B2 · Upper Intermediate
13 min
marine biologypaleontologydeep-sea explorationenvironmental science
Five Hundred Bones, Miles Down
Medio millar de ballenas en el abismo
Chinese scientists have discovered the largest whale graveyard ever found, deep in the Indian Ocean, containing nearly 500 skeletons and a previously unknown species. Fletcher and Octavio go deep on what whale bones reveal about deep-sea life, cetacean evolution, and what we stand to lose before we have even found it.
Científicos chinos han descubierto el cementerio de ballenas más grande del mundo en el océano Índico, con casi 500 esqueletos y una nueva especie. Fletcher y Octavio exploran qué nos dicen estos huesos sobre la vida en las profundidades, la evolución de los cetáceos y el futuro del fondo marino.
6 essential B2-level terms from this episode, with translations and example sentences in Spanish.
| Spanish | English | Example |
|---|---|---|
| quimiosintético | chemosynthetic | Los organismos quimiosintéticos no necesitan luz solar para sobrevivir. |
| cetáceo | cetacean | Las ballenas y los delfines son cetáceos, aunque parezcan muy diferentes. |
| misticeto | mysticete (baleen whale) | La ballena azul es el misticeto más grande que ha existido. |
| morfología | morphology | La morfología del cráneo nos ayuda a clasificar especies extintas. |
| irreversible | irreversible | El daño causado por la minería submarina podría ser irreversible. |
| etapa intermedia | intermediate stage, stepping stone | Los huesos de ballena funcionaron como etapas intermedias para la dispersión de especies. |
There's a place in the Indian Ocean, a few kilometers below the surface, where nearly five hundred whales went to die over millions of years, and until last week nobody had any idea it was there.
Sí, y lo que me parece increíble es la escala.
Yes, and what strikes me as incredible is the scale.
No estamos hablando de un hallazgo pequeño.
We're not talking about a small find.
Un equipo de científicos chinos, usando un submarino de aguas profundas, encontró casi quinientos esqueletos de ballenas en una sola zona del océano Índico.
A team of Chinese scientists, using a deep-sea submersible, found nearly five hundred whale skeletons in a single area of the Indian Ocean.
And these aren't all from the same era.
They're spanning millions of years, which means this location was drawing whales, again and again, across geological time.
Exacto.
Exactly.
Y entre esos huesos, encontraron algo completamente nuevo: una especie de ballena que nunca antes habíamos visto.
And among those bones, they found something entirely new: a species of whale never seen before.
La llamaron Pterocetus diamantinae, por la zona geográfica donde fue descubierta, cerca de la Fosa Diamantina, en el sureste del océano Índico.
They named it Pterocetus diamantinae, after the geographic zone where it was discovered, near the Diamantina Trench, in the southeast Indian Ocean.
The Diamantina Trench.
I had to look that up.
It's one of the deepest points in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of western Australia, and it's essentially been unexplored until now.
Claro.
Right.
Y eso nos dice algo importante: hay partes del planeta que todavía no conocemos.
And that tells us something important: there are parts of this planet we still don't know.
Sabemos más sobre la superficie de Marte que sobre el fondo de nuestros propios océanos.
We know more about the surface of Mars than about the bottom of our own oceans.
Eso no es una exageración, es un hecho.
That's not an exaggeration, it's a fact.
That comparison always floors me, even though I've heard it a dozen times.
What makes this particular spot a graveyard, though?
Why did so many whales end up in the same place?
Bueno, hay varias teorías.
Well, there are several theories.
Una posibilidad es que las corrientes oceánicas profundas en esa zona transportaran los cadáveres hacia allí durante millones de años, como un embudo natural.
One possibility is that the deep ocean currents in that zone carried carcasses there over millions of years, like a natural funnel.
Otra es que esa región fuera históricamente una ruta de migración importante para muchas especies.
Another is that the region was historically a major migration route for many species.
A funnel at the bottom of the ocean.
Millions of years of dead whales drifting down to the same address.
Así es.
That's right.
