[Post reconstruction in progress after 25.10.07 hack (body, comments and images to follow)]:
There’s something ever so romantic (not in the hand-holding-under-the-moon sense) about deep sea exploration. It occupies the roughly same part of one’s emotional landscape as space exploration, I think, but it’s maybe even more exciting in some ways, because there’s something about the utterly weird and unknown being just under the surface of the familiar, while space seems so far away (actually, in one sense it isn’t, if you go straight up, but in terms of logistics, it seems and is far…). It also very much has the feel of a 19th Century adventure, with explorers going off and bagging the weird and wonderful specimens to bring back for museums and entertainment. This was seldom good for the specimens involved, of course, and we can spend a lot of time talking about that aspect… Anyway, I assume that the explorers and marine biologists of today are much more careful and respectful than their 19th Century counterparts, while still living the romance. (Er… Sheril? Is that so?)
As a result of the aforementioned allure, articles like this AP one by Oliver Teves (via Yahoo News) catch my eye. Here’s a sentence to tempt you to read the whole thing:
The most striking creature found was a spiny orange-colored worm that had 10 tentacles like a squid, Madin said. “We don’t know what it is … it might be something new,” he said.
…and I borrowed the wonderful picture above of that amazing jellyfish they found (in the Celebes Sea south of the Philippines), from the article as well.
Enjoy!
-cvj
breathtaking, and yes, very romantic.