Can there be too many jellyfish at one biology blog? No. No, there can’t. This is the famous Jellyfish Lake on the island of Palau, where jellyfish cut off from the sea 12,000 years ago have evolved into docile migratory creatures that live off the food produced by their symbiotic algae. That shot downward into the depths is my favorite.
I post it here to celebrate the fact your blogger has decided to take the plunge and become a certified diver. Though I live in landlocked Colorado, life is too short not to experience ocean life the way I experience land life — particularly for a person with a passion for biodiversity. If I’m ever going to achieve my dream of swimming with whales, it’s a fairly necessary step. Plus I found out about an incredible dive in Hawaii where they take you out at night in 7,000 feet of water, drop you down on a tether 40 feet, and let you watch the nightly ascent of the crazy-cool pelagic (deep ocean) bioluminescent organisms — jellies, ctenophores, crustaceans, etc. Something about the thought of floating out in the Pacific Ocean in the dark with 7,000 feet of water below and glowing organisms all around sends shivers up my spine. It’s the best possible sort of ocean documentary — the one you’re starring in. As soon as I discovered it, I knew I must do it before I die, and the only way to get there is to get SCUBA certified. Q.E.D. (although we’ll see if I’m still singing that tune when I get my credit card bill this month. : ) )
In other news, I have just re-upped on the web address for this site and purchased a few more for good measure. Hence theartfulmaoeba.com has now divided into artfulamoeba.com, theartfulamoeba.net, theartfulamoeba.org, and theartfulamoeba.info. You can reach me by any one you choose. Knock yourself out.
At some point I will also move this blog to my own host service. You may have noticed it is currently hosted at frazer.northerncoloradogrotto.com. That is because the webmasters at my caving club and kindly agreed to lend me some of their unused space. But it would be nice for the domain names for this site to be consistent, so one day soon I’ll move it over and all the frazer.northerncolorado.com links will break. I want to tell you now (and will remind you frequently) so anyone who has linked here has plenty of warning. If you are linking to the blog as a whole, theartfulamoeba.com will always work.
Happy Friday!
Jen
