Recently in biology Category

The recent outbreak of Invertebrate Wars reminded me of something splendid that happened a while back. A couple of blocks from our house, as we were coming home from a walk, my husband spotted an ant moving at frenetic ant-speed across the sidewalk. "Look at that ant," he said, "fleeing from the Great Arthropod Wars!"

This assertion was apropos of nothing at all (other than the ant) and did not in any way reference earlier conversations. In fact, as far as I can recall, this was the first instance that the phrase "the Great Arthropod Wars" has ever entered my brain.

But now it will not leave.

I've already sketched out the plots. Plots, plural, because it is a trilogy, of course. I will pick Star Wars over Star Trek (and the Beatles over the Rolling Stones, which now that I mention it seems somehow like the very same thing for reasons that I do not now have time to dissect) every time. Not that I ever dressed up as Princess Leia* or anything that dorky. Well, I may have done the double-braid-bun to my hair once. Or maybe twice. But I haven't seen pictures of that in a long time. It will remain a happy mystery. (Apparently I am into italics today! Maybe it's all the suppressed energy that can't find an outlet in my dissertation. Writing in academese is getting really, really tiresome. My illustrious university is now doing electronic dissertation submission--do you think that means I could just blog my whole thesis? And they would confer a degree on my head? Because that would be awesome!)

Does anyone remember what I was talking about before the long parenthetical diversion? Oh yes: Arthropod Wars.

But first, a quick disclaimer, because this whole plot hinges on a post-apocalyptic Earth, in which we foolish vertebrates (not just humans, mind you, but all vertebrates) have long since wiped ourselves out, and all those jokes about bugs taking over the world come absolutely true. The story opens with Insecta reigning supreme. And of course, the quesion is, how could I? How could the Cephalopodiatrist's deep and abiding love for molluscs be set aside so callously, to sketch out an entire trilogy about a crunchy reddish mess?

Never fear! I'm not setting aside that love. No, I'm still going to write all sorts of novels and poetry about squid in space and other fabulous cephalogia. But I love all invertebrates. I can't help it. So although I am greatly honored that the Cephalopodiatrist and Squid-A-Day were both invoked in the defense of Molluscs during the Invertebrate Wars, and although I did issue of checklist of cephalawesome, I can't really argue against the wonder and delight of tunicates, echinoderms, and, of course, arthropods.

With that, I give you:

Episode IV: Crustacea Rising
Insecta reigns supreme. Termite mounds have spread across plains and deserts. Dipterans (flies and mosquitoes) have quickly engineered leftover human technology to their own ends. Cockroaches serve as beaurocrats, organizing insect affairs. But in their hubris, the insects have forgotten that Earth should be more appropriately called Water. And in the oceans, the downtrodden Crustacea are plotting insurgency. Their plan: to engineer the slippage of the Greenland ice sheet (yes, we're assuming it hasn't happened already) to drastically raise sea level, bringing in their armies on the rising tide to inundate the terrestrial Insecta.

Episode V: In Which The Myriapods Mediate
Okay, it's a stupid title. But here's the idea: the Myriapods (millipedes and centipedes) are not nearly as abundant as either Insecta or Crustacea. But what they lack in numbers, they make up in legs. Also, they have deadly poison (centipedes) and negotiating ability (millipedes). Seriously, I've had pet millipedes, and they are very soothing. Look at this: wouldn't you listen if that talked to you in a calm, reasonable voice? Especially if its centipede pal is backing it up? So the myriapods try to negotiate a cease-fire between Insecta and Crustacea. But the aggressive, poisonous Centipedes are won over by Insecta, accusing the Millipedes of being more sympathetic to Crustacea--even though Millipedes themselves can't breathe underwater. Battle lines are drawn again, and the nascent treaty is in shambles.

Episode VI: Return of the Chelicerates
For those who have been following along at home with your favorite invertebrate textbook, you know who the final player is . . . the Chelicerates! For those who haven't been following along (what? you don't have a favorite invertebrate textbook?), we're talking about spiders, scorpions, horseshoe crabs, and pycnogonids. They have long memories. They remember when their cousins the Eurypterids ruled the world. (The Largest Arthropod That Ever Lived was a Eurypterid.) They even remember the Trilobites. They've got perspective. And they get things sorted out.

Um . . . the end?

Do you see how I am heavy on biology, but short on things like plot and character? Do you have helpful ideas for me? Then share them! As long as you don't mind me using them when I make these into books someday. You will be in the acknowledgments, I promise!



* Yes, I did just link to a perfectly good blog that has nothing to do with biology whatsoever. Well, that is not strictly true, because it is (ostensibly) about dachshunds, and dachshunds are certainly included in the Great Circle of Life. Although some people think they shouldn't be. Some people are judgmental about weiner dogs. I am not one of them. Perhaps it is my German ancestry, but I think this is the very definition of adorable.

Well, right after this. So, um, hmmm, maybe it's hard to define words with pictures.

Anyway, the moral of the story is: I like Miss Doxie, even though she cusses and drinks a lot, plus she is blond and a lawyer, and all of these characteristics make her like the ANTITHESIS OF ME, and perhaps if we were ever in a room together, there would be an explosion like in a collision chamber, and new subatomic particles (blogons!) would be discovered. And now I will stop being weird and creepy, because I am talking about a fellow human being whom I do not actually know and may possibly, concievably, through the magic of the interwebs, find and read this.