Y lo que pasa cuando una ballena muere y cae al fondo del mar es, en sí mismo, uno de los fenómenos más fascinantes de la biología marina.
And what happens when a whale dies and sinks to the ocean floor is, in itself, one of the most fascinating phenomena in marine biology.
Los científicos lo llaman 'whale fall', o caída de ballena, y genera un ecosistema completamente único.
Scientists call it a 'whale fall', and it generates a completely unique ecosystem.
Walk me through that.
Because I think most people picture a whale dying and that being more or less the end of the story.
Para nada.
Not at all.
Cuando una ballena cae al fondo, comienza una secuencia que puede durar décadas.
When a whale sinks to the bottom, a sequence begins that can last for decades.
Primero llegan los tiburones y los peces, que se comen los tejidos blandos.
First come sharks and fish, which eat the soft tissue.
Luego vienen crustáceos y gusanos que se alimentan de lo que queda.
Then crustaceans and worms arrive to feed on what remains.
Y finalmente, las bacterias descomponen incluso los huesos, liberando sulfuros que alimentan a comunidades enteras de organismos quimiosintéticos.
And finally, bacteria break down even the bones, releasing sulfides that feed entire communities of chemosynthetic organisms.
Chemosynthetic.
Meaning they don't need sunlight at all.
They're running on chemical energy from the decomposing bones.
Exactamente.
Exactly.
Y eso es lo que hace que el fondo del océano no sea el desierto vacío que mucha gente imagina.
And that's what makes the ocean floor not the empty desert most people imagine.
Cada ballena muerta es como una ciudad temporal: aparece de la nada, florece durante décadas, y luego desaparece cuando el último nutriente se agota.
Each dead whale is like a temporary city: it appears from nowhere, flourishes for decades, and then disappears when the last nutrient is exhausted.
And at this site, you had something like five hundred of those cities, layered on top of each other across millions of years.
The diversity of life that must have cycled through that one patch of seafloor is almost impossible to conceptualize.
Y no solo eso.
And not only that.
Algunos biólogos creen que los whale falls pueden haber funcionado como 'piedras de salto' evolutivas, es decir, lugares donde especies que vivían cerca de fuentes hidrotermales pudieron dispersarse por el océano usando los huesos de las ballenas como etapas intermedias.
Some biologists believe whale falls may have functioned as evolutionary 'stepping stones', that is, places where species living near hydrothermal vents could disperse across the ocean using whale bones as intermediate stages.
Wait.
So the argument is that deep-sea life colonized new territory by hopping from one dead whale to the next, over millions of years, the way island species spread across an archipelago.
Sí, esa es la hipótesis.
Yes, that's the hypothesis.
Y si es correcta, significa que la evolución de la vida en las profundidades del mar está profundamente conectada con la historia de los propios cetáceos.
And if it's correct, it means the evolution of deep-sea life is deeply connected to the history of the cetaceans themselves.
Lo que les pasó a las ballenas, les pasó también a miles de otras especies.
What happened to the whales happened to thousands of other species too.
Which brings us to the new species.
Pterocetus diamantinae.
What do we know about it?
Por ahora, los detalles son limitados, pero lo que sabemos es que parece ser un cetáceo antiguo, probablemente del período Mioceno, hace entre 5 y 23 millones de años.
For now the details are limited, but what we know is that it appears to be an ancient cetacean, probably from the Miocene period, between 5 and 23 million years ago.
La morfología del cráneo sugiere que era un cetáceo misticeto, es decir, de los que filtran el agua con barbas, como las ballenas azules modernas.
The skull morphology suggests it was a mysticete, meaning a baleen whale that filters water, like modern blue whales.
I want to stay on the evolutionary thread for a moment, because whale evolution is one of those stories that genuinely staggers me every time I revisit it.
These are animals that went from land to sea, and we have the fossils to prove it.
Es uno de los ejemplos más impresionantes de la evolución.
It's one of the most impressive examples of evolution.
Hace unos 50 millones de años, los ancestros de las ballenas eran mamíferos terrestres, algo parecido a un hipopótamo pequeño que vivía cerca del agua.
