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Why Are We STILL So Terrified Of The Ocean?
Unveiled
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3/5/2025
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😹
Fun
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00:00
The ocean covers more than 70% of the Earth's surface, containing 97% of our entire planet's water supply.
00:07
But they're still famously, and quite bizarrely, mostly unexplored.
00:11
It's commonly said that we know more about space than we do about the ocean.
00:15
And by many metrics, that actually isn't hyperbole.
00:18
What's worse, is while we've only had the technology to explore space for a few decades,
00:23
we've been traveling the seas for thousands of years.
00:26
So why have we seemingly learned so little in so much time?
00:30
This is Unveiled, and today we're answering the extraordinary question…
00:34
Why are we still so terrified of the ocean?
00:37
Do you need the big questions answered?
00:39
Are you constantly curious?
00:41
Then why not subscribe to Unveiled for more clips like this one?
00:44
And ring the bell for more thought-provoking content!
00:48
Life on Earth was born from the sea, with the leading theories suggesting that it originated
00:53
along and around ancient deep-sea hypothermal vents.
00:57
The first cells and complex lifeforms took shape here, almost four billion years ago.
01:02
And for millions of years afterwards, that was the status quo.
01:06
Eventually, life evolved far enough to leave the water to walk on land,
01:10
and much, much later on, the first modern humans arrived.
01:14
It's a tale as old as time, in a more literal sense than most.
01:18
But the long and short of it is that our holy, sea-based ancestors,
01:22
those primordial, microscopic lifeforms of the past,
01:25
are extremely, laughably distant from us as we are today.
01:29
So much so, that while life may have been born from the sea,
01:33
early humans were, if anything, scared of it.
01:36
A swirling mass of cold, stretching on for as far as the eye can see.
01:41
An icy, shivering bulk of near-certain death.
01:44
The ocean was, and really is, a pretty ominous place.
01:48
Nevertheless, the land-loving human did eventually turn its attention to taming the sea.
01:53
The consensus is somewhat divided over exactly when,
01:56
but our species learned to sail roughly 50,000 years ago, at least.
02:01
The first key and busy trade routes date back to around 1,000 BCE.
02:06
In more recent times, travelling by boat is a norm,
02:09
and the only reason we don't do it more is due to the advent of flight.
02:12
But in the grand scheme of our species' lifetime,
02:15
journeying across oceans has not been the norm.
02:18
There has been a disconnect.
02:20
And this is perhaps part of the problem.
02:22
Obviously, humans are at a physical disadvantage when we're in the water.
02:26
On land, we can run, climb, easily use a variety of tools,
02:30
and we can defend ourselves relatively simply, if the need arises.
02:34
In the ocean, we're slow, awkward, and vulnerable.
02:37
We can't see beneath the waves.
02:39
All of our senses are dull.
02:41
We can swim, yes, but only for a limited time,
02:44
and it's not always enough to resist the tides,
02:47
nor to out-swim most ocean creatures.
02:49
From an evolutionary perspective,
02:51
it has therefore always made sense to stay close to land
02:54
and to be cautious when in or around the sea.
02:57
The ocean represents the unknown, and humans are inherently afraid of it.
03:01
It could even be argued that avoiding the sea is a survival mechanism.
03:04
Thalassophobia is the irrational fear of deep water.
03:08
It's a phobia that is little understood,
03:10
with conflicting views that it could be linked to the sufferer
03:13
enduring some kind of related trauma in their past,
03:16
it could be linked to a person's upbringing,
03:18
as is often the case with irrational fears in general,
03:21
or thalassophobia could be genetic,
03:24
so fear of the ocean might be inherited.
03:26
Whatever the reason, the media unapologetically plays
03:30
on this apparently inescapable trope of our character.
03:33
From Jaws to Sharknado,
03:35
from The Perfect Storm to The Life of Pi,
03:37
there's an endless stream of movies that rely on the key themes
03:40
of danger, isolation, and helplessness.
03:43
Even Finding Nemo is a hard watch for someone who has thalassophobia.
03:47
The hostility of the sea, of course, stretches far beyond the movie theater.
03:51
Our histories all over the world are crammed with cultural myths
03:55
about sea monsters and lost ships.
03:58
The horrifying Kraken, a legendary sea monster,
04:01
is said to be so large it can swallow entire boats,
04:04
and its body can be reasonably mistaken for an island landmass.