(with apologies to the Beatles)

Woke up at half past five,
Got in the car and started to drive.
Crossed over the hills and headed down
And looking around,
We noticed we were there.
Got on the boat and dropped our lures,
Caught two squid, they weren't mature.
Made our way back home, another eight-hour drive,
And by the time we arrived,
It all felt like a dream . . .

Not too surprisingly, I was seasick, but not as ill as that one time. I managed to keep my squid jig in the water, dropping down to the bottom and cranking up to the surface over and over as I gazed beseechingly at the horizon.

Man, we fished the heck out of that ocean. We just didn't catch much.

I'd talked two other marine biologists into joining me as customers on a commerical sport fishing expedition. The captain and crew were great fun, and just about as doggedly determined as we were, although the enthusiasm of the non-scientist customers waned as hours passed with little success.

One of the biologists came from a lab in La Jolla; the other was a colleague from my home institution and did the whole trip with me, starting and ending in Monterey. We took her wonderful new car Valentine, whose front seats make very serviceable beds to curl up in at a rest stop off I-5 from four to six o'clock in the morning, when the fog is as thick as the radio static obscuring Fresno's classic rock station.

To sum up:

936 miles, 27 hours (total trip time), 5 hours (fishing time), 11 anglers, 4 hook-ups, 2 landed squid, 0 mature females.

BUMMER. I was really hoping to do more of this.

Personal virtues that might be commonly attributed to scientists include intelligence, persistence, concentration, diligence--virtues of the head, one might say.

Less frequently associatated with scientists are virtues of the heart: kindness, generosity, compassion.

Yet it was an abundance of these latter virtues that constantly impressed me during the four-day Strathfest extravaganza, a retirement party for Richard and Megumi Strathmann. Students, colleagues and friends gathered at Friday Harbor from around the world to celebrate the "global influence of Strathmann". As they spoke of lessons they'd learned from this brilliant scientist couple, I heard the same threads being woven together again and again:

Meticulously credit others with ideas. Provide students with the best materials and support. Always be respectful. Treat students as colleagues. Take your science seriously, but don't take yourself seriously. "I love being wrong because that's when I really learn something new." He makes you feel smart. Someone comes into their offices, and it doesn't matter what they were doing before, now they're yours.

This sweetness, this humility, wasn't present just in Richard and Megumi, it was the flavor of the whole crew. Everyone, absolutely without exception, was smart and interesting and funny and, most especially, kind. It didn't matter whether I was talking to a retired whitebeard or a fellow grad student or anyone in between. Every conversation was shaped by mutual interest and respect. I met for the first time famous people whose names I have heard and read for years, and I made friends I'd like to keep forever.

Mentioning my desire to move into science communication after I finish grad school, I met with nothing but enthusiasm and encouragement. With several people I brainstormed a coffee table book about field stations, across America or across the world. It would be such fun to research and write! Field stations are remarkable places, marked by a certain cosmopolitan insularity, populated by characters so distinctive you'd swear they're fictitious.

As background, I have to read Here's How We'll Do It, a book on the creation of Shoals Marine Laboratory in the 1970s. Other books recommended in various conversations throughout the weekend include Oranges, Volcano Cowboys, Science at the Edge (is this the right book? I have to ask Moose!), The Crest of the Wave, Mindless Eating, The Plug-in Drug, and the Dictionary of Word Roots. Also, one TV show: Slings and Arrows, about a troubled Shakespeare festival.

But all conversational diversity aside, the party was at its core a four-day ode to invertebrate larvae and embryos, since Richard basically invented the field of larval ecology. I met him (and Friday Harbor itself) in the summer of 2008, when I took Invertebrate Embryology. I had an absolute dream of a time drawing embryos night and day, composing poetry, and falling a little bit in love.

Strathfest, just as I'd been hoping, was a concentrated dose of more of the same. Just about the most awesome way I could imagine to ring in the new year.

January 1st, 2010: The Larval Art Auction

The goal was to raise money for a scholarship fund. To this end, I contributed the very hand pluteus whose creation is illustrated in Make Your Own Hand Pluteus. I was a little embarrassed to see it rubbing shoulders with such unique wonders as hand-knit echinoderms and photographs of dancing larvae, but was pleasantly surprised that it did get a few bids. And since only one person could take it home, I now have commissions to make several more for the non-winning bidders!

The darlings of the auction were the incredible twin cuttlefish sculpted, glazed, and fired by Richard's last student Fernanda. They carried the evening, a perfect blend of biological accuracy and aesthetic interpretation. I have to prod Fernanda to see if she would be willing to post pictures somewhere . . .

January 2nd, 2010: The Larval Poetry Slam

Writing poetry about larvae has been a glorious tradition since the days of Walter Garstang. The pairing seems extraordinarily appropriate to me, because both larvae and poetry come in a wild diversity of form. Limerick. Actinotroch. Sonnet. Pilidium. Haiku. Planula.

Triolet.

The triolet is an old French form of eight lines. The first line is repeated twice, the second once. It has enjoyed much popularity with modern poets as well; one of the best examples is from Wendy Cope. I readily confess that I completely ripped off her rhyme scheme for my contribution to the poetry slam, which was born out of my frustration with growing baby squid at home in the lab.