About 50 million years ago, the ancestors of whales were terrestrial mammals, something resembling a small hippo that lived near water.
Con el tiempo, se volvieron completamente acuáticos.
Over time, they became fully aquatic.
Y los fósiles muestran cada etapa de esa transición.
And the fossils show every stage of that transition.
Pakicetus, Ambulocetus.
I covered a paleontology story in Pakistan years ago and ended up spending a day with a researcher who was almost tearful talking about Ambulocetus.
'The walking whale', he kept calling it.
Y tiene sentido emocionarse.
And it makes sense to be moved.
Porque eso es lo que hace la paleontología: nos conecta con versiones anteriores del mundo que ya no existen.
Because that's what paleontology does: it connects us with previous versions of the world that no longer exist.
Cada esqueleto es una ventana.
Every skeleton is a window.
Y en el caso de este cementerio en el océano Índico, son casi quinientas ventanas abiertas al mismo tiempo.
And in the case of this graveyard in the Indian Ocean, there are nearly five hundred windows open at the same time.
Let's talk about the Chinese angle for a moment, because this discovery was made possible by Chinese deep-sea submersible technology, and that's a significant geopolitical data point on its own.
Sí.
Yes.
China ha invertido enormemente en exploración de aguas profundas en los últimos veinte años.
China has invested enormously in deep-sea exploration over the last twenty years.
Su submarino Jiaolong llegó a más de 7.000 metros en 2012.
Their submersible Jiaolong reached more than 7,000 meters in 2012.
Y desde entonces han desarrollado flotas enteras de vehículos de exploración.
And since then they've developed entire fleets of exploration vehicles.
No es solo ciencia, hay también un interés estratégico en conocer el fondo del mar.
It's not just science;
The strategic interest being mineral resources.
Polymetallic nodules, rare earth elements sitting on the seafloor.
The deep sea is the next resource frontier, and knowing what's down there is step one.
Y aquí está la tensión.
And here is the tension.
Porque los mismos fondos marinos que contienen estos tesoros científicos, estos cementerios de ballenas, estos ecosistemas únicos que tardaron millones de años en formarse, son exactamente los lugares donde la minería submarina podría causar un daño irreversible.
Because the same seabeds that contain these scientific treasures, these whale graveyards, these unique ecosystems that took millions of years to form, are exactly the places where deep-sea mining could cause irreversible damage.
And the regulatory framework for deep-sea mining is, to put it charitably, a work in progress.
The International Seabed Authority has been trying to finalize mining codes for years, with significant pushback from environmental groups and from Pacific Island nations who see it as a direct threat.
Es una paradoja extraña.
It's a strange paradox.
Para descubrir estos lugares necesitamos la misma tecnología que podría destruirlos.
To discover these places we need the same technology that could destroy them.
Y el descubrimiento de este cementerio de ballenas llega justo en un momento en que el debate sobre la minería submarina está más activo que nunca.
And the discovery of this whale graveyard arrives precisely when the debate over deep-sea mining is more active than ever.
There's a case to be made that discoveries like this one are actually the strongest argument against moving too fast.
We found five hundred whale skeletons and a new species in a place we'd never looked.
What else is down there that we haven't found yet?
Muchísimo.
An enormous amount.
Los científicos calculan que menos del 25% del fondo oceánico ha sido mapeado con detalle.
Scientists estimate that less than 25% of the ocean floor has been mapped in detail.
Y en las zonas más profundas, el porcentaje es mucho menor.
And in the deepest zones, the percentage is much lower.
Cada vez que enviamos un submarino a explorar una fosa nueva, encontramos algo que no esperábamos.
Every time we send a submersible to explore a new trench, we find something we didn't expect.
I want to throw one more angle at you, because it came up in some of the coverage I was reading.
The astrobiology connection.
The idea that these chemosynthetic deep-sea ecosystems might be a template for life on other worlds.
Sí, eso es fascinante.
Yes, that's fascinating.
