← Ologies with Alie Ward
Ologies with Alie Ward
Haunted Hydrology (SPOOKY LAKES) with Geo Rutherford
01:13:12
Mudbank bones. River wrecks. Salty seas. Pink ponds. Poison dust devils. Steamy streams.. It’s Haunted Hydrology with your favorite Spooky Lakes ambassador, the artist and author Geo Rutherford who is widely known as Geodesaurus. Geo covers the dark history of The Great Lakes, a stump that controls the weather, the what and why of a good lagoon, the field excursions she’s been on for research, the lakes she wants to see the most, and how a drought can shiver your spine. It’s a Spooktober spectacular, folks. It’s Haunted Hydrology.
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- [00:00]
Alie Ward
Oh hey, if you're listening to this, and it seems like you are, a quick announcement that I'll be doing my first ever live show on Monday, November 17th in Brooklyn, New York at the Bell House. Patrons. I have sent you a pre sale code so if you haven't joined patreon it costs $1 but tickets are available there with a code but they'll go on sale to the general public in a few days. Thursday, October 9th again, the show is November 17th in Brooklyn. Okay, link is in the show notes. Let's have the episode go from Skeptic.
- [00:30]
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- [01:00]
Alie Ward
Hey, right now everyone's doing their best. We do our best to take care of our bodies, but chances are we might not be getting all of the nutrients we need that are essential every day. This is why I take Ritual. It is the obsessively researched multivitamin which is my speed. So Ritual Essential multis. They have nutrients most of us don't get enough of from food. They have clean absorbable forms. They don't have shady additives or ingredients that can do more harm to your body than good. I like Ritual because they're a certified B corp and take them every day and I know that for me, B vitamins give me a bit more energy, so that's why I take them.
- [01:34]
Co-host/Interviewer
I also love that they have things.
- [01:35]
Alie Ward
Like gut health and daily protein. And I'm also trying to up my protein and it's great to do it on the go, especially with non dairy options. For me personally, not that you asked, but I'm telling you. So instead of striving for perfect health, aim for supporting foundational health. Get 25% off your first month only at ritual.com ologies you can start ritual or add essential for women 18 + to your subscription today. That's ritual.com/ologies for 25% off. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose treat, cure or prevent any disease. Yes, hello, it's the podcast host using the greeting of her guest. And this is Ologies. I'm Alie Ward and either you are shaking and crying right now about who we're about to talk to or you are here for curiosity's sake. You don't even know what a deep dive into haunted waters you're about to take. It's great. My guest today is one that y' all have begged for for five years in a row. Their TikTok rivets 2 million people, many of whom gather specifically for a month of Spooktober Haunted Hydrology or spooky lakes and rivers and ponds and oceans and seas and sometimes dams and fountains. Anything that is a threat to your life and involves liquid they'll cover. And they do so with a boatload of facts, some deep research, creepy visuals, and a very smooth voice. We love them. Ologites love them so much that you tag us in each other's social media and this is the year we made it happen for Spooktober. They're also a brilliantly talented artist and illustrator and last year came out with the very gorgeous and informative and creepy book Spooky 25 Strange and mysterious Lakes that Dot Our Planet. And there's a companion coloring book. Just get it. Get em both Wonderful. Beautiful. The book is linked in the show notes. I own it. I love it. 10 out of 10 spookies and we will get to the episode in a moment. But first thank you to patrons@patreon.com Ologies who support the show for a hot dollar a month or more. It also allows you to send in questions for the guests before we record even audio questions so you might hear your voice on the show. Also got you the pre sale ticket code and we could not do the show without you. If you need classroom safe kid friendly episodes we have them. They are called smologies S M O L O G I E S and you can subscribe them wherever you get podcasts or in their own feed. And also Ologies Merch is available@ologiesmerch.com in case you need a sweatshirt for the chilly weather. Thank you also to folks who leave us reviews because they help the show so much and I read them all as for example this one that was just left by wolfgirl7200 who wrote thank you for reminding me that I love our planet and want to fight for it. The Salugenology and Ethnoecology episodes have literally changed my life this year, Wolfgirl 7200 howls in appreciation. Back at you for the review. And we will link those two episodes in the show notes for others who need their lives changed. Okay. Onto haunted Hydrology. This guest will enlighten you in the dark history of the Great Lakes. The salty seas, the dredged rivers, the chunky Siberian seals, poison dust devils, boiling rivers, pink ponds, and how a drought can shiver your spine. So let's escape to tales of spooky lakes with illustrator, science communicator, author, artist and expert in the good soup of haunted hydrology. Gio Rutherford.
- [05:15]
Geo Rutherford
I go by Geo Rutherford even though technically my name is Georgina because my mom is a geologist with a bad sense of humor. But I've always gone by Geo. And so Gio Rutherford and I use she. Her pronouns. Cool.
- [05:30]
Co-host/Interviewer
And your mom is. I saw in your book your mom's Sandra, right? A science mom.
- [05:35]
Geo Rutherford
Yeah, yeah, she was. She has a PhD in geology. And so, yeah, she's. I was. I very much grew up with like earth science in like every facet of my life.
- [05:45]
Co-host/Interviewer
Well, you're also in the Midwest, so you got tons of lakes out there.
- [05:49]
Geo Rutherford
Yeah, yeah, technically I grew up in Boulder, Colorado, where I think we only really had reservoirs. I moved then later to Wisconsin. But Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, all those states that just have so many lakes.
- [06:01]
Co-host/Interviewer
What's the difference between a reservoir and a lake?
- [06:03]
Geo Rutherford
A reservoir is a man made created body of water. So it's like a dam put on a river which then creates like this. Like they always look like spiny bushes from the space where they're just like these weird. And I love them. Like Lake Powell and Lake Mead are some of my favorite lakes. They're just so weird looking from space and in person. And so, yeah, that's. A reservoir is just a man made lake.
- [06:27]
Co-host/Interviewer
I didn't realize that, and I didn't realize until your book that a pond is just a very small lake and it's kind of just up to whomever, right?
- [06:34]
Geo Rutherford
Yeah, it's like there's no formal, like universal definition for a pond. I think that if you wanted to clarify then if sunlight reaches the bottom and it's like really? But that you could state that about the Great Salt Lake because the Great Salt Lake is like very shallow. I think it's like maximum 20ft, maybe 3ft average. Yeah, it's like this crazy shallow lake. And so you could argue that it could be a pond by that definition. But then the second kind of qualifier is that it's usually pretty small. And so it's like a small body of water where the sunlight reaches the bottom is usually kind of more considered a pond. But there's tons of ponds across the United States that have lake names, and there's tons of lakes that have pond names. And so it just. It doesn't end up really mattering at all.
- [07:20]
Co-host/Interviewer
What about the ones that are seas like the Dead Sea? Salty?
- [07:25]
Geo Rutherford
Yep. And the Salton Sea. The largest lake in the world is the Caspian Sea, which is a sea. And that's because the definition of a lake is a body of water surrounded by land. So technically, as long as it's not connected to the ocean, then it's a lake. But you have salty lakes as a result of no outlet for the water. It's called an endoric basin. And that means that the water only escapes via evaporation. And because of that, it ends up being salty. So the Salton Sea, the Great Salt Lake, the Dead Sea, the Caspian Sea, these are all bodies of water that have no outlet for their water, and it can only escape the. The evaporation.
- [08:01]
Co-host/Interviewer
Do salty lakes, do those just keep evaporating until they're a big mud flat for Burning Man? Like, do those just become saltier and saltier and then they're bye bye?
- [08:10]
Geo Rutherford
Yep. Yeah. So, like, the future of the Great Salt Lake and the Salton Sea is kind of to end up being these crusty salt flats. So I just visited Lake Manley, which is the lake in the belly of Death Valley. During the glaciers, when all the glaciers were here covering North America, there was a ton of these prehistoric lakes. I don't know why they're called prehistoric lakes, because they don't predate history. But whatever. There was all these giant lakes and a lot of them disappeared. And what we have left is these giant salt flats. Yeah, most lakes in the world die because of evaporation or like drought. But also rivers are carrying sediment which gets dropped into these lake bodies. Even our great lakes here, Michigan, Superior, they have rivers bring sediment in that end up filling them in. And over time, you end up losing your valley or your lake bed, and you end up with like a bog or a fen or one of these different types of wetlands.
- [09:08]
Co-host/Interviewer
Is a bog a lake that's been kind of filled in.
- [09:11]
Geo Rutherford
There is a clarification between the difference between these different types of wetlands. But in a lot of cases, a bog is created from, like, a body of water that has kind of transformed or evolved into its next phase of life. Like, if you talk about, like, the life and death of a lake, you know, how it begins and how it ends. A lot of times it ends up as this, like boggy wetland.
- [09:34]
Alie Ward
And yes, we need a bogology episode. But a quick rundown. According to the article, bogs and fens, what's the difference, for Pete's sake? Via greatecology.com the primary driver that distinguishes a bog from, from an alkaline fen is that bogs form above the water table from precipitation. But fens are fed mostly through this mineral rich ground or surface water. Now if you've heard of a bog body or a mummified corpse, well, yes, that is a thing. And it's due to the cold and really acidic water of a bog, which can preserve and then tan the skin. Now, if you're ever in Dublin, there is a natural history museum there that has bog bodies on display. And it's actually a very reverent, kind of somber affair. I went there in March and I spoke with the docent as the museum was closing. We kind of snuck in right before and then popped out. And she told me that as she locks the door behind her every night, she bids goodnight to the bog bodies and wishes them a restful slumber. So haunted. Hydrology, it's history, it's chemistry, it's ecology, it's biology, it's geology, and of course it's geo.