You see, during the Invertebrate Embryology class, we fertilized dozens of species' eggs and watched them develop with ease to hatching and beyond. But at home, when I try to fertilize Humboldt squid eggs in the lab, my success rates are dismal. Other researchers don't have much better luck. One of the big problems has to do with an envelope, called a chorion, which surrounds the embryo. It's supposed to expand as the embryo develops, giving it room to grow, but this expansion can only be stimulated by jelly from the mother squid's special jelly glands. Sadly, we can't get her to extrude jelly on demand, so we take the glands, freeze-dry them, grind them into power, and sprinkle the powder in the water with the eggs.

Heh. When I say it like that, it sounds impossible that it would work at all. Miraculously, it does, but not very well. So, in closing, here is an

Embryonic Triolet

In vitro looked so easy. But embryonic
squid are awfully difficult to grow.
The nature of the challenge, chorionic.
In vitro looked so easy. But embryonic
squid require a freeze-dried jelly tonic.
And even then the embryos won't grow.
In vitro looked so easy. But embryonic
squid are awfully difficult to grow!

Or, An Illustrated Guide to Sorting Plankton.

First the motivation: why would you want to spend all summer sorting plankton? Especially why would you go to La Jolla, beautiful warm sunny La Jolla, just so you could sit in a basement laboratory behind a microscope all day--sorting plankton?

Because in 2006 I went on this cruise, and I sorted plankton every night, and my findings were preliminary, but intriguing.
Because as part of this scholarship, I had to do some kind of research collaboration at a NOAA facility.
Because it turns out that NOAA has been doing these cruises, and collecting plankton samples, every few years for decades, and that is an amazing dataset ripe for the picking.
Because it made sense for the fourth and final chapter of my thesis to focus on squid spawning in the tropics, and that means looking for squid babies in plankton.

So, for all of these reasons, I found myself spending the summer in a rather surreal environment.

The fume hood:



The doorstop:



The bench full of open containers:



The best thing about my working conditions was definitely the company. A hilarious and energetic undergrad helped me out on her own erratic schedule, and next door to us was the reliable, friendly and knowledgeable collections manager, Annie. I admire Annie a great deal, in large part because she can look at crustaceans and see something biologically meaningful, instead of a crunchy reddish mess, as I do. But she also loves molluscs. Sort of the same way I love worms. We actually had this conversation:

Me: I would be a worm person if I weren't a mollusc person.
Annie: I would be a mollusc person if I weren't a crustacean person.

Unfortunately for me, plankton samples tend to be mostly crustaceans--copepods, ostracods, krill, shrimp, crab larvae, you name it--if it's red and crunchy, it's probably in the plankton somewhere. It will not surprise you to hear that I was looking for squid, not crustaceans. It's not as bad as a needle in a haystack, but . . . well, sometimes it is. After a few days, this is what I began seeing on the backs of my eyelids:


So, sorting squid out of plankton samples makes you insane! Hooray!

My job was made slightly more rewarding because I had decided to sort out fish also. There were more fish than squid, but (usually) not so many more that it really slowed me down. And at the end of the day, it feels like more of an accomplishment to have pulled 87 fish and 2 squid out of a jar than to have pulled out just 2 squid. Or zero squid. There are lots of people at NOAA who are very interested in fish, so I was able to give a little back to the people who were helping me out.

Plankton sorting is essentially a grown-up, scientific version of Where's Waldo? There are two fish and one squid in this image:


See?



It's not fair, of course, because I get stereo vision through the microscope, but you're just being given a single flat picture. Sorry about that. Here, I'll make up for it with some lolplankton:

So the folks over at ScientificBlogging decided to have themselves a little contest. A contest that is absolutely irresistible to yours truly. You see, US News & World Report did a 3-year survey-based study on the nation's best science graduate programs. Scientific Blogging reported the results, then said,

Now we know what universities to attend in order to receive a phenomenal education in science. But it's one thing to know a lot about science, and another thing entirely to be able to apply it and communicate it effectively. And communicating science is what we at ScientificBlogging are all about.

So to highlight these outstanding universities, ScientificBlogging has decided to sponsor a little friendly competition between them. Today we announce our first ever "University Writing Competiton." We invite graduate students that are currently enrolled at any of these Top 10 Universities (actually, eleven) to participate. The official rules are below, but the big idea is that we are inviting graduate students to write about science - on any scientific topic of their choosing. It is our hope to discover those exceptional students that not only know their science, but can also effectively communicate it to the scientific community - as well as to the general public.

The grand prize? A three-month paid writing internship. Hello! I'm in! Now, if only I could decide what to write about . . .

Just kidding. Of course I'm going to write about squid. But which squid? And what tentacular squidly aspect of squid? These are the questions that must be answered, in superb, nay, flawless prose, by me, before October 15th. And that answer must be posted on my Scientific Blogging account. Which I have just created for this purpose.

But I can't create a new blog and then post only one entry in it, ever, just to enter the contest. That feels a little cheap. I also can't create another blog like the Cephalopodiatrist, full of deep, rich, and way-too-long-for-sensible-blogging entries. So I thought: let's do something different. Something short and snappy that won't take too much time away from the Cephalopodiatrist, and OH RIGHT ALSO MY THESIS. Something that will serve a greater goal, namely, gathering fodder for the brilliant essay that I will eventually craft as my contest submission.

And thus, Squid A Day was born. I haven't decided if it should have dashes in the name or not. Opinions, anyone?

The idea was simple: Find something about squid in the news every day, and blog it, either correcting the science, or--in the unexpected instance where everything in the news article is actually correct--congratulating it. The execution was fairly simple, too--once I figured out ScientificBlogging's awful user interface.

