It is probably wrong to touch, even gently, these creatures. But even now I find it difficult to resist
In her book Theatres of Glass, Rebecca Stott writes about the Victorian craze for home aquariums – which swept London in the 1850s, with people taking animals from the seaside and making miniature rock pools at home in large glass enclosures or pie dishes. The craze did not last long; people didn’t have a way to oxygenate the water and most of what they collected died.
But among the people who loved the idea that you could create a rock pool at home was Mary Ann Evans – who wrote as George Eliot. She and her partner, the philosopher and critic George Henry Lewes, spent two summers hunting sea anemones in the town of Ilfracombe, where they were “absolutely fascinated” by what they saw, Stott says. Commenting on how difficult they found it at first to spot the anemones they had been told were as “plenty as blackberries”, Eliot wrote that it is “characteristic enough of the wide difference there is between having eyes and seeing”.
Lewes, meanwhile, wrote in an article for the Westminster Review:
We must always remember the great drama which is incessantly acted out in every drop of water, on every inch of earth. Then and only then do we realise the mighty complexity, the infinite splendour of nature. Then and only then do we feel how full of life, varied, intricate, marvellous, world within world, yet nowhere without space to move is this single planet, on the crust of which we stand and look out into shoreless space peopled by myriads of other planets, larger, if not more wonderful than ours.
Viciously, then, I lock my door.
The gas-fire breathes. The wind outside
Ushers in evening rain. Once more
Uncontradicting solitude
Supports me on its giant palm;
And like a sea-anemone
Or simple snail, there cautiously
Unfolds, emerges, what I am.
At nights birds hammered my unborn
child’s heart to strength, each strike bringing
bones and spine to glow, her lungs pestled
loud as the sea I was raised a sea anemone
among women who cursed their hearts
out,
Helen Sullivan is a Guardian journalist. She is writing a book for Scribner Australia
Do you have an animal, insect or other subject you’d like to see profiled by this columnist? Email helen.sullivan@theguardian.com
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
12/16/2024 - 09:00
‘Increasingly worried’: more than a quarter of a million waterbirds disappear from eastern Australia
12/16/2024 - 09:00
One of the world’s longest continuous bird counts has dashed the ‘wistful optimism’ of scientists hoping for a La Niña-driven recovery
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Drier conditions have led to waterbird numbers in eastern Australia plummeting by 50% compared with 2023, one of the country’s largest wildlife surveys has found.
Conducted annually since 1983, the eastern Australian waterbird aerial survey is one of the world’s longest continuous bird counts as well as one of the largest by geographical distance covered.
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12/16/2024 - 09:00
Peter Dutton’s path ‘would be an absolute failure’ in decarbonising the electricity sector and meeting Australia’s emission targets, analyst says
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Australia would emit far more climate pollution – more than 1.7bn extra tonnes of carbon dioxide – between now and 2050 under the Coalition’s nuclear-focused plan than under Labor’s renewable energy dominated policy, analysts say.
The opposition last week released modelling of its “coal-to-nuclear” plan that would slow the rollout of renewable energy and batteries and instead rely on more fossil fuel generation until a nuclear industry could be developed, mostly after 2040.
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12/16/2024 - 07:58
Stretch of river in West Yorkshire was first to get bathing status in 2020 but has since recorded poor water quality
The first river to be given bathing water status in England is in limbo waiting for the Environment Agency (EA) to approve crucial nature-based solutions that are part of £43m in improvements to cut sewage pollution.
In the West Yorkshire town of Ilkley, campaigners were the first to use the EU-derived bathing water regulations to drive a cleanup of their river. But since part of the River Wharfe was granted bathing water status in 2020, water quality has persistently been recorded as poor, most recently in the latest classifications last month. If it remains poor next year, when the status is up for renewal, it could lose its bathing water designation.
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World Ocean Explorer Wins Gold Medal Serious Simulation Award from Serious Play Annual International Competition
10/26/2023 - 14:35
For Immediate Release October 19, 2023
Sedgwick, Maine USA World Ocean Explorer, a 3D virtual aquarium and educational simulation, was recently cited for excellence, winning a Gold Medal Award in the 2023 International Serious Play Awards Program.
World Ocean Explorer is an innovative 3D virtual aquarium designed for educational exploration of the world’s oceans. With interactive exhibits and a lobby space, visitors can immerse themselves in realistic marine environments, including a DEEP SEA exhibit funded by Schmidt Ocean Institute, showcasing unprecedented deep-sea discoveries off Australia. Targeted at 3rd graders and beyond, this immersive experience offers a range of perspectives on the ocean environment and can be explored through guided tours or user-controlled interfaces. Visit DEEP SEA at worldoceanexplorer.org/deep-sea-aquarium.html.
Serious Play Conference brings together professionals who are exploring the use of game-based learning, sharing their experience, and working together to shape the future of training and education. For more information on Serious Play Award Program visit seriousplayconf.com/international-serious-play-award-programs.
World Ocean Explorer is a transformative virtual aquarium designed to deepen understanding of the world ocean and amplify connection for young people worldwide. Organized around the principles of Ocean Literacy and the Next Gen Science Standards, World Ocean Explorer brings the wonder and knowledge of ocean species and systems to students in formal and informal classrooms, absolutely free to anyone with a good Internet connection. As an advocate for the ocean through communications, World Ocean Observatory believes there is no better investment in the future of the sustainable ocean than through a new approach to educational engagement that excites, informs, and motivates students to explore the wonders of our marine world and to understand the pervasive connection and implication for our future, inherent in the protection and conservation of all aspects of our ocean world.
World Ocean Explorer presents an astonishing 3-dimensional simulated aquarium visit, organized to reveal the wonders of undersea life, with layers of detailed data and information to augment the emotional connection made to the astonishing beauty and complexity of the dynamic ocean. Within each of the virtual exhibits, students visit exemplary theme-based sites with myriad opportunities to understand the larger perspectives of scientific knowledge as organized and visualized to dramatize the impact and change on ocean life as a result of natural and human-generated events. Through immersion among displays, mixed media and 3D models, the experience of an aquarium visit will be brought into classrooms or home school environments as a free, accessible, always available opportunity for teaching and learning. All of this will be available to a world audience without physical limitation or cost. World Ocean Explorer, a project of the World Ocean Observatory, receives support from the Seth Sprague Educational and Charitable Foundation, Visual Solutions Lab, the Climate Change Institute, the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation, and The Fram Museum Oslo. To learn more about the current and future exhibits of World Ocean Explorer, visit worldoceanexplorer.org.
media contact
Trisha Badger, Managing Director, World Ocean Observatory | director@thew2o.net +12077011069
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