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OK now I need to go down the rabbit hole of why other mammals don't get the bends. Here goes my evening.
https://www.whoi.edu/press-room/news-release/how-do-marine-m...
You may know these critters by their more menu-friendly name, Chilean Sea Bass.
OK now I need to go down the rabbit hole of why other mammals don't get the bends. Here goes my evening.
Similar to free-diving humans, other mammals are much less susceptible to the bends than human scuba divers. Possibly their innate behavior minimizes the risks further — like slowing their ascent as they get close to the surface?
OK now I need to go down the rabbit hole of why other mammals don't get the bends. Here goes my evening.
To me, it's more fascinating that land animals like humans can survive at all at ~50x the highest pressure on land. Another fascinating remnant of our oceanic ancestry is the mammalian diving reflex[1].
The coolest thought this gave me, that I'd never really considered before:
How little life must have changed in the past 3000 years in the deep ocean? Have we even been adjusting the atmosphere for long enough for the circulation currents to take pH changes that deep?
We've essentially remade the surface of the planet, the lower atmosphere, and the top of the ocean. But in the depths... little of this actually impacts them.
From time to time, a single ship dropping down and coming to rest on the bottom. But those are a drop in the bucket compared to the ocean surface area.
Other than that, life is probably very similar to what it was 5,000, 10,000, 100,000, 1,000,000, 10,000,000 years ago. Before modern humans existed, and certainly before industrial civilization. And probably before our species even existed. Mind bogglingly constant.