Hi, ScientificBlogging. Do you notice how I am whining about this here on my personal blog instead of on my/your blog? You're welcome!

I'm pretty sure I am not dumb, nor technically incompetent (my advisor's snide comments notwithstanding) and yet I could not for the life of me figure out how to start posting on my new SB blog.

By the time I scrolled down to the part of their FAQ which announces, "Article creation is quite easy. Go to My Account and click Write Blog," I was already seriously annoyed. It is not "quite easy" it is "quite circuitous and counter-intuitive." I understand that UI is difficult--it should be intuitive, but everyone's intuitions are slightly, or drastically, different. So intuitive isn't always possible. But how about just "simple"?

You see, this is what happens when you sign up for an account on SB. First you find and click on the "register now" option, that's fairly straightforward--although admittedly I didn't find it on my own, I had it pointed out to me by the rules of the contest. Now you're at a page where you can provide some information about yourself, then you click "create new account." Then you get an e-mail. You follow the link in the e-mail, and it takes you to a login page. At this page you can edit more stuff: change your password, add books to recommend, and so forth. You make some edits, and click "save". Now you're still at the same page, it's just added a little note indicating that your changes have been saved. But nowhere does it have any place to actually write a post.

I stared at this page bleakly for a while, then went and did some actual work, then went back to staring at it bleakly. Finally  I noticed a little link in the corner leading to "my account". Hunh, I thought, am I not already at "my account"? But I clicked it. This took me to my "account dashboard"! This page boasts a "my friends" section and also a "corkboard" (The heck is a corkboard?) as well as a menu called "my tools."

(Was it Microsoft that started prefixing first person possessives to make everything look more friendly? Maybe that worked once, but now it is just aggravating. And ambiguous. Are you suggesting that the tools actually belong to me, the user, or are you emphasizing that you, the website, are generously allowing me to use your tools? Either way it's patronizing and a waste of space.)

Anyway, "write blog" is one of these tools, so now I'm in business! Hooray! And, SB, don't take it personally. No one can do UI properly. Not even my own school, which apparently offers the number one science graduate program in the entire NATION, can make reasonable UIs.

Check out the screenshot below. This is how I enroll in classes. Isn't it great that the exact same set of links is at the top AND bottom of the page, just to give you more stuff to look at? Also, note the instructions suggest that you "select the term and click Change." Anyone see an option to select a term? Or a button labeled "Change"? Nope, I don't either! Another fun fact: it's impossible to "proceed to step 2 of 3" as such. All you can do is keep clicking through those pale green buttons, and eventually, if you look to the upper right at the retro sci-fi "1-2-3", you will notice that the 2, instead of the 1, has become highlighted. It's like a bread crumb, indicating you're on the right track!

 

My husband and I went to Miyazaki's new film knowing only its title. We hadn't even seen any promotional posters, let alone the trailer. As Anton said, "I kinda like the idea of going to see a movie that I'll love without knowing anything about it."

Well, as it turned out, we didn't love it. Spoilers commence.

It began as a marine biologist's dream--gorgeous underwater scenes that weren't all about dolphins and turtles, with plenty of gooey invertebrates, and actual plankton! Plus a message of environmental conservation--a magician who's angry with humans for harming the oceans, and a rather bleak and frightening scene of a trawl net tearing up the already polluted ocean bottom. Classic Miyazaki, right? But (in my opinion) the movie just didn't sustain the awesome.

So I rewrote it.

Before posting my version of Ponyo, though, I figured I owed the reader some explanation of why I was so discontent with Miyazaki's version. But I was too lazy to write a movie review myself, so I poked around online until I found a nicely articulate one that addressed my concerns*.

According to this review, the problem is just that I'm an adult. Little kids, apparently, don't care if a story is "chock-a-block with inconsistent internal logic, head-scratching plot turns and nonsensical story progression." Grown-ups do. And I cared, oh, how I cared! The movie was crammed with logic hiccups--the worst for me was the total lack of distinction between seawater and tap water. Apparently Ponyo is the most euryhaline fish ever.

Two salient points from the review I will quote in full:

It's light as a feather, with little to no real meaning or subtext - the wizard's generic dislike of humanity doesn't fuel the main conflict (which is hardly much of a conflict at all, really) and is more of a side note than a real theme within the film . . .

. . . there's one character - Sosuke's mother, Lisa - who provides something of a ground for adults, and is a delight every time she's on screen. She is portrayed as a strong, caring, rational and totally modern mother figure, with plenty of human flaws peeking through the cracks. Her tender and realistic relationship with Sosuke - and ultimately, Ponyo - is a big highlight of the film, and her scenes provide a subtle but potent refuge for adult viewers who may need a break from the tempest of fairytale madness that inhabits the rest of the story.

I was reading this after rewriting the story, and I recognized these as the very story elements that I'd changed! I desperately wanted the wizard's dislike of humanity to fuel the main conflict (and for there to actually be conflict at all), and I wanted more of Lisa. So here's my version, somewhat validated by the opinions of a random Anime News Network reviewer. I tried to keep some of the Miyazaki feeling by not overthinking the plot too much . . .

