Under the Sea

A couple of years ago I was wandering through the stacks of the biology library looking for inspiration and happened upon a book. It was Cindy Van Dover, Deep-Ocean Journeys: Discovering New Life at the Bottom of the Sea (Reading, MA: Addison-Welsey, 1997). Van Dover was the first female Alvin driver, a submersible with incredible deep ocean capabilities. She is also a professional marine biologist and, judging by the personal exploration she shares into her chosen field, one hell of an interesting woman.

Originally published as the Octopus’s Garden the year before, Deep-Ocean Journeys describes Van Dover’s engagement with a fascinating and alien world. The ocean floor is a desert of sorts, but, amazingly, life clings tenaciously around hydrothermal vents in this realm of eternal darkness. She describes the strange and unusual denizens of the deep with a poetic naturphilosophie flair. In the final analysis an ethical paradigm informs her work, and in discussions of the fragility of these depthless spaces, an argument evocative of Carson’s archetypal classic Silent Spring emerges.

Much of the deep-ocean is as mysterious to us as deep space. Down there, the pressure conditions are little different from the surface of Jupiter. And finding life in the abyss also reminds us of the possibility of life in environments we assume are universally inhospitable. Reading Van Dover’s book gave me a different way to understand vitalism, too.

This is why when I see something like this story, about a giant (colossal) squid dredged up by a New Zealand fishing boat off the coast of Antarctica, my mind lights up. You could end up going all At the Mountains of Madness on this, and maybe the inner space/outer space dichotomy needs more refinement. Truth is, it’s just a really incredible find proving how poorly understood certain parts our own world remain. These are large ocean predators and we know next to nothing about them.

More frightening than any of Lovecraft’s mind-bending creations is the fact that we use this mysterious realm as a dumping ground. I notice, for example, the science tidbits at the back of Harper’s a couple of weeks ago mentioned research suggesting an alarming decline in the populations of small ocean organisms (like plankton) — this could be easily accompanied by other research warning of the environmental hazards of an ever more tainted ocean. Food chains are more complex in water ecosystems, and the accumulation of toxins, a worrying effect in all living systems, takes on greater severity. The beluga whales of the Gulf of St. Lawrence have such intense concentrations of toxins in them, for example, they are living chemical laboratories. Like the ocean floor, this goes way deeper than admittedly tragic, and more well-publicized, accidents (c.f. the Exxon Valdez)…

With apologies to science fiction from Jules Verne to The Simpsons, nobody is going to live at the bottom of the sea. But the ocean, we should remember, is the world’s largest ecosystem. And its mysteries abound. The picture at the top of this post is of a creature (one of many bizarre and odd beasts) that washed up after the tsunami in Southeast Asia in December of 2004. Its alien strangeness reminds us of the natural possibilities…

Funny thing this nature — in its dual role as both mysterious and ultimately connected to us. It is in the ocean, a place that still moves deeply in the human psyche, that insight to this link lies. I am reminded of The School of Athens in the Musei di Vaticani, and Aristotle’s downward pointing hand. He wasn’t the most influential figure in biological thought up until the 19th century for nothing, and recalls us to look around us here on earth for meaning. Much of what has been learned in the physical sciences has infiltrated our understanding of living nature, but what an interesting mindset it would be to have the opposite approach become more essential. I think that’s one good way to understand the environmental message…”Look to the stars, sure, but never forget the depths of inner space.”

That’s deep…It’s probably why people also like to swim with dolphins…

---

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)

• Introducing…
• What Is That? Ocean Colored Pancake Fish