The Deep

I could have become a marine biologist. But in college, chemistry seemed so much more interesting than biology. Thirty years later, I’m finding biology fascinating, although admittedly it has mainly to do with my learning the intricacies of biochemical evolution as part of my origin-of-life research.

 

It also helps if there are amazing engaging books for popular audiences on the subject. Chemistry is sorely lacking here. But marine biology gets another boost from Edith Widder’s Below The Edge of Darkness. It’s a memoir recalling pivotal events in her life and in her career studying bioluminescence. She has plenty of interesting life stories, and she’s a very engaging writer, so that’s a major plus. And she does a fantastic job bringing out the lure of the strange denizens of the deep. And I mean thousands of feet sea-deep where light hardly penetrates. Here be your mythical creatures, both monstrous and colorful. The color red looks black to prey and predators when you’re in the deep.

 

Bioluminescence is key in the deep. Even though it’s very expensive metabolically. To emit photons is energetically costly (in the hundreds of kJ/mol) so you’d better have a good reason to shift resources in that direction. Especially when there’s not much access to available energy in the deep. Denizens of the deep have huge eyes. For one thing, they need bigger eyes for better light-sensitivity. Some of them have one eye on the top and one eye on the bottom (of different sizes) to see different contrasts of light. But many also have light-emitting organs for a variety of reasons ranging from luring prey to camouflage, luring predators to signaling danger. Light is the communication device of the deep – although we haven’t figured out its coded language yet.

 

I learned so many things from Widder’s book including all the things you have to worry about when you’re in a submersible. People die if mistakes are made. And how ingenious you need to be if you want to ‘see’ creatures in their natural habitat without shining a whole bunch of light at them and scaring them off. I learned about all manner of adaptation in the dog-eat-dog world of the sea, except there aren’t any dogs per se but rather much stranger creatures. It’s a eye-opener in multiple senses. Yes, there is a giant squid of the deep, Kraken-like. There’s a brownsnout spookfish with four eyes, and a barreleye fish with a rotating telescopic eye inside its head.

 

I also learned not to trust what I see on Discovery. In the tug-of-war between entertainment and science, entertainment wins big to the chagrin of participating scientists. I also learned that the deep ocean science exploration budget is peanuts compared to NASA even though we could learn so much more about life and our earth that would be both practical and edifying. Yes, outer space is cool, but the deep… you’ll see it’s real cool if you read Edith Widder’s book. You couldn’t ask for a better apologist. I hope more folks read her book and get excited about it.

 

P.S. For another marine biology memoir, there’s the jellyfish book.