Short Wave - Dancing Yeti Crabs, Morphing Cuttlefish, Other Stories From The Deep Sea

Episode Date: July 24, 2024

As a kid, Sabrina Imbler loved the ocean. They'd swim and snorkel, following around parrotfish in the water. Later, they tried to learn everything they could about the brightly-colored tropical fish ��� how some create a mucus cocoon at night to protect it from parasites, or how they help keep coral reefs healthy.As they got older, their fascination with sea creatures only grew. Imbler released a collection of essays in 2022 called How Far The Light Reaches: A Life In Ten Sea Creatures. Each chapter focuses on a different marine species – from yeti crabs near hydrothermal vents in the deep sea to the morphing abilities of cuttlefish. Often, these creatures act as a mirror for Imbler to explore parts of their own identity.Want more on the wonders of the deep sea? Email us at [e-mail]. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. As a kid, Sabrina Imbler loved being in the ocean. And snorkeling, following around all kinds of parrot fish. They're big, they don't swim that fast, and I was just, like, obsessed with them. This brightly colored family of tropical fish, who can be heard munching on coral in reefs around the world with their super strong beaks. Sabrina quickly learned everything they could about them, filling their mind with parrotfish facts. At night, they, you know, produce this mucous bubble that they can sleep in.

They are responsible for, like, most of the sand on the reef because of, you know, their jaws that crunched down on coral and disintegrate it. And this was the first time Sabrina realized, wait, fish do more than just swim around all day? It felt like I was getting this little portal into like, what does the parrotfish do when I'm not around? How does it shape its environment? I was like, I, you know, I'm a fish person now.

Like, these are the creatures that I love. Later in life, Sabrina had a writing job, which allowed them to share their fascination with marine organisms. Occasionally I would come across a story that really, like, moved me emotionally. Like Granoledinie Boreo Pacifica, the deep sea octopus, an octopus that made headlines in 2014, when scientists recorded one watching over her eggs for four and a half years. Sabrina read all about them. How... When a mother octopus lays her eggs and begins to brood them, meaning sitting on them, you know, oxygenating them, protecting them from predators, she stops eating.

And then when her eggs hatched, she dies like all mother octopuses do. and I remember just feeling so stunned, like about this sacrifice that felt very unimaginable to me. And in writing about this starving octopus, Sabrina started writing about their own mom. That essay is one of many in their 22 book, How Far the Light Reaches, a Life in Ten Sea Creatures. Each chapter focuses on one marine species, living at a different vertical zone in the Oval. ocean. The book is also a memoir of Sabrina coming into their own as a queer, mixed-race kid from the Bay Area with big feelings and a love of fish. Just like trying to understand these animals, understanding their biology, their evolution, like their ecology, how they live and

move throughout the world, I think it would always sort of make me turn those questions on myself and think about myself as an organism, right? Like someone who is just as interested in survival in adaptation as any of the creatures that I was writing about. So today on the show, A Life in Sea Creatures with Sabrina Imbler. The surprising, sturdiness, goldfish, how cuttlefish morph, and why we should all be dancing like Yeti crabs. I'm Emily Kwong, and you're listening to Shortwave, the science podcast from NPR. Okay, so you grew up in the Bay Area, and your first chapter is called If You Flush a Goldfish, and it's set at Petco, where at 13, you staged a protest in the aquarium section, trying to convince people

not to buy these fish. What were you trying to tell people then? So when I was 13, I had read about goldfish and their biology and sort of what the experience is like for a goldfish to live in a bowl, which is an incredibly small environment. And I was so surprised to learn, right, that goldfish actually should live many years, like sometimes up to 20 years. Goldfish have just this very hardy nature to them and can survive, like these conditions that would kill most other fish. Goldfish pee a lot, and so they are sort of just surrounded by their own ammonia in these bowls. And I think one of the things that I was most struck by is learning that goldfish are indeterminate growers. So a goldfish that you put in a bowl will only ever grow to the size of the bowl.

But if you put a goldfish in, you know, a big tank of water or in a pond or something, the goldfish will grow much, much bigger. As big as a cantaloupe, a pineapple, various large, large fruits. And so I think I just wanted to tell people both how they were, you know, maybe unintentionally harming their pet, constricting its size, its life. Yeah, I mean, and since leaving the bay and writing this book, your life has kind of grown in size, much like the goldfish. Okay, so there are 10 essays in this book. I've picked two of my favorites that focus on your relationship to gender and self-expression and queer life. And I want to start with this chapter called Morphing Like a Cuddlefish. Okay, so Cuddlefish are marine mollusks that are able to shift and change their appearance.

through manipulating light and a lot of other fancy properties. Sabrina, what do you love about cuttlefish? You know, I really appreciate that question because I think octopuses have had a big moment, are continuing to have a moment. And I'm like, cuttlefish are right here. And like, no one is making a documentary about them. But I mean, I just think they're absolutely incredible. You know, cuttlefish can change the color of their body.

