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My Life in Sea Creatures: A young queer science writer’s reflections on identity and the ocean

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In How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures, Sabrina Imbler examines a selection of marine life and their methods and adaptations of survival, highlighting what makes these creatures unique. Simultaneously, Imbler shares their experience as a queer, nonbinary POC working in science. Each anecdote is paired with a certain sea creature, their traits and habits becoming the jump-off point to an analogous revelation about Imbler themself. I love memoirs in which the author includes some kind of technical writing or specialized history, but especially when they include science writing. I learned about sea creatures, and connected emotionally with them, almost as much as I did with Imbler herself. This is a powerful, moving collection for the unexpected, heartbreaking, and affirming stories Imbler shared from the parts of the world we don't always pay attention to. From Norweigan folklore, there emerges yet another sea/lake monster who goes by the name of Selma. Said to live in Lake Seljord in Norway, this mythical sea creature is alleged to have been sighted numerous times since the 1750’s. Many say that it resembles a long anaconda-like snake, and a reptilian monster with a head like a horse. 31. Mussie

Almost every system we exist in is cruel, and it is our job to hold ourselves accountable to a moral center separate from the arbitrary ganglion of laws that, so often, get things wrong. ” Conclusion: The proximate cause of death may be falling in love with the idea of a person, or the idea of a relationship." Perhaps any human would pale in comparison to the wonders of the sea creatures Imbler describes with vividness and insight. Watch out for the bit where humble pet goldfish are released into open water and all hell breaks loose or for the lovely, bold descriptions of sturgeon, whose “mountainous scutes and chin bristles jut out like stalactites” and who “glide aimlessly, with an ossified kind of grace”.

The Abaia is a huge, magical eel from Melanesian mythology that lives in the bottom of the freshwater lakes of Fiji, Solomon, and Vanuatu islands. This mythical sea creature is said to be very protective of the creatures living in the lake and if anyone tries to fish from the lake where the Abaia lives, they will encounter a tremendous wave resulting from the protective thrashing of the Abaia’s tail. Watch out for the bit where humble pet goldfish are released into open water and all hell breaks loose I also thought thematically the connections between the sea creatures and Imbler's life didn't quite resonate. Although I loved the idea of combining these two disparate genres, the execution didn't work for me. That said, I learned a lot of cool stuff about the ocean and its inhabitants that I won't forget and I appreciated getting this information from a queer feminist mixed race perspective. I would have liked a book that was just that better, I think. SN: In the essay “How to Draw a Sperm Whale,” you write, “The anemones had found a home on the remains of a creature once so staggeringly alive that it inhaled metric tons of krill each day and fertilized entire food webs with its waste, hundreds of pounds of heart beating through the water with no sense of what was to come.” My Mother and the Starving Octopus: Comparing their adolescence, their mother's journey from Taiwan to Michigan, their mutual preoccupation with the size of their bodies, and the story of the purple octopus who nurtured her egg clutch for four and a half years. This one was heart-breaking.

SN: How did you approach thinking and writing about the corporeal in the context of thinking about bodies of people and sea creatures, and also thinking and feeling your way around your body and your own corporeal experiences?

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Each essay in their debut collection profiles one such creature: the mother octopus who starves herself while watching over her eggs, the Chinese sturgeon whose migration route has been decimated by pollution and dams, the bizarre Bobbitt worm (named after Lorena) and other uncanny creatures lurking in the deep ocean, far below where the light reaches. Imbler's debut weaves the wonders of marine biology with stories of their own family and coming of age, implicitly connecting endangered sea life to marginalised human communities and asking how they and we adapt, survive and care for each other. A beautiful lure that caught me; the lush colors of the cover, the temptation of sea creatures, explorations of identity. Overall, it was an interesting collection of pieces that interested and occasionally challenged me. I can be honest enough to say that Sy Montgomery and her attempts to do something similar drives me bonkers, perhaps because I've had my fill of straight, white, middle-class women. Intersectionality and grey areas are everything. I admit that I feel bad that I didn't like this as much as everyone else did. I really loved the first two essays. I loved all the essays, really. It's having them all in one book that was not really for me. Some of these hazards include jellyfish stings, stingray stings, and another biting, stinging or leeching animals. The author is a journalist and writer who covers science and queer issues. They are both queer in terms of sexuality and gender as well as being mixed race. This brilliant collection of essays covers many of these elements of their identity by contrasting them with sea creatures that illustrate key elements.

The writing is lovely; the science is usually--but not always--cleverly integrated, the perspective interesting, though occasionally so very developmentally young. I'd love to read more about what Imbler does with their life in twenty years.

Sunfish

Us Everlasting: immortal jellyfish actually revert to polyp stage ('ontogeny reversal'). This piece attempts some more poetic license, using second person narrative at times, as well as talking about different lives. "Its immortality is active. It is constantly aging in both directions, always reinventing itself." Compulsively readable, beautifully lyric, and wildly tender [...] A breathtaking, mesmerizing debut from a tremendous talent" How to Draw a Sperm Whale: I liked this one, although the formatting it vaguely like a report was a challenge. This one tries to parallel their college thesis on sperm whales, information on necropsies, and their first girlfriend, M. (they abbreviate it 'M,' which I found distracting, like we were reading an impression of a medical report, except medical reports would no longer use abbreviations). Given how much I abhor whaling, even the historical accounts of it, it was hard to warm to this section. However, I thought it awkwardly done and felt, well, like a college writing project.

Interestingly enough, sea slugs are able to eat sea anemones without discharging their nematocysts. Unlike the organ hippocampus in the human brain, there is a mythical sea creature from Phoenician and Greek mythology known as the Hippocampus. He has the lower body of a fish and the upper body of a horse, and he is said t0 have drawn the chariot of the god Poseidon. 49. The Fish-Man of Lierganes A selkie is a mythical sea creature or water spirit that can change from a seal to a human by shedding their skin, hence the name Selkie, or “seal folk”. Selkies originated in Norse and Celtic mythology and are believed to reside in the Northern Islands of Scotland. 43. Bunyip Shondaland spoke with Imbler about geological time scales, the many meanings of immortality, being jealous of a sea creature’s bodily autonomy, and the importance of dreaming. Pure Life: hydrothermal vents and the deep sea yeti crab, Kiwaidae, and Imbler's time in Seattle, where they moved for an internship. They explore the parallels of space and movement between the crab and them; inhospitable space transformed by a monthly queer POC party, and dancing, the crab farming the bacteria attached to their bristles. "It is exactly suited to the life it leads."

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In Norse mythology, Jormungandr is a “huge monster” from the sea who is so big he can surround the earth and grab his tail. In Marvel Comics, Jormungandr is known as the Midgard Serpent. Thor, the thunder god, is the arch-enemy of Jormungandr. 16. The Kappa In Greek mythology, The Cetus was a deadly sea monster pursued by both Perseus and Heracles. The Cetus constellation, “whale” is located near other water-related constellations such as Aquarius, Pisces, and Eridanus. 28. Akkorokamui Sarah Neilson is a freelance culture writer and interviewer whose work regularly appears in The Seattle Times , Them , and Shondaland , among other outlets. They are an alum of the Tin House craft intensive, and their memoir writing has been published in Catapult and Ligeia . Imbler's ability to balance illuminating science journalism with candid personal revelation is impressive, and the mesmerizing glints of lyricism are a treat. This intimate deep dive will leave readers eager to see where Imbler goes next"

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