so she can get on there, just right. So she's like a couch version of Bunsen's divaness, a couch version of Bunsen's diva-ness. Beaker's a very big couch diva.

Speaker 2: 54:25

So just a couple updates Bunsen's whatever injury he had partial torn cruciate, like I think he's good to go. We've been now taking him on creek walks on leash and sometimes off leash, like for little bits. I think he's getting super antsy to just cut loose. And that's kind of the dangerous time I read, is the dog like it thinks it's healed and wants to just roar around and you let them and then they re-injure themselves. So you need to kind of like build them up to the point where they want to cut loose.

Speaker 2: 54:59

Um, so we've been slowly doing that with Bunsen and and what what we've been given advice with was, you know, after he was limping it was two weeks of rest, like no walks besides pee, and then two weeks minimal walking and then we've been gradually increasing his walking after that. So he's like over a month of recovery now and like he has not limped or shown any signs of problems really since, you know, four or five days after he was limping. So that's all good news. And we got a bunch of new beaver footage so that's really exciting. The beaver was out and about in the daytime scratching his head, scratching his belly, swimming in the water doing a front flip, chris said. So I'll have to take a look at that video, but that's my story for this week.

Speaker 1: 55:48

Alrighty mom, do you have a story?

Speaker 3: 55:51

I sure do. I was able to get some video footage and some pictures of our new puppy, bernoulli. We're going to get him in two days and so we're super excited and super thrilled that we're going to be getting a new puppy. And I've been doing some cleanup around the yard and on the deck to get prepared for puppy. That's what I've been doing, working really hard, getting things ready for when Bernoulli comes.

Speaker 3: 56:20

I've been hanging out with Beaker and Bunsen. Of course, when Bunsen's been doing his toddler time, jason tries to give him a hug and be like, oh, I'll lay with you. And the minute Jason gets close, no, bunsen's like nope and he eats out of there and he comes and sits beside me and gets, I guess, love from me, which is good, but then I also want him to cuddle with Jason and I guess you know what that's all I really got. Beaker's been a good girl and Bunce has been a good boy and Ginger has been very escape-y, like non-stop.

Speaker 3: 57:02

She's very good at getting out and she's bold. She is the bold and the beautiful like the soap opera, because the continuing saga is will she get outside? And lately she's been very successful at waiting at the door and plotting her exit and being patient, because the dogs are there and then our feet are there to kind of block her from getting out. And now she, she, actually I want to say that she's very much like a foosball table, where she's able to outthink and outplot the players on the field, and by players I mean me and my feet. She's very good, and that's my story.

Speaker 1: 57:53

Alrighty Well, thank you very much for listening to my section of the podcast Storytime and thank you for listening all the way through to the end. I hope to see you all on the next podcast episode.

Speaker 2: 58:06

Bye-bye that's it for this week's show. Thanks for coming back week after week to listen to the science podcast. Special thanks to our guest dr april abbott, and also a big shout out to the top tier of the paw pack. Plus the, the Paw Pack is our Patreon-like community. It's awesome. Tons of extra little bonuses. Plus, you get your name shouted out at the end of the show. Take it away, chris.

Speaker 3: 58:31

Bianca Hyde, mary Ryder, tracy Domingue, susan Wagner, andrew Lin, helen Chin, Tracy Halberg, amy C, jennifer Smathers, laura Stephenson, holly Burge, brenda Clark, Anne Uchida, peggy McKeel, terry Adam, debbie Anderson, sandy Breimer, tracy Leinbaugh, marianne McNally, fun Lisa, Shelley Smith, julie Smith, diane Allen, brianne Haas, linda Sherry For science, empathy and cuteness.