An interview with Alexander Supin, chief researcher at the Institute of Ecology and Evolution of the Russian Academy of Sciences, about marine life

For International Maritime Day, Alexander Supin, Doctor of Biological Sciences and chief researcher at the Sensor Systems Laboratory at the A.N. Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution (IEE RAS), spoke to Kommersant journalists about marine life, how it lives alongside humans, how much they suffer from pollution, and what people can do about it.

— Alexander Yakovlevich, you've spent your entire life studying marine life, primarily marine mammals: how they hear, breathe, and sleep. Have you understood what they're thinking?

— It's difficult to understand, although interesting. I'm a neurophysiologist by profession, studying the structure of the brain. In recent years, I've been working primarily with dolphins. We were studying their sleep, which had long remained a mystery.

— How did you do that?

— We installed sensors on the brain that monitor the nature of the electrical activity within. And it's completely different during wakefulness and sleep. It turned out that in dolphins, one half of the brain can be asleep, while the other is active. There was a lot of speculation about this, but only recording the brain's electrical activity could provide a definitive answer.

— Why do they need that?

— Dolphins have a difficult life: they live in water, but they need to breathe air, just like you and me. Every few dozen seconds or a few minutes, they must surface to bring their blowhole above the water. This allows them to expel used air from their lungs, draw in fresh air, and then dive back underwater. Our breathing is automatic—we can lose consciousness, faint, or be anesthetized, but our respiratory center works to ensure airflow. For dolphins, such automatic breathing would be fatal—they would choke on water. Therefore, their breathing can be called voluntary: they must surface, and only when skin receptors indicate that their blowhole is above the surface, do they exhale and inhale. This isn't unique to dolphins—it's the same for all whales. To perform the complex movements that allow them to breathe air and prevent their lungs from filling with water, some part of their brain needs to be active.

— Surely there are times when both sides of the brain are active, meaning they're not sleeping?

— Of course. They need more time to get enough sleep than you or me, because one side of the brain needs to rest, then the other. So, for about 20-30% of the day, they're in a situation where the waking half of the brain can maintain some minimal movement, but active work—searching for prey, a mate, or whatever—only occurs when both hemispheres are active.

— Do dolphins and other marine mammals suffer from insomnia?

— It's hard to say. At least, none of them have ever complained to me about it in person.

— And does your research on the brain's electrical activity show that they always sleep well?

— It shows that sooner or later they must fall asleep with at least half their brain—one, then the other. It's a vital state. I can't say it's essential for all living things. I don't know whether worms or bacteria sleep, but for highly organized animals—birds, mammals—it's a must, although they all sleep differently. Otherwise, our brains become inactive.

— What happens if you deprive dolphins of sleep? You've probably conducted such experiments.

— Yes, we have. Sleep pressure increases: when the experiment ends, the animal immediately falls into a deep sleep. It’s not something you can live without.

— Are there any remaining mysteries about it?

— Yes, far from everything is clear. What's going on in their brains, what turns on or off first one half of the brain, then the other? We still don't fully understand this whole process. There are many questions.

— From time to time, it is suggested that marine mammals are intelligent creatures. What do you think about this?

— Some manifestation of rational activity is characteristic of almost all highly organized animals, only to varying degrees. We had a remarkable researcher and ethologist in Russia, Leonid Krushinsky. He studied precisely the problem of rational activity. He found it in all mammals, in birds—for example, in crows. Dolphins have it to a significant degree. Among the most striking manifestations, I would mention play behavior. In play, an animal or person hones behavioral elements that will be needed during waking life. Dolphins have quite a pronounced play behavior.

Typically, communication between an experimenter and an animal proceeds like this: do something right and receive something edible; for a dolphin, that's a fish.

However, there have been cases where dolphins didn't eat their hard-earned reward right away, but hid it somewhere. Then, when, from their perspective, the dolphins believed the human had behaved correctly, they retrieved the fish, buried somewhere and already rotting, and brought it to the human as a reward.

— So who's watching whom — are we watching them, or are they watching us?

— There's an old joke: when you look at a microbe through a microscope, don't forget that the microbe is watching you through the microscope." They probably also try to control the experimenter's behavior to some extent. If they don't like something, a dolphin might refuse to perform a task, even though it's perfectly understood and knows what to do. But if they don't want to—that's it.

— Can a dolphin behave aggressively, punish a human?

— It's not so easy for them, because the human is usually out of the water. But there are cases where a dolphin has behaved unkindly toward a trainer who was next to it in the water: it could pin them down or even drown them.

— For what?

— If a person, from the dolphin's point of view, behaved incorrectly. For example, rewarded another dolphin, but they weren't rewarded. I don't know if this should be called jealousy, but in their opinion, it's wrong, unfair, and counterproductive: why should someone else be rewarded? I can perform just as well!

— How do they show affection towards each other?

— By organizing cooperative behavior, meaning they can become friends in pairs and do everything together. When we try to teach one of them a behavior, the other, observing it, acquires the same skill. Generally, dolphins who are attracted to each other are very difficult to separate. They don't want to be separated; they swim close, touching each other's fins.

— If one of them dies, do they form a new pair?

— It varies. People don't always remain faithful to the memory of a deceased person either. Of course, nature takes its course; sooner or later, a dolphin will find a new mate. But if one member of a pair dies, it's extremely stressful, a very serious psychological trauma.

— Like people, are they each individuals? Do they have their own personalities, preferences, habits?

— Of course, and not just dolphins: talk to any cow owner. She'll tell you something about her cow: compared to her, a human is a senseless, stupid creature. Every animal is an individual. They learn different skills differently. This is also typical for dolphins, but they can learn more complex skills, so this individuality is more noticeable.

