A SERMON FROM SCIENCE

you in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth and God said let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place and let the dry land appear and God called the dry land earth and the gathering together of the waters called he sees two realms fashioned by the hand of God the earth habitation of man and the sea commanded to bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life the Seas family is an immense one comprising creatures of every conceivable size shape and color literal fulfillment of God's creative command be fruitful and multiply and filled the waters of the Seas yes the sea is a strange and wonderful part of God's universe but this is our world a world of familiar sights and sounds the ear tells us almost as much as the I about the realm in which we live yes sounds tell us a lot about our world but beneath the sea man is awed by an overwhelming silence his ear tells him practically nothing here little wonder that long ago the sea became known as the silent deep and that through the years writings on marine life should support that theory man stated positives as silent as the proverbial tomb such as this quotation from a prominent European aquarium guide if some of the crustaceans and fish can make noises they are so rare and can be heard at such short chances that one can almost neglect them beneath the water ardor hunger and agony of death are silent and even were they not so there would be no ear to hear them with the advent of the 20th century a wonderful new age was ushered in the age of radio with the development of the vacuum tube to amplify feeble currents and the microphone changing sound waves into electrical energy it was inevitable that before long someone would devise a method of using these early electronic instruments to listen beneath the sea though crude and hastily improvised here was an instrument which could detect sounds from passing vessels sounds beneath the sea so the deep wasn't so silent after all if that wasn't too startling a discovery we already knew that sound travels five times faster through water than through air then if water is such a good conductor why don't we hear sounds from the sea well one reason is that the air water boundary is almost as effective as a solid wall but even more important the human ear simply doesn't work well in water for this realm new ears are needed ears expressly designed for operation below it was this realization which led to the development of an instrument known as the hydrophone an underwater microphone which detected sounds in the sea with a clarity never dreamed possible in 1941 man's new knowledge of the sea became a matter of survival this was sonar sound pulses echoing back to hydrophones gave direction and range with amazing accuracy but it was a battery of hydrophones installed across the entrance to Chesapeake Bay as a part of the nation's defense system that led to a fascinating discovery the hydrophones terminated on a control panel where flashing lights enabled operators to plot the positions of moving ships it was a late spring evening in 1942 when tests were completed and the night operators settled down for their first lonely vigil suddenly red lights flared on the panel warning signals from those hydrophones in the bay but cause these strange sounds no evidence of any unusual craft could be found yet each evening the phenomenon occurred and soon became one of the most baffling mysteries of the war the military turned to the scientists for help and at last the answer came with the platter disregard unusual hydrophone signals sounds made by schools of fish known as croakers fish that talk when the war ended the story of sounds beneath the sea could at last be told and from laboratories in Los Angeles a team from the Moody Institute of Science embarked on a historic mission the filming of the first underwater sound motion picture you thus began a series of descents into that blue realm of water here was the world who shapes and colours had been familiar for centuries but a world in which man had been almost totally deaf deaf that is until new ears open to him our realm as noisy and vibrant as his own some of the sounds were rather easily traceable others remained unidentified particularly those that welled up mysteriously from the darkness of the night scene not all sound makers are as easily identified as our friend here and so relentless research has continued over the years at places like the Narragansett marine laboratory where dr. murray poland fish and her staff have painstakingly analyzed and catalogued the sounds of hundreds of species of fish crustaceans mollusks and mammals so characteristic is the sound each animal makes that sound spectrograph such as these become in effect voice prints which clearly identify each sonic species the inhabitants of the sea produce sound for much the same reasons as do terrestrial creatures some sounds are songs repeated phrases quite analogous really to birdsong although in this case our singer happens to be a distant whale others suggest the droning of insects on a summer night but most biological sounds are purposeful calls warnings or responses to fright through pain the toadfish for example uses a loud drumming to declare territorial rights around his selected nesting site it is his way of saying no trespassing for his sweet young thing however he has a different tone of voice voice wait a minute fish do not have lungs larynx or vocal cords not even an air medium in which they would work so how does a fish talk anyway well God has provided some pretty special equipment more varied than the instruments of a symphony orchestra and all designed to work in water in many fishes the sound producing organ is an air-filled structure that is wrapped or banded with long muscle fibers these thump or vibrate the resonating chambers producing a variety of barks grunts or groans depending on the species we've heard from the croaker and toadfish this is a common see robin per fish possess a kind of built-in percussion section a rasp like device located in the throat is coupled to resonators which help amplify the Sun the skeleton is instrumental in producing the note of the Longhorn sculpin bones of the pelvic girdle transmit muscular vibrations to the sides of the which radiates sound like drum heads these voices of the deep our new voices to most of us this one do you know what it is well a spiny lobster so far as we know the lobster is the only animal that produces sound with the antenna without electronic ears you might swim through a rocky seascape like this and never know it was inhabited by millions upon millions of tiny snapping shrimp some of the Seas most prolific noise makers but the hydrophone detects a crescendo of sound from these unseen little fellows the snapping shrimp is a tiny crustacean but smaller than his seafood cousin averaging less than an inch in length one of the shrimp's Klaus is larger than the other and is the noise producing organ in a normal cops creatures the individual clicks merge into a continuous crackling lid of all sea creatures perhaps none is proving more fascinating to man and the friendly dolphin or ports some have become stars of stage screen and television delighting audiences with their antics acrobatics and their seeming pleasure in social contact dolphins are not fish but warm-blooded air-breathing mammals possibly ranking second only to man in intelligence the cheerful chirps and whistles that contribute to the fun of a sea circus can be emitted both above and below the surface of the water and in the open sea there used to a certain extent for communication between members of a school no ear to hear them nothing is further from the truth the Dolphins entire body can receive sound but the ears are especially designed