- [10:41]
Co-host/Interviewer
But I should also note that I'm sitting here asking you a million late questions and you are by profession trained as an artist.
- [10:51]
Geo Rutherford
Yeah, I've gotten really lucky to be able to combine all these interests that I have into what I do now. I feel so blessed. But I was did my undergrad in printmaking and fibers and then I spent five years being a high school teacher. But then I decided to go to grad school and I went to grad school for printmaking again. And while I was doing that at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, it was the first time that I had ever lived like within seven blocks of a great lake. I started to just go to Lake Michigan every day for 90 days. I went to Bradford beach, which, if you don't know, if you're not from Milwaukee, it's like kind of a nasty little beach, but I love it. And I didn't know what I was doing there at first. I started to just collect things that I found. There's a lot of like plastic and interesting, like artifacts that end up on the shoreline, which kind of tell you a story about what's going on with the Great Lakes. So like invasive mussel shells, rusty crayfish claws, things where you're like, you're starting to put together a story of what's happening. And I started to do tons of research into the Great Lakes. So I read Dan Egan's book, which is the Death and Life of the Great Lakes. And then I wrote like a 75 page paper about the Great Lakes and all the things I had learned. And then the pandemic hit and I was in the middle of my last year in grad school and I started a TikTok account that my first video I ever posted kind of went viral because of the work that I was doing. Biannual report, canned with fluid inside of a mason jar. But the main question is still, is this a book? Clearly the object inside the jar is a book, but it's now become part of the jar and the contents as artifact, the book has lost its.
- [12:28]
Alie Ward
So this post racked up hundreds of thousands of views very quickly and partly, Gio told me, because people got mad that this art book, by her definition, wasn't a real book. And so they fought it out in the comments.
- [12:41]
Geo Rutherford
And that's how you go viral on the Internet, is just make everybody really mad. And I used that to kind of end up making Great Lakes videos. And that kind of ended up somersaulting into me making videos about lakes of the world. And then the first Spooky Lake Month video was in October of 2020. And they're really messy videos because they were like back when you only had a minute.
- [13:01]
Alie Ward
Gio says that she was very experimental and had planned on being a high school teacher again, but then scrapped that and has been sailing the beautiful and sometimes stormy TikTok waters, which is essentially.
- [13:14]
Geo Rutherford
Like strange lakes of the world wave. Any body of water, actually, any water, anything is wet. That's morbid. Ali. It's so. I'm such a. I'm crazy about Spooky Lake Month because I should do some of those videos ahead of time or like prep them, even download some pictures. That would be helpful. Gio. Like, do that please. Like, that would be so helpful if you would just download a couple images or like write your scripts ahead of time. But I don't. I wake up and every morning roll out of bed, I'm drinking coffee and I'm figuring out what I'm gonna do for that day.
- [13:46]
Co-host/Interviewer
I love that glimpse into behind the scenes. Cause I'm like, you must be working all year. Like a week to. No, that's. I mean, same same with ologies. Like our episodes should publish by midnight 11:57 sometimes, you know, What I mean.
- [14:04]
Geo Rutherford
Well, there's something about it where, like, I work my best under pressure and, like, knowing that people are waiting for a 7pm post central time that, like, that works for me. And I post bad videos sometimes where I'm like, wow, that was awful. Last year, I made a video about the Chicago River. I hated that video. I thought it was so terrible. I, like, there was so many weird things that I discovered while I was, like, researching. There's a submarine that was found in the bottom of the Chicago River. And I was like, that's weird. It had a corpse and a dog corpse in it, a human corpse and a dog corpse. And I was like, how did this end up happening?
- [14:40]
Narrator/Additional Voice
To this day, no one knows who the skeletal remains belong to or how a submarine ended up at the bottom of a Chicago River. 3 out of 10 spookies.
- [14:51]
Geo Rutherford
And I ended up literally down this rabbit hole. Like, all these weird things happened in the early 1900s where, like, people were jumping off the Niagara Falls in barrels and there was a guy who rode a giant leather bubble across Lake Michigan. And, like, all of these things were weirdly connected to the submarine at the bottom of Lake Chicago River. And so I was like, taking all of these things and trying to combine them together into a topic. And it was a mess. And yet that video still did really well. And I was like, guys, no. Bad, bad. This is a bad video.
- [15:25]
Co-host/Interviewer
Are you a person who is afraid of lakes in general?
- [15:30]
Geo Rutherford
That's kind of interesting. I had a life and death experience in a river.
- [15:34]
Co-host/Interviewer
Oh.
- [15:35]
Geo Rutherford
Where it was like a flooded river. And I. My dog jumped into a waterfall that was overflowing, so it's like a hardcore waterfall and didn't come back out again. And I jumped in after this dog at like, 18. I was 18 years old. And to this day, I don't know how I survived. I don't know how my dog survived either, because I, like you, immediately have no sense of what's up and what's down and where you are and what's going on, and you can't get out because you're being sucked back in. And I swear the only reason I survived that was because I'm 6 foot 2. And for some reason, I was able to reach the top of the waterfall where the water was pounding into my face and my feet were touching the bottom, so I was able to shuffle across. And while I was doing that, I reached out and my dog's paw, like, just ended up in my hand. It was crazy. I still don't know how that happened. And I feel like that, to me, I think about that a lot when I'm making these videos, because a lot of these videos are, you know, about lakes, but also about just anything that, like, water is so such a killer. Like, water is a killer. And I find it really fascinating. And there are topics that are too much, that are too scary, and I don't cover them, even though people ask for them.
- [16:52]
Co-host/Interviewer
Yeah, I think you thread that needle really well, where it's also educational, where I'm like, I wouldn't know that. Like, a low dam could kill me. Like, I wouldn't know that, or you don't know that aerated water is impossible to get out. Think about people who have not gone into bodies of water because of your videos.
- [17:10]
Geo Rutherford
The one video I was thinking of when I said that was I did a video about the uranium tailing ponds in the Navajo Nation. Mm. It's like this crazy story about the uranium that is still to this day poisoning the water of people in the Navajo Nation.
- [17:25]
Narrator/Additional Voice
In fact, thousands of abandoned uranium mines and radioactive tailing ponds still plague the western United States.
- [17:33]
Alie Ward
And for more on mining on tribal lands in the Southwest, we happen to have a great pedology episode with Dr. Lydia Jennings. And it's on soil. And it's a topic that matters we don't hear much about, which is why Jio's work, these three minute videos reaching a huge audience of millions is so impactful and also addictive.
- [17:51]
Geo Rutherford
Because sometimes I like to do topics about contemporary issues that are, like, sick and like. Like the oil fields in Texas, which are, like, creating these giant pools of toxic water. And like, those are fascinating and they're really terrible. And so an opportunity to talk about it, like, I can't turn it down. It's just so interesting. And I think we need to know.
- [18:09]
Co-host/Interviewer
About it when it comes to kind of the creepiness factor of bodies of water. And I'm sure people talk to you about this a lot. Do you feel like there's something innate where if you can't see below a certain depth or if you, like, rub up on a stick or something. What makes some bodies of water creepy to you now that you have gone literally, like, in depth?
- [18:34]
Geo Rutherford
Yeah, actually, I think it comes back to the fact that I believe that every lake has the potential to be spooky. Okay. You don't know what's beneath the surface. Like, there could be somebody who disappeared years and years ago, and they're just there at the bottom of the lake. Like, you'll never know. You don't know if that stick that you think you brushed across is just someone's hand. Every lake gets to have a chance on the starlight of, like, being a spooky lake.
- [18:59]
Co-host/Interviewer
Do you ever see, like, the Reddit board, like, sub mechaphobia? Sub mechaphobia.
- [19:03]
Geo Rutherford
Do you know that I actually go through that for inspiration?
- [19:08]
Co-host/Interviewer
Submerged vehicles, submerged. Anything, like, freaks me out.
- [19:14]
Geo Rutherford
Yep.
- [19:15]
Alie Ward
So if you share my goosebumpy dread at the sight of a sunken boat or car or a shopping cart or whatever, please know that there is a word for that. Submechanophobia. Also, please enjoy our maritime archeology episode with Chanel Zafaropoulos, who I love. And that episode talks about all kinds of shipwrecks and submerged machines all over the world. Now, Gio has also traveled all over in her quest to bring you haunted hydrology reports. And just like a mommy blogger's perfect Instagram, they can be picturesque on the surface, but mask unknown horrors.
- [19:48]
Co-host/Interviewer
Lake Tahoe. Do you know what's going on in there?
- [19:51]
Geo Rutherford
I just visited Lake Tahoe a couple weeks ago. I went on a Spooky Lakes road trip. So Lake Tahoe is interesting to me. Some of the basic facts about Lake Tahoe is it's one of the oldest lakes in the United States. It's like over 2 million years old, and it's the second deepest lake in the United States. So it's deeper than Lake Superior, but it's a little less deep than Lake Crater Lake, which is in Washington.