For example, a dolphin refuses to work with a human, goes to the end of the enclosure, stands with its nose in the corner, and that's it. Using any kind of punishment or tactics is completely useless—dolphins don't tolerate it.

Only rewards for good behavior. But if they're unwilling to do the right thing, you won't achieve anything.

— What should we do then?

— Be patient.

— Have you ever apologized to them?

— It's difficult to apologize because we still haven't learned to talk to dolphins, although there are people who do it very seriously. But I don't know how to say "sorry" in dolphin.

— There was a recent story in the media that whales allegedly try to communicate with people by creating special circles, and that this is supposedly some kind of message from the whales to us...

— I think it's still a rumour, because no matter how high the intelligence of whales and dolphins, they are still animals, not humans. Verbal communication, using words, is the prerogative of humans. Although we can also communicate with more than just sounds: people who are unfortunate enough to be deaf communicate very well with gestures and can convey a great deal to each other.

— Marine mammals don't try to communicate with us in any way because they can't or don't want to?

— Let's start with the fact that physically, our speech and dolphin sounds are very different signals. We simply don't have access to the frequency range dolphins use to communicate. But they can convey quite significant information to each other.

One American scientist devised the following experiment: two dolphins in two halves of a pool, separated by a partition. The partition is opaque to light but transparent to sound. A dolphin can easily be trained to perform simple actions: say, press a button and get a fish. It's elementary. But if the button is in one half of the pool, and the signal, which is a command, is in the other, can the dolphins coordinate their activities? If it were two people, there's no question: the one who saw the signal would tell their partner to press the button, and both would get a fish. But if the dolphins were in two parts of the pool, could they do such a thing? It turns out they can and do. This experiment has been repeated many times, but it requires tremendous patience and skill in training dolphins. Plus, there are some doubts about the interpretation: perhaps the dolphin heard something other than the words its partner spoke, some splashes of water, something we don't know about.

— That's another mystery: how do they communicate with each other?

— They have a very rich sound repertoire. It's multi-level. Single-level sound signals are not uncommon; many mammals and birds have them. But this is a simple method of communication: this signal means food is coming, that signal means danger, and they should run away. But you can't say much this way, whereas our speech is a multi-level system of signals. Individual sounds are combined into words, and those into phrases... Using this system, we can communicate a great deal—from simple signals like "danger" or "go away" to the content of the novel War and Peace. Dolphins may not have as many levels as humans, but they also have multi-level systems, where individual signals combine into combinations that can be called words, and words combine into phrases. So they communicate quite effectively.

— So, should we seek a common language with dolphins?

— Of course we should. It's not just a matter of educational interest, although that's important. We're also dealing with the problem of human underwater activity. With all our intelligence, we remain land-based creatures. The aquatic environment is alien to us. Of course, we've invented a breathing apparatus that allows us to dive underwater. But a diver in a suit, a steel helmet, and with a breathing apparatus strapped to his back is a clumsy and helpless creature. Therefore, the question of finding assistants for whom the aquatic environment is natural, who could be indispensable, is constantly being considered.

— What for?

— For example, sailors are very interested in rescuing the crews of sunken submarines. Dolphins could be trained to solve this problem. A diver can locate a sunken submarine and signal a surface vessel that he's found it. But he can't do much. The sunken ship may have a device that emits sounds. But a diver can't determine where they're coming from because our auditory system is designed for use on the surface. He hears a "thump-thump" but can't figure out where the signal's source is. Dolphins don't have this problem: their auditory system is naturally designed to work underwater. They'll hear the sound and locate its source, placing a buoy there if trained to do so. Then it's up to humans to take the necessary measures to rescue the crew.

Therefore, finding a common language with dolphins and other marine life is not only an important fundamental problem but also a practical one. And to keep their home—the sea—safe and sound. This is important not only for them, but for us as well.

— How are dolphins doing now, for example, in the Black Sea? Does the environmental situation affect them?

— They avoid polluted areas. The Black Sea isn't the most suitable body of water for life because, at a depth of several hundred meters, there's a layer of water contaminated with hydrogen sulfide. Life there is only possible in the upper layer. If this layer becomes polluted, things are bad. For now, there's plenty of space for them to live in the Black Sea without entering polluted areas.

— But when news of the Kerch Strait disaster came in, the 'greenies' said there were many dead dolphins washed up on the shore. Did that happen?

— Dead dolphins washed up on the shore were commonplace even before any environmental disasters. There are various points of view on why they die. My point of view is a bit heretical: they die because that's how they save themselves. They live in water, but they need air to breathe. So if a dolphin is very sick and can't move properly, it simply can't surface and dies from being deprived of the ability to breathe.

Therefore, mass dolphin strandings could be the result of a pod being struck by some kind of infection or infestation.

Perhaps they're trying to save themselves this way. They've crawled ashore, they don't need to actively move to get some fresh air; they're just lying in the shallows and can breathe, and survive for a while." Those "well-wishers" who try to push the dolphins back into the water are doing them a disservice. But that's my point of view; not everyone shares it.

— Many researchers perceive the sea as a single living organism. How do you see it?

— A living organism requires all its parts to be united by something that provides it with energy, safety, and so on. You can't say that about a body of water several thousand cubic kilometers in volume. No, I think it's more of an image. For me, it represents the habitat of all the animals that interest me and that I study. There's the concept of an ecological system. The sea is an ecosystem inhabited by various organisms, interconnected with one another. Some are food for others, some are a threat to others. But all are equally important and necessary.

Interviewer: Natalia Leskova