Ponyo On The Cliff By The Sea

rewritten from the movie by Hayao Miyazaki, which was, in turn, inspired by Hans Christian Anderson's "The Little Mermaid" (yes really)

A magician named Fujimoto lives far out to sea in a beautiful submarine laboratory. Once he was human, but he grew to despise humanity for its careless disregard of the earth, especially the ocean. Angered by rampant pollution, habatat destruction, and overfishing, he used his magic arts to change himself so he could live and breathe in the sea. He spoke with sharks, chatted with cuttlefish, and danced with many other creatures, deep and strange and nameless. From among his aquatic acquaintances, he took many wives, and for the children they bore, he built a garden on his submarine.

The children have food, and room to play, and the company of their siblings, but they miss their mothers, who stayed behind in their reefs and rocks and nests. The magician is a neglectful father. He tecahes them magic when it suits him, for he will need their help in his master scheme to cleanse the ocean of human abuse once and for all. But most of his time is absorbed in other parts of his plan, and the children are left to amuse themselves.

One of his daughters is a magic little fish named Ponyo. She is not the eldest or the youngest, nor even the cleverest or most beautiful. Nevertheless this story is about her, for one day she manages to squirm out of the magician's garden, and finds herself free in the wide open sea. She catches a ride on the bell of a passing jellyfish, who takes her all the way to the waters of a small coastal town.

Leaving the jellyfish to explore on her own, Ponyo suddenly finds herself scooped into a fishing boat's trawl net. As it drags along the bottom, the net churns silt into the water. Ponyo can hardly see, and she has to dodge rocks, bottles, and all the other fish and shrimp trapped in the net. She gets stuck in a bottle, but luckily, she and the bottle are both so small that they slip right through one of the holes in the net.

With her tail sticking out of the bottle's mouth, Ponyo tries to swim towards the surface. A wave picks up her bottle and washes it onto the sand of a small beach.

On a cliff above this little beach is a little house, far enough from the town that it has its own water well and a generator for electricity. In this little house live a mother and a father and their little son, Sosuke. Sosuke's mother, Lisa, works in a nursing home, and dreams about saving the polluted, overfished ocean. Sosuke's father, Koichi, is the captain of a fishing boat, and he has to spend many days away from his family. When he's gone, Lisa is lonely and resentful, and when he's home, they argue about fishing and conservation. Sosuke misses his father, and wants his mother to be happy, and doesn't have any friends to play with because he lives so far away from the town. He spends a lot of time by himself at the seashore.

He finds Ponyo on the beach, in the morning before school starts, and frees her from the bottle. She doesn't want to go back in the ocean, so he fills a bucket with seawater and puts her in it. His mother is calling that it's time to go, so he rushes back up to the house and into the car, lovingly carrying his bucket along.

In the car, Sosuke shares his breakfast with Ponyo, who decides she loves human food. He introduces her to the old ladies at the nursing home, and to the other kids in school. As Ponyo learns more about the human world, she uses her magic to become more and more human. By the end of the day, when Sosuke and Ponyo ride home with Lisa, Ponyo isn't a fish any longer--she's a little girl. Lisa is surprised, but takes it in stride, and decides to keep Ponyo for the night.

After Sosuke and Ponyo are asleep, Lisa goes outside to sit by the ocean. She is glad that her son has found a friend to play with, but also sad, because Sosuke is her only companion when Koichi's gone. She starts talking to the ocean about how much she wants to take care of it, but doesn't know what to do.

Meanwhile, the magician Fujimoto has finished his spell to cleanse the earth of human pollution, and is looking for a human vector to release it into the world. He sees his opportunity in Lisa, and invites her into the ocean, encasing her in a bubble of air and showing her all the wonders under the water. Sosuke sees his mother leave and screams for her to come back. She doesn't hear him, but Ponyo wakes up and asks him what's wrong. He tells her what he saw. Ponyo realizes that it was her magician father, who is trying to destroy all humans. They go after Lisa to warn her.

Fujimoto convinces Lisa that she can save the ocean by taking his spell and setting it free on land, but he doesn't tell her what it will do. Before she can take it home, though, Ponyo and Sosuke find her. Ponyo tells Lisa what Fujimoto is really up to, and Sosuke reminds her that she loves Koichi, even though he's a fisherman, and wants to protect humanity, even when it's foolish. They destroy the spell, which causes a terrible storm, and turns Ponyo back into a fish.

The other part of Fujimoto's plan, after he killed all humans, was to have his many magical children travel around the oceans, using their magic to clean up all the pollution and plastic, and restoring the balance of nature. Ponyo suggests that all the other children go out and start doing that now. Fujimoto claims that it's no good to clean up while humans are still around, because they'll just mess it all up again.

Ponyo insists she's going to turn back into a human, so Fujimoto's spell, if he creates it again, will kill her too--and Lisa and Sosuke, whom she loves. Finally Fujimoto promises to stop trying to kill humans, as long as they work to stop polluting the oceans and fish sustainably.

The rest of Fujimoto's children all swim out of the garden to visit their mothers and begin the great cleanup. Everyone is happy, except that Ponyo finds that she can't turn herself human again, because she lost her magic when they destroyed the spell. Fujimoto agrees to use his magic to make her human, if Sosuke will prove he returns her love by kissing her when they reach the surface. In the magician's eyes, this is the first step towards redeeming humanity.

Lisa, Sosuke, and Ponyo swim back to the surface, where Ponyo turns back into a girl, and Koichi fishes the three of them out of the water onto his boat. Lisa and Koichi kiss too, and start making plans for the human side of ocean conservation.