- [20:12]
Alie Ward
Lake Superior, 1333ft, or 406 meters at its deepest point. Lake Tahoe 1645ft, or 500 meters. And Crater Lake in Oregon is over 1900ft deep, or nearly 600 meters, which is about as deep as the tallest radio towers that you might see. Or like two Eiffel Towers stacked on top of each other deep. And we're going to chat about Russia's Lake Baikal in a bit. But it's over 5000ft deep, or over 1600 meters, which is about twice as tall as the tallest building in the world, which is the 163 story Burj Khalifa in Dubai. But back to Lake Tahoe, which straddles the lines of Northern California and Nevada near Reno.
- [21:01]
Geo Rutherford
And so it's one of the deepest lakes in. And what's interesting about it is that it has kind of a similar history to Lake Superior. And these cold freshwater lakes which don't give up their dead people who die in a cold freshwater lake and sink to the bottom, they are potentially never going to be seen again. But their bodies are preserved in perpetuity.
- [21:25]
Alie Ward
Well, almost.
- [21:27]
Geo Rutherford
There is a diver there who disappeared in the early 2000s or like, maybe the late 1990s, and his body reappeared 20 years later. Somebody discovered his body, and it was almost in perfect condition. It was still the way it was 20 years ago. So there's something that happens at the bottom of these cold freshwater lakes. It's called saponification, where the cold freshwater minerals in the water interact with human skin, and there's a chemical reaction called sponification, which creates a substance called adipocere, which is like a waxy substance. And so a human body in a cold freshwater lake essentially becomes just a giant bar of soap. And that crust of soap on your body just keeps you preserved, and you just stay kind of intact, which is really spooky. Lake Tahoe is, like, one of those lakes that'll hold on to you forever. And divers have disappeared there. There's been shipwrecks there which we still have not discovered. We don't know where they are. And Lake Tahoe can have a really crazy shift of weather where there can be, like, a huge storm on Lake Tahoe, which can take down ships and take down people. And so, yeah, Lake Tahoe is definitely qualifies as a spooky lake. Unfortunately, it is a little too beautiful. When you're there in person, you're like, wow. And I went swimming there. It's just so beautiful.
- [22:43]
Co-host/Interviewer
But then I guess you could think of it as. As a temptress in that way, perhaps. Yeah, like a siren of the land, if you wanted to think about it that way. That's the beautiful thing about lakes is anyone can whisper. You don't know what's down there. When you're looking at a lake and you got yourself a spooky lake. Stinky lakes. Let's talk about the Salton Sea.
- [23:02]
Geo Rutherford
Ooh. I also visited the Salton Sea. That was actually the one I was the most excited about because I knew. I knew it would be spooky. And it lived up. It was very spooky. And it was so hot the day that we went there in August. I don't know what we were thinking, but it added somehow to the spookiness. Like the sun just like this, like, beating down. And I was so sweaty and exhausted even thinking about it. I'm getting hot.
- [23:28]
Co-host/Interviewer
Has the Salton Sea been the stinkiest lake you've ever been to?
- [23:31]
Geo Rutherford
Ooh, the Salton Sea smells like dead fish and like rot. It smells like mud. It smells it just smells terrible. And, like, in the heat, it feels like the heat is just, like, cooking it, making it, like, extra stinky. I love the Salton Sea. It's so weird. Everybody should go there.
- [23:47]
Alie Ward
So the Salton Sea is the result of a big water. Oopsie. When in 1905, a deluge from a spring flood breached these canal walls and flooded a dry lake bed for years, turning it into a big wet lake bed. And as the waters evaporated over time, got saltier and saltier. But in its heydays, like in the 1950s and 60s, the Salton Sea, just a few hours from Hollywood, was this bustling getaway with vacation homes and resorts and shops and nightclubs along this strip called Bombay beach, which is where Frank Sinatra would croon. And decades later, the water evaporated along with the tourism and the money, leaving behind skeletons of a lot of fish on the lake bed and a bunch of rusted out trailers where there once were resorts.
- [24:37]
Co-host/Interviewer
And just it's like rise and fall as a recreation area for, like, Angelenos needing an escape. And it is truly one of the worst places I have ever been. I remember my mom. My mom had the stomach flu when we went there once. Poor woman, fancy Nancy in the back of the van, already retching. And then we roll up to the Salton Sea for a family reunion. She did not deserve that. She didn't deserve it. Not at all.
- [25:01]
Geo Rutherford
Salton Sea is such an anomaly. You know, first of all, why they call it a sea? It was like the early 1900s. You ought to know that. And it wouldn't have even been salty right away. Like, it would have been a freshwater lake for years before the salt kind of built up because of the evaporation. Because it evaporates so much, I think that it's hard to appreciate how huge the Salton Sea is. I flew over it on my way home, which was so satisfying because it's just enormous. And when you're there, because it's so flat, it's in this Imperial Valley. You can't see. You can't see how far it goes. It like, truly, it's one of the biggest bodies of water in the United States. So we created it by diverting the Colorado river, where then it flowed into the Imperial Valley for, I think it was like four years. It was like years of water flowing into the Imperial Valley. But then that eventually got cut off, and now it's just this body of water that's, like, slowly evaporating and disappearing, disappearing. So there's all these, like, dried out and completely abandoned kind of beach towns along the edge. But the bad thing about that and the reason that the salt in the sea, Great Salt Lake, are spooky in their death is because when they die and become these dry salt pans, it's not going to be like Lake Manley, which is this perfectly preserved, like, salty crust. Instead, it's a salty crust with toxins and arsenic and heavy metals and a lot of nitrate and things that we pump into our farmlands ends up in the Salton Sea and then ends up in that dry basin. And that ends up picking up in the wind and then getting into everybody's lungs. And so people are breathing in these, like, agricultural toxins. And that's how you get these huge cancer rates that spike in the Salton Sea, the Great Salt Lake, the Aral Sea, which is out in Kazakhstan, they're like years ahead of what we're seeing happen at the Salton Sea because the RLC was almost completely drained for agricultural purposes. And now it's just this, like, toxic wasteland of dust. And while we were there at the Salton Sea, we saw so many dust devils because it's like this dry basin. And so there's all these giant dust devils that are, like, flying around. And I was sitting there thinking, man, I am here, like, just like all these people who live here, just kind of breathing in this, like, fine, silty dust that's a result of the drying of the Salton Sea. So that's kind of what makes it spooky to me.
- [27:30]
Alie Ward
And it's not just the Salton sea. In the 2024 paper, harmful dust from drying Lakes. Preserving Great Salt Lake water levels decreases ambient dust and racial disparities in population exposure. It lays it all out for Utah, stating that the drying of lakes with no outlets, called terminal lakes or inland seas, is a major ecological catastrophe of the 21st century. And these lake beds are drying in part due to decreased inflows of water because of climate change and also due to increasing human demands for water. And the study found that two major benefits of stabilizing those water levels for the Great Salt Lake would be to decrease that airborne dust and reduce racial disparities in population exposures to dust. So halting the lake from drying up would protect human and ecological health while promoting environmental justice. And for more on environmental justice, we have a critical ecology episode, which we're going to link in the show notes. But on other continents, the 2025 paper Toxic Dust Emission from Drought Exposed Lake, A New air Pollution threat from dried lakes. Researchers in China found that a large number of lakes worldwide are shrinking rapidly due to climate change and human activities. And pollutants accumulated in these lakebed sediments are released into the atmosphere as dust aerosols. The study found that Poyang Lake and Dongting Lake, the largest lakes in East China, experienced these record breaking droughts with up to 99% of the areas exposed to air. And the team found that the dust generated from the lake beds exceeded the regional thresholds of carcinogenic risk and may get worse as climate change progresses. So toxic water evaporates. It leaves the toxins to become toxic dust in the wind, hastening our own return to being dust in the wind.
- [29:23]
Co-host/Interviewer
I mean, dust devils do seem like ghosts. And then you also have particulate matter that could one day slowly, painfully kill you. So I think that that is everything that is scary. And it's also funny to be like, where is everyone who needs it? You know what I mean? Also, fish particles in there.
- [29:40]
Geo Rutherford
So many dead fish.
- [29:42]
Co-host/Interviewer
So many dead fish.
- [29:43]
Geo Rutherford
Yeah. Salty. And then a lack of oxygen because it doesn't have any kind of introduction of like fresh water or anything.
- [29:50]
Co-host/Interviewer
Just a stink puddle is what that is. Can I ask you some questions from people who are excited that you're coming on? Oh, yeah, wonderful.