for use in water even at the crushing pressures of a thousand foot dive the entire auditory system gives the animal and amazing sense of hearing directionally accurate and sensitive to frequencies of over 180 thousand Hertz cycles that's far above the range of the human ear but there's more rubber suction cups are placed over the eyes of this dolphin at Marineland of the pacific in california three rings are then tossed into the water although the animal is effectively blindfolded he still unerringly locates and retrieves the Rings scoring bull's-eyes on all three by the way how does he do it with sonar literally even when compared with the latest of man's sonar equipment the Dolphins echo aging system seems incredibly sophisticated in the vicinity of the blowhole our structures which produce intense pulses of complex sound we hear these as rapid series of sharp clicks the skull and other structures of the head direct most of the sound energy forward lower frequencies disperse in a wide pattern used for general locale salmans the extreme high frequencies however concentrate into a narrow pencil beam which is used for scanning specific targets the system which detects the returning echo is also highly directional oil-filled channels in the lower jaw apparently guide the signals directly to the middle ear these echoes convey precise information concerning shape and range of objects even something of their texture and composition just how good is the dolphin sonar man is just beginning to find out at the United States Navy's marine biology facility at point mugu California a bottlenose dolphin named Doris can while blindfolded distinguished between the various materials used to make these target discs in this particular experiment her task will be to differentiate between two metals copper and aluminum a remarkable discrimination if she can do it first Doris is blindfolded and then sent to one end of the tank the targets are set in place at the other end the signal is given and Doris begins her run in what for her is now total darkness she must swim through the wickets then identify the copper target which is on your left listen the whistle signals success and a reward before each run the targets are raised and replaced in a completely random sequence a switch this time copper on the right this will be a repeat copper is again on the right notice the scanning motion as she compares echoes from both targets before making her choice a video tape recorder allows the action to be replayed even slowed so that the motions and sounds associated with echo ranging may be studied in detail in experiments such as these scientists continue to probe the full extent of the Dolphins sonic way of life a way of life which depends upon the ability to locate food and avoid obstacles even in water so murky that vision is well-nigh impossible a matter not just of convenience but of survival one would expect the largest creature's ever to have lived on earth to be capable of some pretty thunderous noises and indeed some of the lowest frequencies known in the sea Rumble forth from incredible giants like the humpback whale pilot whales however for all their two or three tuns turned out to be the Canaries of the sea sighs seems to be of little help in predicting the menagerie of voices belonging to Wales some of the most astonishing undersea sounds ever recorded are these distress calls emitted by nami one of the first killer whales ever captured as the animal was being towed port Seattle and Puget Sound other whales were sighted in the area and on the hydrophone the cries of namu were heard echoing through the channel waters the vast domain of the great whales covers nearly seventy percent of our planet to the north the far north the oceans deep beneath first scattered flows then great masses of polar ice along these shifting fragmented boundaries live some of the seas most incredible musicians this is the song of Eric methesse the bearded seal bells steel drums something man-made the Eskimo knows what to look for walrus inflatable throat pouches of the adult male in the springtime account for the bell sound in addition both sexes emit rasps and clicks thought to be similar in function to the sonar pulses of the dolphin like the walrus seals of the Arctic and Antarctic apparently possess effective sonic guidance systems the weddell seal for example thrives and the blackness beneath dense ice shelves locates food a thousand feet below any possible light penetration and then homes in on a tiny vital breathing hole somewhere in that frozen canopy a quarter of a mile overhead all this even through the blackness of the long polar night it is here in these environments that we come to the startling realization that this so-called silent deep actually abounds with creatures whose very existence depends upon sound here the blind may live it is the death that died years ago man put his head under the water listen couldn't hear anything and so decided that there was no sound under the sea to him it was the silent deep in other words he made a test discovered a fact and reached a conclusion the test was a simple one he put his head under water and listened the fact he discovered was obvious he couldn't hear anything the conclusion he reached seemed logical after all he had two good ears if he couldn't hear anything there just wasn't anything to hear we now know that man reached wrong conclusion he was entering a realm for which he was not equipped there was plenty of sound of the sea he just had the wrong kind of ears there's another realm we call it the spiritual realm it deals with things like God salvation eternity heaven I say be hear someone say well you don't believe in things like that do you it's all foolishness there's nothing to it well how do you know there's nothing to it perhaps you mean that you made a test you looked into this realm intellectually you put your head into the spiritual realm looked around couldn't see your hair anything and so you decided that there's nothing to it in other words you made a test discovered a fact and reached a conclusion but was it a right conclusion was the test made on a valid basis in the Bible God says the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God for they are foolishness unto Him neither can he know them because they are spiritually discerned in other words man is not equipped by nature to understand or experience this spiritual realm some vital element is missing in man now we have accepted this hydrophone as a scientific instrument because we know it works it works because years ago some man quit trusting his own ears put aside a lot of preconceived ideas and then set about to discover some very fundamental laws of nature God's laws and then followed these laws with meticulous care before van could know about underwater sound he had to have new years before man can know about the spiritual realm he must have not only new years but new eyes and a new heart and a whole new life in John 33 we read verily verily I say unto thee except a man be born again he cannot see the kingdom of God there are millions of people all over the world today and untold millions who have lived in all ages of time who have put this to the test they have by faith receive Jesus Christ the Son of God as their Savior and their lives have been completely transformed the reality of this spiritual realm has become the most dominant factor in their lives they know because they have believed here are two instruments one has opened to us the secrets of the sea the other the promises of eternal life and today there is a new voice the voice of the deep it cries from the depths of the sea to say make your tests discover your facts but in this spiritual realm for the sake of your soul for all eternity reach the right conclusion believe and know