Well! I'm finally home from my two-month research collaboration in La Jolla. Any day now (any day! really!) I'll be posting a distillation of my experiences: Plankton Sorting and Identifying for the Layperson. It'll be riveting.

First, though, I'm going to wrap up the unexpected adventures that resulted from a few dozen of my study organisms washing up on the beaches while I was there.

I already wrote about the fun and inky times of finding and dissecting squid on the beach, with the help of some wonderfully enthusiastic chance companions who provided a knife and plastic bags for my samples. Well, they were so grateful--for what was probably the most unappetizing experience of a lifetime--that they insisted on treating me to dinner at White Sands, their (very posh) retirement community. Baffling! But very sweet! Here we are, the squid dinner crew:


The company was outstanding, the food was delicious, and the view is unbeatable--they're right on the beach, watching every sunset over the Pacific. Apparently I'm not old enough to apply for residency, but man, I know where I'm going on Februrary 19th, 2048!

Meanwhile, other people were losing their heads over the whole business--first the squid sensed an earthquake, then they started attacking divers, and wait a minute, they were GIANT squid, weren't they? Actually they were not. Big thanks to Deep Sea News for setting the record straight.

No thanks to the New York Times, who ran the disappointingly sensationalist and poorly-fact-checked AP article, with the addition of this hilariously captioned picture:

John Hyde, a marine biologist, and a jumbo flying squid, now swarming off San Diego.

That is the actual caption--no substitutions, exchanges, or refunds. Was the copy editor so harried that she missed the verb taking two subjects, or was she so entertained that she let it slide? I hope it was the latter.

Finally, the night before I left town, I had the wonderful opportunity to speak about squid to the San Diego Dive Club at their monthly meeting. I started off by introducing all the squid in the area--

 
--but I know more about Dosidicus than the others, so I spent a lot of time skillfully steering the conversation towards that species. It was an awesome discussion; I found the audience was more engaged and curious than those at many scientific meetings. Of course, it was 8pm at the La Jolla Brewhouse--a rather different venue from most conference presentations.

After meeting so many interesting and interested people, I was sorry to be leaving the next day! I hadn't even made time for a dive, just a few short swims and snorkels. Next time I'll get on scuba and look for some squid . . .

For now, it's good to be home, reacquainting myself with the mammals in my life.

If you haven't already, check out the video Trouble in Paradise. I'll wait.

Okay? Now. Take a deep breath and calm down.

The video is a beautifully filmed and narrated work of fiction. Inspired by real events, but fiction nonetheless. Yes, there are Humboldt squid in the waters and beaches of La Jolla. But is it true that "an undersea earthquake has driven these predators close to the shore"? No. Is it likely that local marine creatures "sense an alien presence"--other than divers shining lights in their nocturnal faces? Probably not. And the most important question of all . . .

"WILL ANYTHING SURVIVE THE NIGHT???"

I'm pretty sure there are still octopuses, horn sharks, and divers in the water, along with the squid, so it would appear that the answer is a dull and unequivocal yes.

Humboldt (a.k.a. jumbo, but not giant) squid have been swimming in California waters and washing up on Southern California beaches every summer for years. The biggest stranding events were in 2002 and 2005 and received abundant media coverage, but minor strandings in the intervening years passed pretty much under the radar. This summer's stranding has (so far) been one of the more modest. So why all the fanfare?

I don't know for sure, any more than I know for sure why the squid stranded in the first place, but here's a plausible scenario. Several squid strand during the week, but not many people notice or think much of it. Come Saturday morning, not only is it the beginning of the weekend, but an earthquake has just jostled people out of bed, so now there are more people on the beach and they're more alert. They notice the squid, and with the earthquake fresh in their minds, they connect the two. The media jump on it. What a great headline!

By the time some responsible reporters decide to interview scientists, the quake has been inextricably tied to the squid. The actual content of the story is now debunking the connection, but the headline still reads Humboldt Squid Wash Ashore in La Jolla After Quake. Even National Geographic asks: Dozens of Jumbo Squid Beached After Quake--Coincidence? Please, Natty Geo, don't make it a question. It is an answer. Coincidence!

Now people are excited about squid, and some recreational divers decide to hang out with them in the water, rather than on the beach. Humboldt squid are active, inquisitive sorts, and sure, sometimes they can be a little grabby. BAM! Now we have a whole new sensational angle on the story. The Associated Press article many news outlets are using is called Jumbo Squid Invade San Diego Shores, Spook Divers and I just can't resist peering through a few scientific holes:

- Folks always want to describe the Humboldt squid beak as "razor-sharp." I really wish they wouldn't. For one thing, it is a classic cliché, and for another, it's plain wrong. Just from handling them, it's quite easy to cut oneself on razors and nearly impossible to cut oneself on squid beaks. Certainly, the squid could break your skin with its beak if it chose to bite--but so could a human with its teeth, and no one ever calls human teeth "razor-sharp."

- It's misleading to describe Humboldt squid as "deep-sea giants" and imply they're not usually seen near the surface. Their natural habit, in both Mexico and California, is to migrate daily between surface and deep waters--most likely following their prey.

- Speaking of clichés, I know I start to sound like a broken record, but really, I have never heard anyone in Mexico refer to the Humboldt squid as diablo rojo (red devil). It's just calamar gigante. Boring but true!

