Went today with my Brooklyn friends V, R and their son E to the Birch Aquarium at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, where we oohed and aahed at jellyfish and lost ourselves in a kelp forest habitat full of garibaldi and flounder, moray eels and sea bass, sharks and rays. But the show was stolen again by the leafy seadragon, a relation to seahorses and pipefish which lives off the coasts of Australia - it features in a special exhibition on camouflage. (Photo source). Nearly two year ago we saw another member of the family - a weedy seadragon - in Richard Flanagan's bravura Gould's Book of Fish, where, as I recall, it's part of the most important chapter, describing the astounding mystery of life. And truly, this is an astounding creature. If evolution permits the seadragons in all their improbable finery, what can't it do?
Monday, December 29, 2008
Horsing around
Went today with my Brooklyn friends V, R and their son E to the Birch Aquarium at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, where we oohed and aahed at jellyfish and lost ourselves in a kelp forest habitat full of garibaldi and flounder, moray eels and sea bass, sharks and rays. But the show was stolen again by the leafy seadragon, a relation to seahorses and pipefish which lives off the coasts of Australia - it features in a special exhibition on camouflage. (Photo source). Nearly two year ago we saw another member of the family - a weedy seadragon - in Richard Flanagan's bravura Gould's Book of Fish, where, as I recall, it's part of the most important chapter, describing the astounding mystery of life. And truly, this is an astounding creature. If evolution permits the seadragons in all their improbable finery, what can't it do?
