Page |1 Robert Johnson Write-Up 2 Most of us live our lives never having to worry about seeing in a medium besides

the air around us. In order to get our food, we simply go to the grocery store, or for some of us maybe even hunt or fish. However, the same cannot be said for everyone in the world. For the people of South East Asia, diving down into the water in order to harvest food from the sea floor is a common and necessary activity. In order to locate food on the sea floor, these people need good visual acuity and resolution. Most of us would just throw on a pair of goggles since our eyes cannot focus very well under water, but their eyes have physically adapted to see in this environment. This essay will discuss why they adapted, how they adapted, and why the adaption is so important. In order to analyze the visual adaption that the Moken have made, it is important to understand why vision does not work as well in different mediums, such as water. In this case, a medium can be defined as a fluid through which light moves. When light moves from the current medium into the cornea, refraction occurs. When refraction occurs, the light is bent a certain amount in order to obtain good focus on whatever object the observer is looking at. The amount of refraction that occurs has a large dependency on the current medium. In a medium such as water, very little refraction occurs since the cornea is constructed largely out of water. This in turn means the eye cannot focus as well on the object being observed, which for humans means a blurry image. One solution to this problem is to wear a device to change the medium through which the light enters the cornea, such as a scuba mask. With a scuba mask, the light will always enter the cornea through air, which in turn increases refraction and focus. In order to analyze the performance of the Moken underwater, researchers compared their vision against a control group of 28 European children. In order to test the childrens vision, an apparatus was placed in clear water at an angle of 90 degrees from the sun. Patterns of both horizontal and vertical orientation were set up 50cm away from the apparatus. The child placed his head in the apparatus and observed the patterns. When the child came up, he was asked to identify the patterns. Each grating was presented five times, and five correct identifications indicated that the child could resolve the grating. If the child could resolve them, finer gratings were presented. This was done until the child could no longer resolve the gratings.

Page |2 By using the described experiment, it was discovered that the Mokens visual acuity under water was more than twice as good as the European childrens visual acuity under water. The authors needed to explain why this is the case. The authors noted that underwater, the South Eastern Asian children constrict their pupil underwater, whereas the European children dont. The authors hypothesis was that when the Moken constrict their pupils underwater, their visual acuity increases. This is a strong indicator of that the South Eastern Asian children have developed an accommodation. The authors tested this hypothesis by taking images of the childrens pupils with infrared light. These images clearly showed the size difference between the two groups of childrens pupils. This can be seen in Figure 1. It was concluded that the pupil size difference is indeed the reason that the Mokens vision is so much better than that of the European childrens. When an image is severely distorted by a lack of refraction, a smaller pupil diameter can help significantly. This is exactly what is being observed with the Moken.

Figure 1: Pupil Sizes of A) South Eastern Asian Children and B) European Children I personally thought this was a very interesting study with good results. While reading the study, I never would have guessed that the Moken actually adapted their environment by being able to decrease the size of their pupils underwater. I do agree with the conclusion the authors came up with, although that is not to say that the pupil size difference is the only reason Moken can see better underwater. There may be more factors at play. One thing I am also keeping in mind is the fact that the authors only tested the childrens vision at a set distance of 50cm. They failed to test at other distances, which could have given different results. The Moken had to adapt because of the fact that they obtain their food from the sea floor. They succeeded in adapting by being able to decrease the diameter of their pupil when underwater. This adaption is extremely important because without it, they could not survive.