Overview Of Three Adventures-Galapagos-Titicaca-The Blue Holes. Jacques-Yves Cousteau

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Three Adventures-Galapagos-Titicaca-The Blue Holes. Jacques-Yves Cousteau

1) The book is essentially an over the shoulder, first person view of the journey through the marine world. As a team of scientists, adventurers and divers aboard the vessel Calypso, take us on a tour of the ocean’s most unusual underwater phenomena with delightful people as well as vivid images, either through pictures or explanation, that show us their views and findings.

2) The driving question behind this test of marine iguanas was to what depth they can dive, or more importantly, what makes it possible, and how long can they remain underwater. At first, each time an iguana was forced to dive it simply slowed its physical activity the deeper it went. The scientists, thinking they had accidentally killed the specimen, immediately brought it back to the surface. There, the iguana immediately spouted water from it’s nose and mouth, and acted like nothing ever had occurred. It has been learned, that the marine iguana empties its lungs when diving, to help with sinking to the bottom. Instead of retaining fresh oxygen to sustain itself as humans do, they obtain oxygen from their own bodily tissues. Once the iguana returns to the surface, they then replace the oxygen depleted tissue in it’s’ body. When Charles Darwin came to the same islands, a sailor aboard his ship the Beagle, held an iguana underwater to see how long it could survive without breathing. An hour lapsed, and the sailor became fed up and released the still-living iguana!

3) It was the scientist aboard the ship Calypso, which wanted to understand how the marine iguana could dive so deep and so well. So, they understood how the iguana “breathed” (or rather-didn’t) underwater, now they needed a little bit more insight as to what made it possible for the iguana’s to actually slow themselves down enough to the point that they could outlast divers underwater. The scientists performed an electrocardiogram, which is designed to monitor blood-flow and heart rate (in beats per minute) in hopes of obtaining a more in-depth view into understanding how the underwater feat is accomplished. The test revealed that Iguana’s are able to slow their heart rate down so much that blood flow is limited to the brain and heart only! It was also discovered that the iguana can even stop its’ heartbeat completely for up to three minutes before brain-damage occurs. These facts, along with the testing of how they are able to breath so extremely, were the keys to understanding how these animals do the amazing things that only they can do.

4) Before this test, the only way for someone to know what was going to be underneath the surface of the water, or the topography, was to visually confirm what they saw by diving or by using a rope with a weight attached to it-thrown over board and counting how many seconds before it reached the bottom. The use of Dr. Edgerton’s “sounding device” was used to “establish the contours of the bottom and in choosing the area most suitable for a dive (pg. 140)”. The device used an acoustical signal indicating the depth of the area which was of interest, but also the deep-sea bottom’s nature, such as sand, mud, or rock. This was essentially the fore-runner to sonar’s of today, and was a

standpoint in history when this device was used on this trip of monumental importance to the scientific community.

5) At the Galapagos archipelago, the crew of the Calypso set out to delve deep into the secretive and secluded life of the marine iguana. This expedition essentially is responsible for the understanding of the iguana, as the tests performed gave the world an inside view. Their lifestyle of how they ate, how they sleep, and how they accomplished the amazing feats of staying underwater which perplexed even the greatest scientist at that time, were understood with the completion of the expedition.

6) After the long and difficult journey up the Peruvian Andes, the team arrived at the highest body of water in the world, Lake Titicaca. Here, where the fabulous Incan treasure was rumored to be, the team searched for ancient pottery and clues to past civilizations that were previously carbon-dated to before the time of Jesus. The team discovered the difficulty of being the first to dive in Lake Titicaca, and everyone scrambled to get things done so the expedition could press-on, such as calculating the weight difference of the submarines in fresh water. The team got passed all the hardships, and discovered all the vast differences of this body of water