- [29:58]
Alie Ward
Okay, cool. Do you think I would just do the Salton Sea dirty like that? Just leave that? Of course not. So the Salton Sea was once called Lake Coahia, after the indigenous folks from the area who lived off the aquatic aquatic mollusks and the fish and the plants on the lake. And as it stands, the Salton Sea is home to some stocked fish like tilapia and something called a gulf croaker. But scientists report that 97% of the fish are gone due to algal blooms from fertilizer runoff and just general toxic chemicals and rising salinity. One native species though, can deal with the salinity and pollution of the Salton Sea, and that is the desert pupfish, which is the crust punk of ichthyology. Also, over 400 bird species hang out or use the area as kind of a migration truck stop. But because we have shit talked, this disaster made human induced ecological nightmare will be donating to the Salton Sea Action Committee, which is committed to the rehabilitation of the Salton Sea for the benefit and health of the environment, economy and people of Southern California. And in GEO's honor, we're also donating to the alliance for the Great Lakes, which is a nonpartisan nonprofit working across the region to protect their most precious Resource the fresh, clean and natural waters of the Great Lakes. So you can find out more about them@greatlakes.org and thank you to sponsors of Ologies for making those donations possible. This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. So is my website. So is my life. I've said this before. I'll say it again. I had a Squarespace website right before this podcast launched. I was like, okay, I'm putting this baby out. I don't have a website. Boom. I made it literally in a night. So when someone comes to me asking about websites, I'm like, go to Squarespace. They give you everything you need to offer services and get paid. You can showcase consultations, you can showcase events to help build and attract your clients to grow your business. You can also get paid faster. They have professional invoices and and easy online payments and easy to design. They have great design tools. Anyone can build a bespoke online presence that fits their brand or business. I love their templates. I love their drag and drop. It literally is easier than using social media. I've had a Squarespace website longer than most marriages last. So check out squarespace.com ologies for a free trial.
- [32:22]
Co-host/Interviewer
And then when you're ready to launch.
- [32:23]
Alie Ward
You can use the offer code ologies to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Highly encouraged. Do it. Build a website. Okay. Holidays are coming. Maybe you want your home a little cozier. Maybe you have in laws visiting. I don't know your life. But you can shop holiday decor for every room in the house. And you could do it with Wayfair. Whether it's wreaths or trees or inflatables for the front yard. Did you know that Wayfair sells that? They're like a one stop shop. You can refresh your guest room with linens or throw pillows. Maybe your guest room is an inflatable mattress in a large closet. Get some nice pillows in there. You can make holiday hosting easier and better with some quality cookware. They also have free and easy delivery, even on the big stuff. I got a yard umbrella from Wayfair. Boom. It's on my doorstep. So no more huge delivery fees on furniture and holiday decor and stuff. What if you got a pink Christmas tree this year? Treat yourself to some snowflake lights. Brighten up this winter. And while you're at it, get some ornament storage instead of that flappy cardboard box that's falling apart. They also have holiday gift wrap storage. Love that. I love that. For me, so get organized, refreshed and ready for the holidays. For way less, head to Wayfair.com right now to shop all things home. That's W-A-F-A-I-R.com Wayfair Every style, every home. Listen, we've all wanted to run into an open field and scream help at the sky. But what if you realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday and that's not appropriate? How can you find amazing candidates fast? Easy. Just use Indeed. Spare your vocal cords. Indeed has sponsored Jobs. Your post jumps to the top of the page for your relevant candidates so you can stand out. You can reach the people you want faster and the people who want your job faster. There are no monthly subscriptions. There's no long term contracts. You only pay for results. So when it comes to hiring, Indeed is all you need. Join the 3.5 million employers worldwide that use Indeed to hire great talent fast. So there's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed and listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit. To get your jobs more visibility at indeed.comologies just go to indeed.comslologies right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. That's indeed.comologies terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need. Oh I love fall. Oh I love winter. Oh I love squash and seasonal vegetables. And oh, I don't like cooking from scratch if I'm being honest. Home Chef Hello. Home Chef is rated number one by users of other meal kits for quality, convenience, value, taste and recipe ease. So whatever kind of day it is, Home Chef has you covered. They have classic recipes, fresh ingredients, 30 minute meals. They even have quick microwave options. They have oven ready trays. Listen, I'm not a person that likes to measure and this is why Home Chef helps. The meals come to you. They're on your doorstep, they're pre portioned, there is an easy recipe card that you follow and then you're like look at this, I know how to cook and new dish. I also love that you can choose from a bunch of different types of meals. Let's say that you want to try eating vegetarian for a while or you need a meal kit that's family friendly. You got options dude. So for a limited time, Home Chef is offering my listeners 50 off and free shipping for your first box plus free dessert for life. So go to homechef.com Ologies that's homechef.com OlogieS for 50 off your first box and free dessert for life life homechef.com OlogIEs must be an active subscriber to receive free dessert. Ologies is brought to you by Strawberry Me. If your career were a plant, how's it doing? Is it neglected? Is it parched? Is it over watered? What's going on? I know you want to keep that alive and career growth is challenging. Inertia is real, but nothing changes unless you change it. I love career coaching. It has absolutely changed my life. I wouldn't have have started Ologies if it weren't for career coaching and Strawberry Me. Career coaching can help you get out of the career void. Now Strawberry Me, they match you with a certified career coach, a real human. They are not an AI with questionable motives. And your career coach listens. They help identify what box you have and then they help you create a plan. And you can learn how to make small steps for a big change over time. And they hold you accountable so you don't just like, think about the thing you do. The thing. I met with a Strawberry Me coach and instantly loved her. It's never a bad time to brush up on it. I just started Strawberry Me to get over some fears of continuing to expand. So if you're waiting for the right moment to level up, this is it. Go to Strawberry Me Ologies and claim your $50 credit. That's strawberry Me Ologies. You got this. Okay, let's slip below the surface into the fertile water of your Patreon questions, which collectively, I checked, contained 106 exclamation points. You love Geo. We love Geo.
- [37:29]
Co-host/Interviewer
Okay, we have questions from listeners. Eleanor Wall wants to know.
- [37:33]
Geo Rutherford
Hello, Allie and Geo. I have exactly two words.
- [37:37]
Alie Ward
Brine pools.
- [37:39]
Co-host/Interviewer
What can you tell us about brine pools, AKA underwater lakes? What is a brine pool?
- [37:44]
Geo Rutherford
Oh, do you. Have you seen a video of them before, Allie?
- [37:47]
Alie Ward
I have.
- [37:48]
Co-host/Interviewer
I'm unaware.
- [37:49]
Geo Rutherford
Okay, Google it while we're. While I tell you about it. Because brine pools are extra spooky.
- [37:54]
Alie Ward
They look kind of like craters on the sea floor, but rimmed with this ridge of white, kind of like a margarita glass of ghastliness.
- [38:03]
Geo Rutherford
We find a lot of them in the Gulf of Mexico because the Gulf of Mexico has this ancient salt deposit beneath the surface. And what happens is that salt kind of percolates up through what's called salt tectonics, which is kind of cool. You have this salt kind of come up from the crust and it mixes with the water and it becomes brine. Which is heavier than the surrounding ocean, which is already salty. So you have this extremely salty pool at the bottom of the ocean which exists there because it's heavier. It's also anoxic, which means it has no oxygen in it. And so if any creatures which are dependent on the dissolved oxygen in the ocean water drift into one of these brine pools, they end up suffocating. It kind of ends up looking like they're getting shocked. Like there's this famous video of an eel that's like convulsing in a brine pool and it's because it doesn't have any oxygen in that pool and it's starting to like suffocate essentially. And so you have all these creatures that go, like crabs and lobsters and all these things that go into these brine pools and then never come out again. And they're kind of preserved, they're pickled in these brine pools. And it's kind of fascinating. So, yeah, I love brine pools.
- [39:15]
Alie Ward
So these brine pools, which can be up to five times as salty as the water around them, can happen under polar ice via tectonic forces, or According to the 2017 paper study of Conrad and Siobhan Deep Brine's Red Sea using bathymetric parasound and seismic surveys, the brine pools can be formed from subsurface magmatic activity. But more importantly, I need you to know that a brine pool is also called a goo lagoon.
- [39:41]
Geo Rutherford
Goo lagoon. A stinky mud puddle for you and me.
- [39:45]
Alie Ward
Or in the words of one Discovery article, a Jacuzzi of despair. Geo says that some brine pools are really small, like itty bitty ponds, while others are enormous, like over a mile wide. But she loves brine pools. Loves them.
- [40:00]
Co-host/Interviewer
I didn't even know they existed. Caitlyn Sexton. I just want to let you know that Caitlyn said, this is the best day of my life.
- [40:08]
Geo Rutherford
Hi, Caitlin.
- [40:10]
Co-host/Interviewer
Are there any other spooky bodies of water Gio would like to spread the word about that do not fall under spooky lakes. And Katie Hammond said, I remember Gio covering a spooky river stream. Audrey asked about spooky rivers.
- [40:21]
Alie Ward
Someone else asked Bjorn Fredberg. I got you. I do not got how to pronounce. Shanae tempiska. Tempiska.
- [40:29]
Geo Rutherford
Shanae tempiska.
- [40:31]
Co-host/Interviewer
Thank you. About the boiling river. But yeah, so it's not just lakes that are spooky. At what point do you decide this fountain that has claimed some lives? Let's educate people about it, number one, because that is really good to know. And also, like, lake enough, you know.
- [40:48]
Geo Rutherford
I think it's just this idea that water can kill you in, like, any form, whether it is something that is in a contained body of water or if it's one of these freak rainstorms. Like, one topic I did last year, which was like, one of my favorite topics ever, which was just about subways that flood because there's like these inundations of water and then where does the water go? It goes into the subway systems.
- [41:14]
Narrator/Additional Voice
Increasingly intense bursts of rain in increasingly brief periods of time has resulted in subway systems from around the world becoming the receptacles of floodwater. As extreme weather events become more frequent, we'll see more subway systems experience the same fate. These transitory tunnels now filled with rushing, murky water echo the sound of the bustling city above.
