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

This episode explores fascinating marine creatures and their unique behaviors and adaptations, with a focus on their impact on human understanding of nature and self.

1. Marine creatures like yeti crabs and cuttlefish exhibit unique behaviors that can reflect broader themes of adaptation and identity.
2. Yeti crabs thrive in extreme environments by utilizing chemosynthesis, a survival strategy alien to humans.
3. Cuttlefish display remarkable abilities to change their appearance, which can be seen as a metaphor for social masking and identity exploration.
4. The personal connection the host, Sabrina Imbler, feels to these creatures enriches their understanding of queer identity.
5. Stories from the deep sea inspire reflections on human nature and the many ways life adapts and thrives in diverse environments.

1: Introduction to Marine Life

Exploring the fascinating world of marine life through the eyes of Sabrina Imbler, who shares their childhood fascination with parrotfish and their journey into marine biology.

• Sabrina Imbler: "It felt like I was getting this little portal into what does the parrotfish do when I'm not around?"

2: Deep Sea Revelations

Sabrina discusses the yeti crabs' unique lifestyle around hydrothermal vents and how this reflects on queer identity and creating one's space.

• Sabrina Imbler: "What is queerness, right, if not creating these alternative forms of nourishment, energy of spaces to call your own?"

3: Cuttlefish and Identity

Sabrina explores the adaptive camouflage of cuttlefish and parallels it with themes of identity and self-presentation in human society.

• Sabrina Imbler: "They're all authentic to the cuttlefish."

1. Explore and learn about the less known or visible parts of nature to gain a broader perspective on life.
2. Reflect on personal adaptations and changes, drawing inspiration from nature’s resilience and versatility.
3. Consider how personal environments shape identities, much like marine creatures adapt to their habitats.
4. Engage with and support conservation efforts to preserve diverse marine ecosystems.
5. Foster a curiosity for the natural world as a way to understand broader life concepts.

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.

People

Sabrina Imbler, Emily Kwong

Companies

None

Books

How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures

Guest Name(s):

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Content Warnings:

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Speaker
You're listening to short wave from NPR.

Sabrina Imbler
As a kid, Sabrina Imbler loved being in the ocean and snorkeling, following around all kinds of parrotfish. They're big.

Sabrina Imbler
They don't swim that fast. And I I was just, like, obsessed with them.

Sabrina Imbler
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.

Sabrina Imbler
At night, they, you know, produce this mucus bubble that they can.

They are responsible for, like, most of the sand on the reef because of, you know, their jaws that crunch down on coral and disintegrate it.

Sabrina Imbler
And this was the first time Sabrina realized, wait, fish do more than just swim around all day.

Sabrina Imbler
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. I'm a fish person now. Like, this is. These are the creatures that I love.

Sabrina Imbler
Later in life, Sabrina had a writing job, which allowed them to share their fascination with marine organisms.

Sabrina Imbler
Occasionally, I would come across a story that really, like, moved me emotionally.

Sabrina Imbler
Like granuledony 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. Years. Sabrina read all about them, how when.

Sabrina Imbler
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.

Sabrina Imbler
And in writing about this starving octopus, Sabrina started writing about their own mom. That essay is one of many in their 2022 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 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.

Sabrina Imbler
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 and adaptation as any of the creatures that I was writing about.

Sabrina Imbler
So today on the show, a life in sea creatures with Sabrina Imbler, the surprising sturdiness of goldfish, how cuttlefish morph, and why we should all be dancing like yeti crabs.

Im Emily Kwong, and youre listening to Shortwave, the science podcast from NPR.

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Speaker
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?

Sabrina Imbler
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 bull, 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, like, 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 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 fruits. And so I think I just wanted to tell people both how they were maybe unintentionally harming their pet, constricting its size, its life.

Sabrina Imbler
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 ten essays in this book. I've picked a 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 cuttlefish.

Okay, so cuttlefish 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?

Sabrina Imbler
Hmm. 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.

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 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 cuttlefish's body almost like a conveyor belt. And it's almost as if they turned their bodies into, like, a projector that you can, like, put a movie on or put a film on.

And so I think I was just always really fascinated with the cuttlefish's ability to transform their body.

And as I was writing this book, I came across all of these stories that were like, you know, cuttlefish 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 this marginalized queer community. Right. As performing a disguise or being in.

Speaker
Disguise versus it being who they are.

Sabrina Imbler
Yeah. And that's really harmful language that is still 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 cuttlefish as just 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 splay their. 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 thinking about splotch, thinking about all of these sort of gender bending patterns, it just really made me think about 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.

Speaker
Something else we notice throughout the book is just how important places are.

Even the title of the book is based on the different kind of vertical zones of the ocean are inspired by.

In one chapter, you write about the yeti crabs living near methane seeps at the bottom of the ocean.

Sabrina Imbler
And what's so special about these crabs.

Speaker
Making their life there?

Sabrina Imbler
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, like, 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 just, like, a hair above freezing, these hydrothermal vents and cold seeps are like, these oases that are, like the temperature of a kiddie pool.

Speaker
Sounds lovely.

Sabrina Imbler
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 poop and snot and decaying flesh called marine snow, which sort of have this dazzling effect as it sort of slowly rains down on this horde of crabs.

But just the presence of this drizzle of flesh couldn't explain, like, 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 chemosynthetic. And so the crabs will 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 seafloor. And 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.

Speaker
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.

Sabrina Imbler
We all gotta find, yeah. What that dancing is for us.

Speaker
Sabrina Embler, thank you so much for coming on short wave.

Sabrina Imbler
Thank you. This was a real pleasure, Emily. I really appreciate it.

Sabrina Imbler
This episode was produced by Rachel Carlson and edited by Burleigh McCoy and Rebecca Ramirez. Rachel checked the facts. Kwesi 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 short wave from NPRdez.

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