04:07
Moby Dick set the tone for a new age of seafaring scariness
04:11
when it was published in 1851.
04:14
The centuries-old stories of explorers and pirates
04:17
only add to the intrigue, but also to the fear.
04:20
But it's a fear that has always been paired with a desire to know more.
04:24
The stories of sunken cities are another common topic all across the globe,
04:28
the most famous of which being that of Atlantis,
04:31
which, according to the ancient Greek philosopher Plato,
04:34
was swallowed up by a monster wave as an act of punishment delivered by the gods.
04:38
The Atlanteans are said to have been far too proud and demanding for their own good,
04:42
and so their once glistening city was deliberately submerged by the heavens,
04:46
never to be seen again.
04:49
Whatever you think of the tale, the recurring theme of Ocean Bad crops up again.
04:53
In the modern world, the ocean isn't only the final resting place of lost legendary cities.
04:59
According to UNESCO, there are more than three million shipwrecks littered across the seafloor.
05:04
There are supposed and infamous hotspots, such as within the famed Bermuda Triangle,
05:09
but really there are wrecks all over the map, and especially along the busiest shipping routes.
05:14
The spectre of a voyage gone wrong is ultimately and unfortunately never too far away.
05:19
And add into the equation that in the last 100 years or so,
05:23
hundreds of airplanes have also been lost beneath the waves,
05:26
and the ocean becomes even eerier.
05:29
Naturally, all the lost wrecks also highlight the reality that again, the ocean is hugely unexplored.
05:35
There are so many lost objects in the sea that remain totally unaccounted for,
05:39
which further adds to the creepiness and mystery.
05:42
And modern technology, for all its improvements, has yet to truly help us out.
05:47
From sonar to submersibles, we do possess more information now than our ancestors ever did,
05:52
but actually making use of and understanding the scans and images that we do capture is slow going so far.
05:59
It's a problem created on two fronts.
06:01
There's a perceived lack of interest in ocean exploration compared to space travel,
06:06
and there's therefore a distinct lack of funding, notably in America,
06:10
but across most of the major economic powers in general.
06:13
The unpredictability of the ocean is thrown all the more into the light during every single hurricane season.
06:19
Huge storms and typhoons gather over our largest expanses,
06:23
before raining destruction down onto the land, destruction that humans are often powerless to stop.
06:29
The incredibly dangerous tsunamis that can follow earthquakes in the ocean
06:33
are yet another periodic, inescapable, and brutal display of the unmatched strength of the sea.
06:38
For those caught out on the sea during a storm, it can be a death sentence.
06:42
For those nearby, when the worst weather makes land, it's Mother Nature at her deadliest.
06:47
Perhaps the Mariana Trench is the greatest representation of just how intimidating the ocean can feel.
06:53
At more than 36,000 feet deep at its deepest point, it easily ranks among the least explored environments on Earth.
07:00
That said, the trench isn't totally uncharted territory.
07:04
Multiple crewed missions have journeyed down into it,
07:07
capturing images straight out of your very worst thalassophobic nightmares.
07:12
Such missions are vital expeditions, however.
07:14
According to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration,
07:18
not only is around 80% of the ocean unmet, but 91% of the ocean's species are unclassified.
07:25
Again, in terms of life on this planet, the sea is the last great unknown.
07:30
The good news is that our species-wide, centuries-old aversion to the water is slowly lifting.
07:36
The legend of the Kraken doesn't quite generate the horror that it once did.
07:40
Today's technology has made sea travel safer than it ever has before,
07:44
and although our emphasis on space travel is a leading reason as to why we haven't focused more on the ocean,
07:50
our success in space travel, from the Apollo program to the Space Shuttle missions,
07:54
has shown that perhaps travelling the depths isn't quite so impossible as it once may have seemed.
08:00
That said, for all the complexity of space travel,
08:03
our astronauts don't yet need to cope with anything close to comparable pressure.
08:08
At the bottom of the Mariana Trench, it's more than 1,000 bars,
08:12
which is more than 1,000 times the air pressure at sea level.
08:15
Just plain surviving with the weight of the sea on your shoulders is another unique and daunting challenge.
08:21
And after everything else, it's one more reason why we're still so terrified of the ocean.
08:30
What do you think? Is there anything we missed? Let us know in the comments.
08:34
Check out these other clips from Unveiled, and make sure you subscribe and ring the bell for our latest content.
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