- [41:39]
Geo Rutherford
The subway systems end up like, as literal cave diving scenarios. But I do love rivers. And actually I'm writing and I already wrote and I'm illustrating spooky rivers. So I have like, spooky lakes, and then I'm doing spooky rivers right now. And then I eventually will do spooky seas again.
- [41:56]
Alie Ward
Gia's book, Spooky Lakes, absolutely beautifully illustrated. Like, every page is a painting. The info is fascinating. You can go to spookylakes.com to see her book or the coloring book, Merch. I love it. I find it so inspiring. Boy howdy, hot dog.
- [42:11]
Geo Rutherford
Speaking of hot, I visited the Boiling river in Peru in June. I like, just went to the Boiling river with Andres Russo, who is like the scientist who brought the Boiling river to international attention. But the native people knew about it for a very long time. But it's an unusual river because it's a river that truly boils, where it's like over 200 degrees Fahrenheit. And if you fall in, people have fallen in, you might not survive because you essentially get like a crazy third degree burn over your whole body. And it's an interesting place because unlike in Yellowstone, which is also a spooky lake topic, where the water is full of heavy metals and toxins and stuff like that from coming up from a volcanic source. This Boiling river in Peru is clean, which is really weird. And scientists don't even really 100% understand why that's happening. Is it because the rock is acting as like a filter? Is it like what is happening there that's making the water boil and be really clean? And so we, in the morning we would go down to the river with our teacups and our, our tea bags and you just go and you scoop a cup of water from the river and then you have tea in the morning. So it's like kind of an incredible place to visit because it's like you can't do that anywhere else. Like, do not do that anywhere else in the world. But you can do it at the Boiling River.
- [43:30]
Co-host/Interviewer
I was going to say giardia be damned. It's because it just kills microbes that might be not great for you.
- [43:38]
Geo Rutherford
Yeah. So definitely think that rivers are spooky and deserve a lot of like, love and attention because they, but they just don't. I think that like, even after writing this book and I'm currently illustrating it, rivers are more spooky because of like rapids and because of flooding and because of the way that civilizations build themselves around rivers and then rivers deceive them. Like rivers turn around and like destroy things. And that's kind of what's more spooky about rivers is like, they're just, they're killers, you know, and so unlike lakes where like lakes are just kind of chilling there and they're not really doing anything, but they got, they got secrets at the bottom. So it's like a different type of spooky.
- [44:19]
Co-host/Interviewer
Yeah, it seems active versus passive almost in a, in a certain way. It's like you, you fell into it, that's your problem. But a river will take you by the hand and, and try to kill you. What about different color lakes? Clouds, bugs and shrooms. Wanted to know about Pink Lake in Australia. What's up with that?
- [44:34]
Alie Ward
Matt Herschel also asked about the Western Australia salty lake called Lake Hillier. And I googled it. It looks like if Barbie had a waterfront vacation home or like maybe a sea of Pepto Bismol in the best way. It's eerie. More like Pepto abysmal. And Felipe Jimenez asked, hi Ali. In northern Chile's Atacama Desert, there are high altitude lakes like Laguna Roja and Laguna Verde that are strikingly colored, deep red, turquoise, even milky white. Many of these lakes are also considered sacred or dangerous by local communities. Felipe, great question. A lot of you asked rainbow lakes how.
- [45:13]
Co-host/Interviewer
Sarah Manns also asked if there are spooky lakes in Australia and mentioned a blue lake in Mount Gambier. Hot lagoon. So yeah, things that are different colors. What's up with that?
- [45:23]
Geo Rutherford
There's actually, I feel like there's lakes that have come in like almost every color of the rainbow. There's actually a set of lakes in Indonesia that Look like a mood ring. They've like changed into all these different colors.
- [45:34]
Alie Ward
And according to one article, the volcano whose lake waters change color, these three different lakes of varying hues are right next door to each other. They're divided by like a thin fence of rock, kind of like a septum in the volcano of your nose.
- [45:50]
Geo Rutherford
So any lake that is connected to a volcano has the potential of being like weird wacky colors. So like Kauai, gentlemen, is like neon blue. And you get these lakes, like any lake that has these different types of minerals coming up. It could be black, it could be red, it could be orange, it could be like any of those weird colors. As a result, Lake Hillier, though, is a little different. I have docked about Lake Hillier. I've talked about pink lakes in general because there's a lot of pink lakes on earth. There's a lot of amazing pink lakes on earth, including like Lake Retba in Senegal. You know, even our great salt lake here in the United States is often a pink lake. And that's because of the salt content. So these pink lakes are usually salty. And as a result of the salt, you end up with this pink algae that grows. And the pink algae is also sustains a population of brine shrimp, which are also pink. And the brine shrimp plus the pink algae, you end up with these like this little community of pink things that live together. This is also how flamingos turn pink, because flamingos go to pink lakes also like natron in Tanzania, and they eat the brine shrimp and as a result they turn pink. And so like all of these things are connected to the pink algae, which kind of sustains this, this little pink population on these bodies of water.
- [47:10]
Alie Ward
Okay, but Lake Hillier, the Pepto bismolsi is fading. And there was a 2022 study titled Microbiome and metagenomic analysis of Lake Hillier, Australia reveals pigment rich poly extremophiles and wide ranging metabolic adaptations. This is in the journal Environmental Biome. And it says that our data indicate that the microbiome in Lake Hillier is composed of multiple pigment producer microbes, many of which are cataloged as poly extremophiles. But a little good news, bad news. According to a 2025 article, Western Australia's Lake Hillier loses iconic pink color. But there is strong hope for its recovery. There was a massive offshore rainfall event in 2022 which diluted the salt levels. But scientists say that the pink color will eventually be restored when the water evaporates and the water level drops. Also, I was researching this aside. I was listening to music and the song Moon Begins by the band Florist came on. And the lyrics, as I'm researching this aside, were death will come, then a cloud of love. There's no land like the water's edge. Spooky. But yes, the critters and minerals in the pink lake will return like a cloud of love. Full of poly extremophiles, many of which you patrons asked about, including Teresa Gleason, Kathleen Bug in a rug, Chuck Merriam, Clarice Davinoff Wagner, Reece Perini, Jesse Crawford, Earl of Gramalkin, and one very rare, nearly extinct species living in weird places. It looks like a cobalt blue goldfish. And we mentioned them earlier in this episode and in the speleology episode about caves, in Ray's words. Can we please talk about pupfish and why they're the coolest fish?
- [48:52]
Geo Rutherford
Yes. That's like the Devil's Hole. There's a couple different pupfish which are unique to these different pools of water in that desert area in the American Southwest. So there's. There's the pupfish and Devil's Hole, which I think are the most famous pupfish because we've put millions of dollars into, like, researching and studying these pupfish in this hole in the middle of the desert. And that makes some people mad. Some people are like, why are we putting millions of dollars into these pupfish? They're the only ones of their species. I think that at one point there was like less than 20 of them alive. And they're. The funny thing about Devil's Hole is that the pupfish are interesting. But Devil's Hole actually has this enormous lake of water beneath it that the pupfish. The pupfish are living at, like, the top little speck of water, like, near the surface where the sun is hitting. But actually, that place, that hole has, like, killed people. Like, people have dived down there and died as a result. So these pupfish are sharing that hole with the dead of the past, which we have never retrieved. So I do love pupfish. I think extremophiles are really interesting. A lot of extremophiles in these salty, acidic bodies of water from volcanic locations. And then one of my favorite extremophiles are the extremophiles that they study at Rio Tinto, which is the river inside Spain, which is red and orange. Like, if you Google it, it's like one of the craziest looking rivers in the world. And it's because they have mined copper there for, like, 2,000 years. And all of that mining runoff, all of that like toxic runoff has turned this river like neon orange and neon red. And NASA has actually gone there to take samples to study extremophiles because it's like one of the strangest unique environments on earth that's kind of a human byproduct. So there's tons of those that I think are just so fascinating.
- [50:40]
Alie Ward
Now some of your questions, including Kelly Lee's, Aubrey Nelson's, Amanda Lask, Rowan Tree, Rachel Gentile, Katie Hammond, Aubrey Nelson, JMO and Bobby Baldochi, started with um, yes, hello. And other big fans such as Jen A, Sally Warren, RJ Taylor and Gio Sassy wanted to know, have you seen.
- [50:58]
Co-host/Interviewer
Any in person that really dazzled you?
- [51:01]
Geo Rutherford
Yeah, I mean, I think that a lot of the ones that I'm talking about are really hard to get to. Like, it is hard to get to like Natron and Tanzania. I think a good example that would be easy to get to, but I have not been myself is Yellowstone. Yellowstone is like a hotbed for strange wet environments which are a result of this volcanic activity.
- [51:19]
Co-host/Interviewer
I saw your video about the geyser that has changed colors over the years because there's garbage in it and there's so many pennies that they tried to.
- [51:28]
Geo Rutherford
Blow out of there. That was so funny because like that wasn't even one of my official spooky lake videos. But I like thought the topic was really interesting. So I just made it that night, like right after making my spooky like video on the Yellowstone. I made that video like it's a throwaway video and it was more popular than like the rest of the videos from that month.
- [51:45]
Narrator/Additional Voice
But as you can see, the color palette really does not sync up. And that's because it used to be blue. Like the morning glory flower. People threw so much debris and garbage into the pool that it actually changed the chemistry of the water.
