Oooh, I meant to write about this earlier, but forgot!

I think it was on Saturday evening, there was a David Attenborough documentary on ABC about deep-sea creatures and it reminded me of all sorts of things that I’d seen and learned in the Marine Biology course thing that my friend Krystal and I did at the Flinder’s Uni open day when we were in Year 12.

Not that I’d really forgotten about it, but I’d forgotten about how much I’d been tempted to say “Screw it” to the journalism thing and gun for doing Marine Biology.

It was kind of funny with that day we spent at Flinders, because a whole lot of other people who were there to check out the course were all of these kind of preppy girls who had an attitude of “Oooh, dolphins, pretty fish, nice sea things” to what marine biology would be all about, and they all seemed pretty shocked when what we really looked at in the labs were these sea worms, very unusual sponges and “boring” things like that. Kind of funny!

But the best bit was watching a whole lot of pics that the lecturer had taken when doing some deep-sea exploration (and from other deep-sea explorer’s explorations, too). They were AWESOME!

Especially the bit about the pools of water that’s extra salty and the sea doesn’t merge with it in the Gulf of Mexico. Things just float around on the pools and they’re surrounded by hundreds of muscles that use nutrients from the pools, along with delicate tube worms that do the same. Fantastic stuff!

Oooh, and these white starfish that have arms that are literally up to two metres long and are spindly and vaguely creepy.

A lot of the deep-sea creatures are really freakish, but by the same token, it’s pretty amazing, particularly with things like bioluminescence, withstanding immense PSI pressure, not relying on the sun for energy, that sort of thing.

The grotesque just adds to their appeal, really.

Hmm… how different life might have been if I’d done Marine Biology instead.

http://www.teachers.ash.org.au/jmresources/deep/creatures.html