the texture of their body. They have these cool little muscle sacks that they can sort of squeeze and hold firm and sort of lock into place so that they can transform from this very smooth animal to like a very prickly looking animal. And I think the most incredible thing that I've ever seen in cuttlefish

is their pattern called Passing Cloud, which is sort of a moving, dark shape. that just moves across the Cuddlefish's body, almost like a conveyor belt. And it's almost as if they turn their bodies into like a projector that you can put a movie on or put a film on. And so I think I was just always really fascinated

with the Cuddlefish's ability to transform their body. And as I was writing this book, I came across all of these stories that were like Cuddlefish, you know, don these devious acts of drag or like transvestite cuttlefish, like sneak in and fool others. And it was, I mean, it was astonishing. Like, science publications, like, I trust to be objective. And I think it was a very clear example, right, of us placing like a moral human judgment on just this strategy that has evolved in a species that doesn't really have a moral

element. And a lot of these headlines really seem to scapegoat, you know, this marginalized queer community, right, as, you know, performing a disguise or being in disguise. Versus it being who they are. Yeah. And like that's really harmful language that is still like placed upon many trans people, especially trans women as being in disguise. And I, I was really interested in sort of trying to conceptualize the Cuddlefish as just all of, all of. these patterns, right, they're all authentic to the cuttlefish. And I came across this really cool example of a pattern called splotch, which female cuttlefish use only around other female cuttlefish. And scientists did these experiments where they'd put like two female cuttlefish together and they would both sort of have this aggressive display and sort of display their arms against each other. And then as soon as one of them would give this pattern, this visual signal called splotch, which is just kind of like little white splotches on their body. The other one

would splotch back. And I was like, that's like what a beautiful example of like, you know, an affirmation of safety and of sameness of saying like, I'm just like you. Like I mean you no harm. And yeah, I think just, you know, thinking about splotch, thinking about all of these sort of gender bending patterns, it just really made me think about, you know, what are the ways in which I've changed my own body for others around me, for others in my community. How would I want to change my body for myself? Yeah. Something else we noticed throughout the book is just how important places are. You know, even the title of the book is based on the different kind of vertical zones of the ocean are inspired by.

And in one chapter you write about the Yeti crabs living near methane seeps at the bottom of the ocean. And what's so special about these crabs making their life there? Yeti crabs live around these sort of oases of heat on the seafloor called hydrothermal vents or cold seeps. And they're just areas where sort of seawater trickles down into porous oceanic rock on the seafloor. And then it's heated by the magma underneath the seafloor. And then it rises up again in the sort of like surging plume of geothermally heated water. And so while most of the deep sea, it's just like a hair above freezing, these hydrothermal vents and cold seeps are like these oases that are like the temperature of a kitty pool. Sounds lovely.

Yeah, they have to live in these really, really cramped quarters because there's only so much warmth around these vents. And so they all just like live right on top of each other just packed together. There are these little tiny flecks of like poop and snot. and decaying flesh called marine snow, which sort of have this dazzling effect as it slowly rains down on this horde of crabs. But just the presence of this drizzle of flesh couldn't explain this immense amount of life in such a tight space.

And so they actually subsist off of chemosynthesis. A lot of the organisms that live around these hydrothermal vents convert chemicals, the chemicals that surge out of the hydrothermal vents in the heated water into sugars and food. And I learned that some species of Yeti crabs actually have bacteria in the bristles on their claws that are kemosynthetic. And so the crabs sort of wave their claws back and forth in the heated water coming out of these vents to help the bacteria get more chemicals. And it's incredible because in these videos, you see these crabs just waving their claws back and forth. And it just looks like they're dancing. And I was like, this is absolutely incredible

that there are just these raves of dancing ghostly white crabs like at the bottom of the ocean, living off of an energy source that we have no access to in our own bodies. It almost felt like they had formed their own secret crab society at the bottom of the space. seafloor. And like what is queerness, right, if not creating these alternative forms of nourishment, energy, of spaces to call your own? So the crabs just felt very queer to me. Awesome. You know, when you write about the Yeti crabs, you say, wouldn't dancing all day and all night make any creature crustacean or not tired. But according to researchers, dancing doesn't exhaust the crabs. After all, they wouldn't dance unless it gave them energy.

We all got to find, yeah, what that dancing is for us. Sabrina Imbler, thank you so much for coming on Shortwave. Thank you. This was a real pleasure, Emily. I really appreciate it. This episode was produced by Rachel Carlson and edited by Burley McCoy and Rebecca Ramirez. Rachel checked the facts. Quasi Lee was the audio engineer. Beth Donovan is our senior director and Colin Campbell is our senior vice president of podcasting strategy. I'm Emily Kwong. Thanks for listening to Shortwave from NPR.