- [51:58]
Geo Rutherford
But yeah, that was a geyser which we threw so much trash into that we actually like changed the temperature of the water and that changed the color of it. The thermophiles, which are like hot loving extremophiles, like shifted and changed. And so that's a fascinating one as well.
- [52:17]
Co-host/Interviewer
I had no idea. I was watching that and just thinking like, no, so many, like $86 in pennies.
- [52:22]
Alie Ward
Like, come on, guys.
- [52:25]
Geo Rutherford
Yeah.
- [52:26]
Co-host/Interviewer
Andrew McVeigh, Curtis Dog and Magazaroni wanted to know about Crater Lake in southern Oregon. Andrew says only filled with rain and SN level drops over the summer.
- [52:35]
Alie Ward
But there's no clear outlet that scientists have found.
- [52:37]
Geo Rutherford
Huh.
- [52:38]
Co-host/Interviewer
Curtis Dog wants to know about the ghost log floating around Crater Lake.
- [52:42]
Alie Ward
Have you heard of that?
- [52:43]
Geo Rutherford
Yeah. Old man of the Crater Lake. So old man of the lake is an old hemlock stump which is like a 400 year old tree that has been in the lake for as long as we have record. Like, we have a picture of this stump from like the 1800s, been around for that long. It's a deadhead stump which is not in and itself unique. Deadhead stumps happen a lot where the tree itself becomes waterlogged, but then like the top half of it kind of doesn't get waterlogged and remains dry. And it kind of becomes like a cork where it's bobbing in the water, but underneath the water, like, you see the top half of this stump, it's huge. It's huge, by the way. It's like you could stand on it and then there's like, I think there's 30, 40ft of beneath the surface of this log. But if it's a calm day on the Crater Lake, then you can see that entire log underneath the surface. It freaks people out. People love it. But there is a conspiracy theory about the old man of the lake, which is that if you tie him up, like, scientists apparently wanted to like, study and get him out of the way. Like, we got to keep the old man out of here. Like, let's tie him up. So he tied him up and there was this crazy storm on Crater Lake that, like, didn't stop until they released the old man. People, like, think the old man kind of is almost like a spirit that kind of is present at Crater Lake.
- [54:02]
Alie Ward
So I looked at pictures. It looks like if a giant cigar with a bitten end were bobbing in a glass of blue liqueur. And the exposed tip of this big hemlock behemoth is weathered and white and jagged. It looks like a stump surrounded in a placid sea. But it moves around sometimes up to three, three miles a day, but always vertically. And you can see it for yourself if you have a time machine because it looks like the trail to this gorgeous lake, which was formed by a volcano surrounded by steep rocky cliffs, will be closed from this fall until 2029. So set your time machines to last year or 2029 to see the old man yourself.
- [54:43]
Geo Rutherford
You can take the boat and the boat, if you're lucky on that boat ride with National Park Service, it'll take you to past the old man and you can go say hi to him.
- [54:53]
Co-host/Interviewer
I Want to go say hi to him?
- [54:54]
Geo Rutherford
Yeah, it's really fun.
- [54:56]
Alie Ward
So what's next? Lake Bacal?
- [55:00]
Geo Rutherford
Oh, yeah. Actually, I was gonna say Ali, if we didn't talk about Lake Baikal, I was gonna bring her up.
- [55:04]
Co-host/Interviewer
Okay, good, good, good, good, good.
- [55:06]
Geo Rutherford
That's how important it is. We, like, we always have to talk about, like, Bike Hall. It always needs to come up. Everybody needs to know about, like, bi call, like the world needs to know about, like, Baikal. And if they don't, then they gotta listen to this podcast. Lake Baikal is the weirdest lake in the world. It's the weirdest. It's the oldest lake in the world.
- [55:21]
Co-host/Interviewer
How do we know?
- [55:22]
Geo Rutherford
We can test rock. And like, we know because it's one of these tectonic lakes. So it's actually similar to Lake Tahoe in that it's like more. It's not a lake created from glaciers. It's a lake where the Earth is like, pulling apart. Same with the Dead Sea. The Dead Sea is really old and it's really deep. The Dead sea is like 900ft deep. It's crazy. And these are places where the Earth is like, pulling apart or there's like a technical tectonic rift of some kind. Like Lake Titicaca in Bolivia and Peru. Same thing where it's like on this rift valley. So we know that Lake Baikal is the oldest lake in the world. It's 25 million years old. Just so you know. That's got nothing on the oldest river in the world, which is in Australia, which is the Finke river, which is 400 million years old.
- [56:03]
Alie Ward
A lot of you had Baikal on the brains, like Adsi, urbanologist Eleanor Wall, Clayel Moorman, Tommy McElrath and Robin Kuhn, who asked, can you talk about Lake Baikal? It's the first spooky lake that came to mind, what with the 5,000 foot depth and the super clear fresh water and the seals and then in Entarobang.
- [56:21]
Geo Rutherford
Anyway, Lake Baikal, though, is the oldest lake in the world and it's also the deepest lake. So it's over a mile deep. So it's 5,387ft deep. And feel free to fact check me on that because I know it's right. That's correct. It is the deepest lake. And just for comparison, so we were just talking about Crater Lake. Crater Lake is something like 1900ft deep. So it's like pretty deep, but it's not over a mile deep. So 5,387ft deep is really Deep. And because of that, you know, I told you that rivers usually kill lakes because they bring sediment in. So there's over 300 rivers that are carrying sediment into Lake Baikal. But because it's a rift lake where the rift is like being pulled apart on the Baikal rift zone, all of that sediment is just disappearing into the rift underneath the surface. So even though it's over a mile deep, it's even deeper than that if you go to like the bottom of the rift where all that sediment has been building up. So it's like over 20,000ft underneath the surface where that sediment has been building up. So Baikal is lucky. We're really lucky because it's in Russia, it's in Siberia, it's in the middle of nowhere. It's actually hard to get to. And we're lucky because, because it has a very unique ecosystem where 80% of the species that live in Lake Baikal are endemic to Lake Baikal. So they can only be found at Lake Baikal. We're talking about the Baikal amphipod, which is like this weird crustacean. We're talking about the golem yunka fish, which is one of these deep sea fish, but it's not a sea fish, it's a lake fish. It's like lives at the very bottom of Lake Baikal underneath all that enormous pressure we have. The most famous, I think is the Baikal nerpa, which is a seal, but like their ancestors, like we can still connect them to their Arctic ancestors not at Lake Baikal. These seals, we have no idea how they got there. They've been there for some 2 million years. They've evolved to live at Lake Baikal and luckily their population is doing well. I think that that's something that we can't really say about a lot of things in the world right now. But luckily the Baikal Nerpa is doing pretty well.
- [58:29]
Co-host/Interviewer
The Baikal nerpa.
- [58:31]
Geo Rutherford
You know, isn't this so cute? Actually, look, I just did a. I did an enamel pin this year for the Baikal Nurpa. Look how cute it is.
- [58:41]
Alie Ward
A sweet little cartoon seal with whiskers and a smile like a little bright eyed infant. How did these get so far inland? I pictured them just hopping along on their guts to get there. Or maybe they boarded a smoky Greyhound bus decades ago. But our pinnipedology expert on seals, Dr. Louis Huxtadt, told me that at some point there was a channel that connected Lake Baikal to the sea and it allowed these little Nerpa seals to Kind of float there like a log flume ride.
- [59:08]
Geo Rutherford
That's like the thing that I think people are always really excited about. They're like, why can't we have a seal in the Great Lakes? And it's like, well, give the Great Lakes another couple million years and then maybe. Yeah. But unlike the Great Lakes are more likely to fill in or to drain because they're not on a rift where it's, like, continually opening. So, yeah, we love Lake Baikal on spooky lake month, even though, unlike Lake Superior, which has this history of ships which makes it. That's like, what gives it a lot of oomph, a lot of, like, history and spooky power. Like, Baikal doesn't have that type of history as much because people were not using it as transit. They did build a train across it in the middle of the winter, though, in 1904. So it's still. It's. It still has a little bit of a morbid history on that front. We're like giant. You know, pieces of this train would crack and go through the ice.
- [59:57]
Alie Ward
Also, this is apparently what it sounds like, just if you skate over the ice in Lake Bacal and it cracks. Terrifying. Absolutely. And during the war between Japan and Russia in 1904, a Russian train carrying soldiers crashed through the ice of the lake. And reports via telegraph said that there were an unknown number of casualties as troops jumped out of windows trying to swim through the icy waters to safety. Shiver me timbers.
- [60:32]
Geo Rutherford
But, yeah, that's a whole nother story. So, yeah, we love Lake Baikal. It's very spooky.
- [60:36]
Co-host/Interviewer
Well, you did mention Great Lakes. Catherine Crawford. Molly. Danny Kirby. Clouds, bugs and Shrooms. Wanted to know clouds asked, why are there so many shipwrecks in the Great Lakes, especially Superior in Michigan? I'm a backpacking guide out here, and I always wonder why almost every trip involves learning about a new shipwreck.
