Free the dolphins — and Octopi!
Enable them to explore the ‘supramarine’ world.
Humans manage to explore the otherwise-hostile submarine world by taking a bit of the supramarine world (atmosphere) down with us — be it a gulp of air when snorkeling, an air tank when scuba diving, or a submersible’s oxygen supply. In each case the technology has to be developed and the user needs to be trained to use it safely. Once done, a whole new world opens up for exploration.
By analogy, if an intelligent marine organism were provided the necessary technology and training, the above sealevel surface of the world — dry land — would be theirs to explore. Surely, it is within our capacity to provide this assistance to dolpines and octopi, who have demonstrated the capacity to learn complex behaviors, i.e., be trained.
How curious would they be? How quickly would they manage to get around? Depending on the technology, how would they interact with the objects and beings they encounter? What might they reveal about themselves … and ourselves?
The technological challenge has two main components:
(1) Encapsulating a comfortable portion of the submarine environment, while ensuring good vision outward and locomotive flexibility. Engineers of submersibles should have good advice to offer on this challenge, since is essentially an inversion of their usual task.
(2) Creating a good “user-friendly” interface so that the organism can learn to “drive” the capsule relatively easily. A means of manipulating the environment (think, “hands”) would be a plus. Dolphine trainers should be recruited to address this challenge. (Are there any octopus trainers out there?)
So! Get to it! Free the dolphins! And then enjoy watching them make sense of our supramarine world. And in what ways would octopi explore differently?
Speaking of which, how would dogs or chimps behave in the submarine world if they had custom made submersibles? We’ve sent them into outspace, why not inner space?