- "Roger Uzun, a veteran scuba diver and amateur underwater videographer, swam with a swarm of the creatures for about 20 minutes and said they appeared more curious than aggressive. The animals taste with their tentacles, he said, and seemed to be touching him and his wet suit to determine if he was edible." Emphasis mine, because I don't know of any evidence that squid get chemosensory input (smell or taste) from their arms or tentacles. Go ahead and quote him saying he thinks they're more curious than aggressive, but not that they taste with their tentacles. The first statement is a valid personal impression, the second is scientific misinformation. Remember, this guy is a diver, not a biologist. In fact, he's the one who made that gorgeous (but fictitious) Trouble in Paradise video.

Now that we've come full circle, I am done being a cantankerous wet blanket of a scientist. So let me tell you my favorite true thing that I learned from all this media coverage:

"According to local news reports, some beachgoers in the city of La Jolla attempted to throw the squid back into the water to save them from circling seagulls."

Isn't that sweet? Despite all the talk of red devils and carnivorous calamari, here is proof positive of human empathy for other living creatures. Even though they are slimy weird aliens, not cute fuzzy mammals, people weren't out there taunting the squid, stepping on them, or cutting them up. They were trying to save them.

I think that is awesome.

Yesterday I had a snorkeling date with a friend at La Jolla Cove (not to be confused with La Jolla Shores, where I was on Saturday . . . La Jollans really like the name of their town I think) so once again I was off to the beach. This time I cleverly brought my own knife, plastic bags, and measuring tape (newly purchased). I also warned the friend that if there were more squid on the beach, science might interfere with snorkeling.

Yes. Of course there were more squid on the beach. There were also more people on the beach--it was a summer Sunday in sunny SoCal, and there was a concert in the park. It was packed. I wish I had a picture of the crowd that gathered as soon as I started dissecting. My extremely patient friend referred to it, not unkindly, as a squid mob.

Just like the day before, it was wonderful and educational, with lots of curious kids and adults, great questions, and so forth. But the best part by far was one woman who came up to me and asked "Were you at La Jolla Shores yesterday?" I said I was. The woman gushed, "You showed those squid to my daughter and my husband and she told me all about it when she came home, she had such a good time! Thank you!"

This sort of thing does wonders for one's self-esteem, but then she went on:

Beach woman: She said you showed them a penis and she got to see where the sperm comes out! She wouldn't stop talking about it!
Me: Is that . . . good?

Apparently it was okay, or at least this particular mother thought it was a hoot, because she was laughing as she told me. She went on to ask me a bunch of great questions about the squid and the strandings.

All the onlookers were eager to inform me that there were more squid just on the other side of the rocks, so I tromped over there and fell in with a most helpful young lady, maybe in her early teens, who guided me over to the squid, took notes on mantle length, sex, and maturity, and asked lots of great questions. Young lady, wherever you are, you rock very much! As does the French family who gathered around, the father translating my explanations for his children.

Father: Poulpe?
Me: Calamar?
Father: Ah, oui, oui! Calamar!

Finally, I saw one fully intact squid in a tidepool, complete with head, arms, tentacles, everything (all the other squid had been partially pulled apart by seagulls and curious beachgoers). But it had clearly been sitting in that tidepool for a very long time and it was horribly putrid. I had a little game of chicken with the onlookers:

Onlooker: If you're going to dissect that, we'll watch.
Me: I'll dissect it if you'll pull it out for me.
Onlooker: Not me. Maybe my son will do it.
Me: Go for it! I'll open it up and you can see what's inside.
Onlooker's son: Yeah, sure.
Onlooker: Really, you're going to get it out for her?
Son: No way.

So that one didn't get dissected, and it is probably still sitting in the tidepool, slowly and inexorably decomposing into primordial ooze.

Oh, and I did eventually get to go snorkeling. GARIBALDI!

And then I put my stomach in the freezer.

For over a month now I've been living in La Jolla, mere blocks from the beach, without having time to touch the ocean. Yesterday I finally got fed up with being too busy to swim, so I just threw on my swimsuit and board shorts and walked straight down the street and into the water. Joy!

After a swim, I took a little walk along the beach to dry off. As I approached the curve of the beach where wave action piles all of the flotsam--mostly kelp and seagrass--I spotted a small gathering of people pointing curiously at something. I went to find out what it was, and possibly offer my services as a marine biologist.

In fact, I had a sneaking suspicion it might be a Humboldt squid, since I'd heard that divers were starting to see them in the water, and I'd seen photos of one washed up on the beach last week. Lo and behold, it was!

I introduced myself: "It is a squid! Hi, I study these! Yes, I study this particular species, and yes, I will study this specific instantiation of it before your very eyes! Wonder and delight!"

Maybe I didn't say all that; I don't remember.

The first people I met were three fantastically friendly and enthusiastic older folk. The women were Ann and Carolyn, and I regret not getting the man's name. They wanted to know everything, and were interested in anything I had to say. They asked if I was going to take the whole squid, and I said no, probably not the whole thing, but I quickly realized I ought to take some samples, to serve both science and outreach. Ann apparently lives right on the beach--even closer than me--and very happily went home to fetch me a knife and some bags.

Meanwhile, I stood guard over the squid. I dragged it up higher so it wouldn't get washed away, and started an informal Q&A with the rest of the curious onlookers. They were mostly young families: kids dragging their parents (oh no johnny that's disgusting) or parents dragging their kids (eww mom that's gross). One kid looked at it and simply observed, "Wow, that's a lot of bait."