- [60:54]
Geo Rutherford
So the Great Lakes have been a shipping behemoth for over a century. We built the Welland Canal, which connects Lake Ontario and Lake Erie. And that kind of, like, let all these ships in from around the world. So there's some 10,000 shipwrecks in the Great Lakes. But Lake Superior, I think, has the deadliest reputation because this is kind of an interesting science reason. So Lake Superior gets this November gale because the water is warm leading into November, and you get a storm system that kind of comes across the United States, and it picks up speed with that hot water kind of releasing, like, evaporating into and making the storm even More insane. So Lake Superior gets like the craziest storms of the bunch of them. And there's like up to 30 foot waves on the lake. And unlike in the ocean where you'd have a giant wave, but it's like a giant wave that like comes in these like wide spread apart sets. But the Great Lakes waves are different because they're only created from wind, not from any tide. And so as a result, the waves are super close together. So they're really tight. And so you just can be like absolutely buffeted by these waves in Lake Superior during a storm. And then your ship just can't handle it. Like, it can handle it in the ocean, it can't handle it here in the Great Lakes. So it's just a different type of shipping experience. And the water can freeze in the ocean. Like, you're not going to get frozen ice on the boat because of the salt. Great Lakes, your boat is completely covered in icicles. It could be just a giant icicle as a result. And so that's kind of what makes Lake Superior just so different and special because it's so cold and people are shipping there like all the way into the winter. And like I told you guys about, you know, you get she never gives up her dead. So people are like down at the bottom.
- [62:42]
Alie Ward
And again, if you like things at the bottom of lakes or the sea, you will love our maritime Archeology episode with Chanel Zafiropoulos. We chatted about the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. And I'd just like to include a clip from that Maritime Archaeology episode with Chanel to give us some backstory here. We got a lot of questions about my dad's favorite song. Megan Stingle, Gwen Zimmer, Vanessa Fry Baloney Shoes, and Emily Stanislauski. And also, I'm gonna guess, my dad, Mr. Larry Ward. Want to know, does everyone ask you about the Edmund Fitzgerald after finding that you study shipwrecks?
- [63:17]
Co-host/Interviewer
Because the song is already stuck in my head. Gwen wants to know, is it your favorite song?
- [63:23]
Alie Ward
When suppertime came, the old cook came on deck saying, fellas, it's too rough to feed you. At 7pm a man hatchway caved in. He said, fellas, it's been good to know you.
- [63:41]
Co-host/Interviewer
So yes is how many times have you heard it?
- [63:45]
Guest or Additional Commentator
Many times. I love Gordon Lightfoot. I think it's a great example of how broad maritime culture is because, like, music is a huge part of it. When you look at sea shanties and whatnot, it's basically a sea shanty. It's Like a love song to a ship.
- [64:01]
Alie Ward
So Gordon Lightfoot is a Canadian folk song hero, and he wrote this in 1975 after seeing just a little blurb in the back of a Newsweek magazine about the Edmund Fitzgerald, which sunk in a November storm. And Lightfoot recalled that they spelled Edmund wrong in the article. And he was just so sad that 29 lives, all crew members were lost, could amount to just a little afterthought in the news. So he wrote that ditty the next week, and the world has remembered her ever since. And the ship's victims remain with the wreck in the cold, cold, cold waters of Lake Superior, who they say never gives up her dead. It's cold enough that they stay pretty well preserved and wouldn't float up by decomposition. But the bell of the Edmund Fitzgerald has been retrieved at the behest of family members and has been rung in memorials, some of which Gordon Lightfoot has attended. And he also set up a scholarship fund at Northwestern Michigan College, where two crewmen were cadets. So, yes, Grandpa Ward, he has good sea song taste.
- [65:01]
Guest or Additional Commentator
And it's like, it's not even a ship from, like, antiquity. It's like, you know, a freighter from the Great Lakes from, like, what was it, 1875 or, like, something like that.
- [65:12]
Geo Rutherford
It's like.
- [65:12]
Guest or Additional Commentator
It's recent, and I love that. I love that it inspired somebody so much to create this, like, absolute jam.
- [65:20]
Co-host/Interviewer
It is, what, a bop.
- [65:22]
Alie Ward
It's a bop of maritime antiquity.
- [65:25]
Guest or Additional Commentator
Yes. It's fantastic. Yeah, I love any sort of sea shanties, though, or just like, any song about the sea is fantastic.
- [65:32]
Co-host/Interviewer
It really makes me want to raise.
- [65:34]
Alie Ward
A mug of rum or something again. That was from the Maritime Archaeology episode about shipwrecks with Chanel Zapp, who is known online by the handle Sharks and Wrecks. Absolute delight. Okay, back to Gio.
- [65:45]
Co-host/Interviewer
Do you have one of those bumper stickers? It's like, don't honk at me. I'm crying. To the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.
- [65:51]
Geo Rutherford
Yes, Yes. I have an extra one. Ally, you want me to send it to you? I have it hanging up over there in my studio.
- [65:59]
Co-host/Interviewer
That's my dad's favorite song. Favorite song.
- [66:02]
Geo Rutherford
Yeah, I think I have to do Edmund Fitzgerald this year because it's the 50th anniversary this year of the Edmund Fitzgerald. November 11th, 1975. I think it's the 11th.
- [66:13]
Co-host/Interviewer
Sounds right.
- [66:14]
Alie Ward
Sounds right.
- [66:14]
Geo Rutherford
Maybe it's the 9th. I don't. Okay, guys, I'm sorry. I don't remember the exact date.
- [66:18]
Alie Ward
It was neither the 11th nor the 9th. It was the 10th, so I'm gonna count Gio right enough. Twice. Ugh.
- [66:25]
Co-host/Interviewer
It's such a chilling tale, such a chilling song. A couple more listener questions, if that's okay. Turner Pierce, Amanda Lander, Sarah Manns, Bjorn Fredberg, and Brittany Briseno wanted to know again, people very excited. Britney says, as soon as I saw spooky lakes, I knew you must be interviewing Giovanni.
- [66:42]
Alie Ward
Freaking out, freaking out, freaking out.
- [66:44]
Co-host/Interviewer
Turner Pierce says.
- [66:45]
Alie Ward
Omg.
- [66:46]
Co-host/Interviewer
Geo. What happens to towns that get flooded to make lakes? Does that cause any weird happenings with.
- [66:52]
Alie Ward
The lakes that are observable?
- [66:53]
Co-host/Interviewer
Does the flooding destroy the houses or are they all just sitting there under the lake? Whole towns like Atlantis?
- [67:01]
Geo Rutherford
What's going on? Oh, yeah, this is something that happens, like across the world. The whole world is building dams and then flooding river valleys. And as a result, you end up with these preserved towns or trees or things that are underneath the water. I think that the most famous one in the United States is Lake Lanier. I think Lake Lanier is interesting because it has like a history of like, the town that was flooded was a majority black community. But I think it has a reputation of being kind of the most iconic of these flooded reservoirs. But there's supposedly a town at the bottom. Supposedly they're supposed to move the graves and like relocate these towns and these communities and the dead. But they don't necessarily always do that. And we don't always know where people are buried. And so there's kind of this, this idea that we're kind of submerging these entire histories underneath the water. Like Lake Mead, there was like an entire town that got completely flooded and it reappears as the lake levels kind of drop. So we had like, I did Lake Mead in 2022 because it was like the lowest lake level we'd ever seen of Lake Mead.
- [68:10]
Narrator/Additional Voice
In the last 20 years, Lake Mead has been shrinking. And this past summer was the worst year on record. Water levels have been so low that they've revealed at least six different sets of human remains. So as the west continues to deal with record breaking drought because of climate change, Lake Mead will continue to share her secrets. Seven out of ten spookies.
- [68:32]
Geo Rutherford
And there was like all sorts of gross stuff that was kind of popping up like a barrel that was full of human remains.
- [68:39]
Alie Ward
So Lake Mead is really a huge reservoir just outside Las Vegas. And it was made from the diverting of the Colorado river for the Hoover Dam. And due to these falling water levels, the receding shores have unveiled all kinds of past tragedy. And in 2022. A barrel containing a human body was revealed, a probable homicide from a single gunshot wound to the head. And investigators hoping to solve the crime reported that the victim likely died in the 1970s, using his clothes to date it. And he was wearing shoes and an outfit from the discount retailer Kmart at the time of his death. And mafia murders were not unheard of. And I saw one speculation that the affordable wardrobe on the victim suggests maybe he was like a service worker or just a regular Joe who saw too much and was disposed of in the lake. And his identity is still unknown. Weeks after that discovery in 2022, another set of human remains was found in the drying mud banks and DNA traced to his children, who have been grieving their dad for 20 years after he drowned on this nighttime boat ride in 2002. His name was Thomas Erndt and he was 42. He was a single dad. He took his two kids out for a night swim as they often did when he got off work, and he vanished under the water. And his kids, now grown, told the Media that the 2022 discovery of his body afforded them some closure, but also reopened wounds of that grief from losing their dad. So what happens in Vegas stays in Lake Mead until the water levels drop. And as spooky and as sad as are all of these tragedies that play out below the waves of the world.
- [70:22]
Geo Rutherford
China has a lot of spooky lakes. But unfortunately China's a little hard to research. Like China is one of the lakes, one of the countries that it's hard to find stuff unless you're like maybe searching in, I don't know, Chinese. And so I did Kayando Lake, which is this lake that was flooded. But their city, unlike Lake Lanier with this city that they flooded, was like a thousand year old city. And the city, the, you know, all of the brick and the rock from this city is like completely preserved. All these buildings are preserved. And you can like see all the beautiful ornate carvings on the lake or on the. Not on the lake, on the city that are still there underneath the water. And divers have like gone down to visit it. Yeah. So it's kind of, it's interesting. That's like. Yeah, that's a topic that I could probably do forever is just places we've, we've flooded and then now there's things at the bottom that are kind of. We don't know. It's a. Calls back to that like once something is beneath the surface and you don't know, then it's pretty spooky.