La Luna Europa de Júpiter, o Encélado de Saturno, tienen océanos bajo su superficie helada donde no llega la luz solar.
Jupiter's moon Europa, or Saturn's Enceladus, have oceans beneath their icy surfaces where no sunlight reaches.
Si hay vida allí, probablemente se parezca mucho a lo que encontramos en las fosas oceánicas de la Tierra: organismos que sobreviven sin luz, alimentándose de energía química.
If there is life there, it probably looks a lot like what we find in Earth's ocean trenches: organisms that survive without light, feeding on chemical energy.
So this whale graveyard in the Indian Ocean isn't just a paleontology story.
It's pointing at a fundamental question about what conditions life requires, and whether we've been too narrow in how we imagine it.
Durante mucho tiempo asumimos que la vida necesitaba luz, agua líquida y temperaturas moderadas.
For a long time we assumed life needed light, liquid water, and moderate temperatures.
Las fosas oceánicas demostraron que estábamos equivocados.
The ocean trenches proved us wrong.
Y este cementerio de ballenas nos recuerda que incluso en los entornos más oscuros y fríos del planeta, la vida encuentra maneras de prosperar.
And this whale graveyard reminds us that even in the darkest, coldest environments on the planet, life finds ways to thrive.
Right.
And there's something almost vertiginous about that.
You can be in the deepest, most lightless part of the Indian Ocean, on a whale bone that's been sitting there for ten million years, and something is still eating, still reproducing, still evolving.
Oye, Fletcher, hay algo que usé antes que creo que vale la pena mencionar.
Hey Fletcher, there's something I used earlier that I think is worth mentioning.
Dije que las ballenas azules modernas son 'misticetos', pero quizás no expliqué bien qué significa eso.
I said modern blue whales are 'mysticetes', but maybe I didn't explain well what that means.
Es un término que viene del griego.
It's a term that comes from Greek.
I noticed that.
I looked it up while you were talking, actually.
Mysticeti, from the Greek for 'moustache whale', which is a name I find deeply endearing.
Sí, exactamente.
Yes, exactly.
Y la distinción es importante: los misticetos tienen barbas en vez de dientes, que usan para filtrar el agua y atrapar kril.
And the distinction is important: mysticetes have baleen instead of teeth, which they use to filter water and catch krill.
Los odontocetos, por otro lado, tienen dientes, como los delfines o los cachalotes.
Odontocetes, on the other hand, have teeth, like dolphins or sperm whales.
Son los dos grandes grupos de cetáceos modernos.
These are the two great groups of modern cetaceans.
And I want to ask about 'cetáceos', because I assumed that came from the same Greek root as 'Cetus', the sea monster in the old myths.
Is that right or am I reaching?
No, tienes razón.
No, you're right.
'Cetáceo' viene del latín cetus, que a su vez viene del griego ketos, que significaba 'gran pez' o 'monstruo marino'.
'Cetáceo' comes from the Latin cetus, which in turn comes from the Greek ketos, meaning 'great fish' or 'sea monster'.
Los griegos antiguos no distinguían entre ballenas, tiburones y otras criaturas grandes del mar.
The ancient Greeks didn't distinguish between whales, sharks, and other large sea creatures.
Todo era ketos.
Everything was ketos.
So Andromeda was chained to a rock to be sacrificed to what was, taxonomically speaking, probably a whale.
O a un cachalote con mala leche.
Or a very bad-tempered sperm whale.
Fletcher, lo que me gusta de esto es que la palabra lleva dentro de sí misma toda una historia del miedo humano al mar.
Fletcher, what I love about this is that the word carries inside it an entire history of human fear of the sea.
Cuando nombramos a los cetáceos, sin saberlo, estamos citando a los griegos que miraban el océano y veían monstruos.
When we name cetaceans, without knowing it, we are quoting the Greeks who looked at the ocean and saw monsters.
And now we send submersibles down there and find five hundred of their skeletons arranged like a cathedral, with entire civilizations of microbes having been born and died on their bones.
Turns out the monsters were the most generous thing in the ocean.