Another kid--one of my favorites, whose name I didn't get--wanted to see, touch, and know everything. He begged me to puncture the ink sac. He wanted to know if I had a website (I sent him to the lab's) and if I would post the results of my sample analysis. His mother called to him that it was time to go, and he hollered back, "Can I see the other one too? She's going to do the other one!"

Because there was more than one squid, oh yes indeed. At the second squid our motley troop acquired a new family: Chase, his sister, and his father. According to the father, Chase was something of a squid scientist already. This thrilled me beyond words.

I handed out sucker rings like candy, and extracted the buccal mass, complete with beak. Since there were two squid, I asked Chase and his sister if I could give the first one to Nameless Kid (who'd asked first) and could they share the second one? (They could.) Nameless, whose mother was getting insistent, took his beak and took off. But in just a few minutes he returned and handed it to Chase, with the sad news that he wasn't allowed to take it home. Then he disappeared.

Mother of Nameless is probably cranky now. She woke her son up this morning and discovered that his hands still smell like squid, despite how many times she's forced him to wash. She wishes I had stayed home, never gone to the beach, and never handed her child a smelly icky lump of squid mouth. I'm sorry, Mrs. Nameless! I didn't think it through!

The Chase family, though, were all equally and completely enthusiastic. I love that family. Wherever you are, Chase et al., you guys rock! They had heard there were more squid over in the rocky tidepools, so we headed that way. As we walked, Chase's sister told me, with a big smile, "I've never seen a real squid before, only on TV." Chase's father gallantly helped my loyal assistants, Ann and Carolyn, to navigate the rocks. The ladies were still smiling and enjoying themselves. They had stood back while I was playing with the kids, but seemed to be having a delightful time anyway. They'd already gotten their sucker rings, Carolyn for her grandchildren and Ann for "my baby sister, who's seventy-four going on four".

Chase found two squid sloshing back and forth in a deep pool. As I was trying to accurately gauge the depth of pool to figure out if I would drown while retrieving them, Chase's father simply plunged in to pull them out.

These were much better dissections. They weren't exactly fresh dead, but because they'd been in the water they were clean and less molested by birds. One of them even had a piece of meat (probably another squid) in its beak--its last meal! I love when that happens. More kids and families gathered around. Every single person was fabulous. Without exception. I could have happily talked to them forever. I pulled out a pen, punctured an ink sac, and handed the pen around so all the kids could draw. I popped the lens out of the one intact eye I could find. At Chase's insistence, I cut open a head so we could look at the brain.

The two beach squid and the first pool squid had all been immature females, but the last and smallest was a mature male. I actually squealed in scientific delight, and without really thinking about it, plunged into a full reproductive explanation to a bunch of 4-10 year old kids and their parents. And I mean full. "Here's the spermatophoric complex, where sperm is made. And here's the penis where it comes out. Look, these are spermatophores, little packets of sperm! See how they pop open in my hand? Isn't that cool?"

Kid: "What's sperm?"
Me: "Well, it's what mixes with eggs to make baby squid."

Um, yeah, that wasn't the most well-thought-out explanation, but it wasn't a question I was particularly prepared for. C'mon, how do you not know what sperm is? (That wasn't one of the four-year-olds, by the way.) Some parents seemed uncomfortable, or maybe just quiet, but no one got mad or ran away, and most of them nodded and looked on with interest.

The tidepool female may not have had nice ripe orange eggs for me to compare with the sperm, but she had her own new biology lesson: she was full of tapeworms! They were quite large enough to pull out and watch squirming in the palm of your hand--which many of the kids were delighted to do.

Around this time I happened to glance at my watch, and it was 5:30, a time at which I was supposed to be somewhere else, and preferably not dressed in a swimsuit and board shorts. Even more preferably not smelling like dead squid. Well, such is the life of a marine biologist, I thought philosophically. Fortunately the dissections were winding down, the audience was fading, and it seemed like the right time to wrap things up.

I couldn't thank Ann and Carolyn enough, but they insisted they'd had the better part of the bargain. Wherever you ladies are, I want you to know that you're the most awesome impromptu assistants I've ever had! Edit: Right after posting this, I got an e-mail from Carolyn, who had cleverly tracked down my address, as I was much too scatterbrained to provide it at the time. She sent all of the pictures that now appear in this entry, which deserves another huge thank-you!

On my way back, carrying my bag of goodies, I saw some people checking out one of the squid I'd already dissected. I stopped to chat with them, then reluctantly excused myself: "I have to go put my stomachs in the freezer."

Beach guy: "That's something you don't hear very often."
Me: "Well, if you're me, actually . . . you do."

Also, if you're me, it pays to keep using your squid-ink-stained clothing as everyday clothing, because every day could turn out to be a squid ink day. See, yesterday I was wearing my wonderful board shorts that I bought in NZ, then immediately took on a research cruise and stained with squid ink. This bummed me out for a while, so I kept them in the bottom of a drawer. Then I got used to it and just started wearing them again. Then I started to think I really should buy nice new board shorts for normal times, and keep the inky ones for, well, inky times. But it turns out to be good that I did not do that, because yesterday was a normal time, when I would have been wearing normal shorts, and then they would have gotten ink on them and I would have had two pairs of inky shorts. And who needs that kind of redundancy?

The moral: You never know when you might run into dead squid. Then you'll have to dissect them. And teach the whole beach about squid. And really, that is the reason you became a marine biologist.