Mysteries At The Beach

Instead of MY beach, yesterday I ended up at Esquimalt Lagoon. It was one of the nicer days we've had lately and the whole entire shoreline was packed with pesky humans. It took me a little while to find a nice hidden spot in the sun so I could read a little of my Short History of Nearly Everything, in the hopes of finding a little perspective.

We are astoundingly, sumptuously, radiantly ignorant of life beneath the seas. Even the most substantial ocean creatures are often remarkably little known to us - including the most mighty of them all, the great blue whale, a creature of such leviathan proportions that (to quote David Attenborough) its "tongue weighs as much as an elephant, its heart is the size if a car and some of its blood vessels are so wide that you could swim down them." (some excellent photos and videos are here) It is the most gargantuan beast that Earth has yet produced, bigger even than the most cumbrous dinosaurs. Yet the lives of blue whales are largely a mystery to us. Much of the time we have no idea where they are - where they go to breed, for instance, or what routes they follow to get there. What little we know of them comes almost entirely from eavesdropping on their songs, but even these are a mystery. Blue whales will sometimes break off a song, then pick it up again at the same spot six months later. Sometimes they strike up with a new song, which no member can have heard before but which each already knows. How they do this is not remotely understood. And these are animals that must routinely come to the surface to breathe.

For animals that need never surface, obscurity can be even more tantalizing. Consider the fabled giant squid. Though nothing on the scale of the blue whale, it is a decidedly substantial animal, with eyes the size of soccer balls and trailing tentacles that can reach lengths of sixty feet. It weighs nearly a ton and is Earth's largest invertebrate. If you dumped on in a normal household swimming pool, there wouldn't be much room for anything else. Yet no scientist - no person as far as we know - has ever seen a giant squid alive. Zoologists have devoted careers to trying to capture, or just glimpse, living giant squid and have always failed. (apparently recently there are pictures here). They are known mostly from being washed up on beaches - particularly, for unknown reasons, the beaches of the South Island of New Zealand. (one brought up by a trawler near the Falkland Islands is here). They must exist in large numbers because they form a central part of the sperm whale's diet, and sperm whales take a lot of feeding.

aside - The indigestible parts of giant squid, in particular their beaks, accumulate in sperm whale's stomachs into the substance known as ambergris, which is used as a fixative in perfumes. Next time you spray on Chanel No.5, you may wish to reflect that you are dousing yourself in distillate of unseen sea monster.

Sitting on the edge of an ocean that holds such things yet goes so far towards calming the soul. Perspective indeed.

Comments

[Francesca]

I have to say that I love Bill Bryson, bitter, twisted pill that he may be, and thought that A Short History of Nearly Everything was an excellent stab at being a polymath. A great book to read anytime.

But I've also got to say that it's awesome that you have water nearby. The Thames doesn't count, and I miss being near the ocean, giant squid and all.

Aside: You've got to see the new BBC "Planet Earth" series - the first episode had a Great White flipping like a seal. Incredible footage.