- [71:23]
Co-host/Interviewer
The Last listener question I was going to ask Jason E. Faribaugh. I did not know about this. Asked about recursive islands in lakes.
- [71:30]
Geo Rutherford
Oh, yeah.
- [71:30]
Co-host/Interviewer
Third order, fourth order, fifth order islands. I did not know what this was. This is a lake on an island in a lake that's on an island. What the fuck? What is going on?
- [71:44]
Geo Rutherford
This one, to me, is not that spooky, but it's kind of fun. It's just like a fun fact. There's viral, like, picture of, I think it was, like, called Bear island, which was an island in a lake on the Isle of Royale in the lake of Lake Superior. Right. And so people are like, oh, my God, like, look at this tiny island on this tiny lake on this island, on this lake, on this island on this lake. So and so on and so forth. I think my favorite one is Talal. So Talal is a giant lake, which is a lake on this island in Indonesia. And there's a volcano in the middle, and the volcano has a lake in the crater, and that lake has an island on it, which I think did explode in 2021 or 22 or something like that. So that. That might not be true anymore, but for a long time, that was like, one of my favorite examples of recursive lakes because it was like this ocean with an island, with a lake, with an island, with a lake, with an island.
- [72:45]
Co-host/Interviewer
So, like a nesting doll.
- [72:47]
Geo Rutherford
It is. It's a nesting doll. Yeah.
- [72:49]
Co-host/Interviewer
I did not even know that was a thing.
- [72:51]
Geo Rutherford
Yeah, it's cool. Yeah.
- [72:52]
Co-host/Interviewer
I want to be, like, a little tiny elf that lives on a tiny island. And it did bigger and bigger and bigger. And then, no, having no cell phone service.
- [73:03]
Geo Rutherford
Definitely don't have any cell phone service on Isle Royale. So you could head there.
- [73:08]
Alie Ward
Bye. Bye, everyone.
- [73:10]
Co-host/Interviewer
What is the hardest part about? I usually ask hardest part about your job, but as long as we're doing perlatives, do you. Is there a scariest lake? Is there the creepiest you've ever felt? Is there anything that's, like, haunted you? Since researching it, I always answer that.
- [73:32]
Geo Rutherford
The ultimate spooky lake that, like, wins unfortunate award of being, like, an actual killer is Lake Nyos in Cameroon. Have you heard about Lake Nyos?
- [73:44]
Toyota BZ Ad Voice
No.
- [73:44]
Co-host/Interviewer
I'm about to.
- [73:45]
Geo Rutherford
Yeah. It's my favorite, like, it's my favorite horror story, essentially, of what a lake has the potential to do. So there's only a few lakes in this world which have the potential to explode that we know of. Okay. So Lake Nyos is in the belly of a volcano in Cameroon. So it's kind of on a, on a bit of a hill and it's in this crater. And in the crater it's like a 900 foot deep lake. So it's a really deep lake and you have this volcanic activity that's kind of percolating up the bottom. And that volcanic activity is resulting in carbon dioxide that is dissolved in the water that's being trapped at the bottom of this lake by pressure. But also just the cold depths of the lake, the carbon dioxide gas is like being kept down there until I think it was 1984. In the middle of the night, something disrupted the carbon dioxide gas that was at the bottom of this lake and it exploded. Which really, if you were standing there would have looked like a bunch of bubbles on the surface and like you wouldn't have been able to see anything and you wouldn't have been able to smell anything. But carbon dioxide gas, which is heavier than the surrounding air, would have been creeping out of this lake, over the edge of the crater and then heading down to low lying valleys. And unfortunately there's an entire community that lived in a low lying valley next to Lake NYOS. So 1800, over 1800 people died in their sleep. All of their, all of their animals, all of their livestock and even all the bugs. And so the next day when scientists like made their way here, because this was like a mystery, nobody understood what had happened because everybody, nothing didn't look like anything, right? Didn't. There was no evidence left behind by this disaster. And so they eventually figured out that it was Lake Nyos. This is called a limnic eruption. There was a lake a few years before this, Lake Manoon, which had erupted in a similar way but had not had such a huge death toll. And there's a lake in the Rwanda area, like over in the Great African Rift. It's called Lake Kivu. It's like on the border of Republic of Congo and Malawi. And Lake Kivu is a humongous lake that has the potential to also explode. But unlike this lake in Cameroon that was near a very small village, Lake Kivu is next to millions of people. The city of Goma is right on the edge of the lake. And so if Lake Kivu were to ever have a limnic eruption, it could kill millions of people.
- [76:32]
Co-host/Interviewer
Oh my God.
- [76:33]
Geo Rutherford
Because of that carbon dioxide, to me that's kind of like the ultimate spooky. Lake is like a lake that could actually do the killing. Like this lake is deadly in and of itself. It's not just because of human stupidity. It Actively just let off this gas.
- [76:47]
Co-host/Interviewer
Explosion in any time.
- [76:50]
Alie Ward
It could.
- [76:51]
Geo Rutherford
Yeah, it could happen at any time. Now I think that they've put in safety measures to both Lake Nyos and to Lake Kivu to try to release that gas. So like a pipe to the bottom that like tries to off offset that buildup. Because some people that say that it was a landslide that like caused the carbon dioxide gas to be disrupted. But it seems like it could also just be like at a point it just pops where it's just too much.
- [77:16]
Alie Ward
Oh my God.
- [77:17]
Co-host/Interviewer
I didn't never. I had never heard of this. Okay, what about one that you are really excited about one day visiting?
- [77:26]
Geo Rutherford
Ooh. I mean, unfortunately the answer to that is that I want to go to like Baikal. There's no other.
- [77:31]
Co-host/Interviewer
Oh, you gotta meet a seal. You have to meet a seal.
- [77:34]
Geo Rutherford
Yeah, I gotta go. I gotta go to Lake Baikal. But there's this giant train that goes all the way from Moscow all the way across Russia to Lake Baikal. I want to do that so badly, but I think it's harder to communicate and to be kind of isolated in Russia.
- [77:48]
Co-host/Interviewer
Do you know what about scientists who work with the Baikal Nerva?
- [77:53]
Geo Rutherford
Yeah. Well, hello, if anybody's listening and they somehow go to Lake Baikal for scientific reasons, then take me with you, please. I just did. That was the trip I did with the Boiling river was with a bunch of scientists, which was really fun. So I was like there as they were like, what are you doing here? And I was like, I don't know. I don't know what I'm doing here.
- [78:13]
Co-host/Interviewer
I'm just here.
- [78:15]
Geo Rutherford
So like I'm drinking tea.
- [78:16]
Co-host/Interviewer
It's a write off. Don't worry about it.
- [78:18]
Geo Rutherford
Yeah, yeah. So take me as a comedic relief, content creator, artist. I will draw you if you take me.
- [78:28]
Alie Ward
Well, thank you so much for doing this. You're a legend.
- [78:30]
Geo Rutherford
Yeah, thanks so much for having me. Me Ally. It was so much fun.
- [78:33]
Alie Ward
So ask creative people creepy questions. And thank you so much to Gio Rutherford for taking the time to answer the call of Ologites the world over and share your haunted hydrology with us. We will link Gio's TikTok and social medias in the show notes. Very easy to find. Look up haunted hydrology anywhere you get social media. And we will also link her wonderful book Spooky Lakes and do enjoy her fresh cuts all through October as she celebrates Spooky Lake month with us all. There are more links up@alieward.com Ology HauntedHydrology including ways to donate to the Salton Sea Action Committee and the alliance for the Great Lakes. We are at Ologies on Blue sky and Instagram. I'm Alieward with one L on both. Smallogies are those shorter, classroom safe versions of Ologies Classics. They are available wherever you get podcasts and you can also sign up@patreon.com ologies to send in your questions ahead of recording. Aaron Talbert, Admin Zoologies Podcast Facebook group Avileen Malik makes our professional transcripts. Kelly Ardwyer does the website. Noelle Dilworth is on top of our recording forecast as scheduling producer. Managing director Susan Hale gets us safely ashore to the Publish button every week. And navigating the edits are Jake Chaffee and Captain Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio. Nick Thorburn wrote the theme music and if you stick around until the end of the episode, here we are. I tell you a secret this week it's that it just occurred to me, like last week, that navigation and navy have the same root word, which is ship. It never even dawned on me before that navigation means literally steering a ship. This is why our motto is to ask smart people, not smart questions. Some things have been sailing over my head for decades. Also, wear a life vest, please. Can you? Thank you. Okay, bye.
- [80:14]
Co-host/Interviewer
Bye.
- [80:14]
Alie Ward
Oh, also November 17th Bell House, Brooklyn. Tickets go on sale on Thursday. See you there. Bye. Pachydermatology, Homeology, Cryptozoology, Litology, Nanotechnology, Meteorology, Olfactology, mapology, serology, selenology.
- [80:38]
Narrator/Additional Voice
10 out of 10 spookies.
- [80:44]
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- [81:39]
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