ROB SCHMITZ, HOST:
What lurks in the darkest depths of the ocean? Marine biologist Edie Widder has dedicated her life to studying this question and she's found an answer - light.
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EDIE WIDDER: I was stunned by how much bioluminescence I saw, and I realized that this had to be one of the dominant processes in the ocean, and yet very few people were studying it.
SCHMITZ: The new documentary "A Life Illuminated" chronicles Widder's nearly four-decade career. She plunges thousands of feet below the ocean aboard submersible vehicles, all in an effort to understand the mysterious phenomenon of bioluminescence. It's fascinating and dangerous work.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "A LIFE ILLUMINATED")
WIDDER: Every time I make a dive in a submersible, it's a calculated risk.
SCHMITZ: In one part of the documentary, Widder's submersible is hundreds of feet underwater when it springs a leak.
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WIDDER: When you find ankle-deep water in the sub, the appropriate response is panic. I was terrified.
SCHMITZ: Luckily, Widder was able to return to the surface unharmed. But just an hour after narrowly skirting death...
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WIDDER: So they were able to dry it out, and I was ready to dive again in an hour.
SCHMITZ: Earlier this week, I got a chance to speak with Edie Widder and Tasha Van Zandt, the film's director. I asked Widder what drives her to keep on diving.
WIDDER: It's curiosity about what is life like in the biggest living place on Earth, the most unexplored region of the planet, and to be able to see it with your own eyes, especially all of these amazing, amazing creatures that make light to help them survive - so many questions to answer, and you're never going to be able to answer them unless you go and explore.
SCHMITZ: And Tasha, I want to turn to you. Tasha Van Zandt, what drew you to Edie? Why did you want to tell her story?
TASHA VAN ZANDT: Well, I've always been fascinated by stories of the kraken and "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea." But in 2012, I, along with the rest of the world, saw this first footage of a live giant squid in its natural habitat, and I was just completely transformed by seeing these images. But it wasn't until years later that I really sat with the question of who was the person behind the camera, and what did that mission really look like?
And so I ended up reaching out to Edie in 2020, and on our first conversation, when I was asking her about the giant squid expedition, that is when I realized that was really just one of hundreds of discoveries she's made in this lifetime of exploring our ocean planet and is when the spark for this film began.
SCHMITZ: I wanted to talk about bioluminescence, which is at the core of this film. Edie, what is bioluminescence, and how do animals use it?
WIDDER: The bioluminescence that most people are familiar with is fireflies, but there's actually a lot of animals on the planet that make light, most of them living in the ocean. And they do it by mixing chemicals together in their bodies, just the way when you break a light stick, and you shake it up, and the chemicals mix together, they make light.
SCHMITZ: And how did bioluminescence become your life's work?
WIDDER: So I decided I wanted to be a marine biologist when I was 11 years old and got to explore a coral reef. And for my PhD, I was actually working on a marine dinoflagellate. But the bioluminescence was not the point of the study at the time, but I got more and more fascinated by this ability of creatures to make light.
And then my major professor was great at getting funding, and he got a major grant for a new kind of spectrometer. And I've always been kind of a gadget freak, so I became the lab expert on it, at which point, he says, I think we should send you to sea to measure all these animals in the ocean that make light that nobody's ever been able to measure before.
And on one of these expeditions, they were testing this new diving suit called WASP. I would get on the headset and talk to whoever was down in the suit and ask them, would they please turn out the lights, and tell me what you see? And, you know, they'd turn out the lights, and then I'd get, oh, wow. That is so cool.
SCHMITZ: (Laughter).
WIDDER: And I'd say, well, could you be more specific? And they were terrible at it. And so...
(LAUGHTER)
WIDDER: The chief scientist took pity on me and offered to let me train as a pilot. So two years later, I got to have the experience myself of going down in WASP.
SCHMITZ: And what did you see?
WIDDER: The first time I went down was down to 800 feet, and I had the lights on, and there wasn't much in the water. It looked pretty barren. And then I turned out the lights, and I was in the middle of a fireworks display. It was just absolutely breathtaking. Flashes and glows and squirts and swirls of light, all of it different shades of blue - I was blown away because I, at that point, knew how much energy it takes for a living creature to make light. And I felt like, this has got to be one of the most important things in the ocean. Why aren't more people studying it? And suddenly, there was no question. That's what I wanted to study for the rest of my life.
SCHMITZ: Tasha, I want to turn to you here. You know, in telling this story, you've worked with a lot of archival footage. How did you decide which parts of Edie's career to include, and how collaborative was the process with Edie herself?
VAN ZANDT: You know, Edie has done so many incredible expeditions throughout her life. But ultimately, we interweave this present-day journey where we followed Edie to 3,300 feet to the ocean floor, where she searches for this phenomenon called the flashback phenomenon.
And I actually was able to dive with Edie. And when we landed on the ocean floor, I had this transformative experience. You know, I've always been so fascinated and inspired by astronaut stories of the overview effect and what it feels like for them when they go to space and see the entirety of our small, pale blue dot.
But here we were in the center of our planet, and I had this inverse effect and this inner-view effect of our oceans, where instead of feeling like our planet is so small, I felt the vastness of how much more wondrous discoveries there are to be found and, you know, as Edie often shares, how much more there is to find that we don't even know how to look for yet.
SCHMITZ: As you mentioned, Tasha, the crux of this film is the pursuit to capture on video this flashback phenomenon which, Edie, you have seen multiple times. What is this flashback, and why is it important for you to capture it, Edie?
WIDDER: If you're down in a sub in total darkness, and you flash your floodlights on, and this - on the second flash, it seems like you're just surrounded by everything that's lighting up all at once but in synchrony. And I don't know what it is, but I suspect what it is is marine snow and bioluminescent fecal pellets that have bioluminescent bacteria on them.
SCHMITZ: Marine snow, in the briefest of descriptions, is material that is basically the detritus of the sea. Is that correct?
WIDDER: Right, and that's why it's important. This is why there is life in the deep sea below depths where sunlight can penetrate because of the marine snow and fecal pellets drifting down from above. And how these animals find this in total darkness is critical, and bioluminescence apparently plays a part in that. So for bioluminescent bacteria to light up like that is an opportunity for them to be eaten by a fish or any kind of animal that has a food-rich environment in its gut. And so that's why we have as much life as we do in the deep sea.
SCHMITZ: Tasha Van Zandt is the director of "A Life Illuminated," a film about marine biologist Edie Widder. Tasha Van Zandt and Edie Widder, thank you.
WIDDER: Thank you.
VAN ZANDT: Thank you so much. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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